Fun_People Archive
22 Mar
The Fundaments of the KJV

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 99 18:17:08 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: The Fundaments of the KJV

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Forwarded-by: Vicki Rosenzweig
From: copyediting-l

There's a small but vocal subset of fundamentalist Baptists who believe the
King James Version of the Bible is It - it's been supernaturally preserved
in a way that can't be said of a newer translation (such as the New
International Version), which these people often condemn as being Satanic.

The general preface of the old King James, "The Translators to the Reader,"
BEST THINGS HAVE BEEN CULMINATED.  This is often an important part of the
theology of such groups - the KJV represents the pinnacle of Bible
translation in English, the intended end of a divine refinement process.

Unfortunately for the King James Only gang, the word in the subtitle wasn't
"culminated," but "calumniated" (slandered).

The preface was not to say the translators had refined all previous English
Bibles into one perfect Bible (although they did say that one of their
intentions was to create one very good version out of the many already in
use).  They were defending themselves against the false accusations advanced
new translation, there was no need to translate the Bible into the
vernacular at all, and so on.

Unfortunately, it appears as though one unobservant soul scanned the
Preface, let that word get through the spellchecker unmolested, and other
KJV advocates have simply copied and recopied the file, not bothering to
verify its accuracy.  As a result, part of their belief system has been
formed around a printing error.

© 1999 Peter Langston