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Didn't King James just pick and choose on the Bible, the King James Bible? I mean, I heard that he just chose what went in there.
Yoshoua60, good question. Your information is incorrect; King James did not pick and choose on the Bible. He appointed scholars to create an "authorized" Bible. and this they did in 1611. Tyndale had already translated the Bible into English in 1525 (amazing isn't that our language is such the dominate language of the world, when a mere 475 years before, our language was considered a brutish, corrupt utterance from the lips). The KJV (for the NT) is based primarily on the Theodore Beza's Greek edition. Beza primarily rested on Erasmus's Greek NT of 1519 (that is Erasmus's second edition), and Erasmus relied primarily on the Byzantine family of the MSS (remember, there are 4 distinct families of texts that modern Bibles and scholars rely on in preparing our Bibles today). According to Dr. Bruce Metzger, the Byzantine text is the youngest of the families, meaning, it's not based on the oldest MSS that we have.
On the whole, the KJV is still a remarkably accurate work if for no other reason than all of the MSS of the NT are very accurate (same for the OT) as we discussed elsewhere. But, in fairness, for the more accurate Bibles, one would choose one translated based on ALL the MSS that we have and particularly on the oldest MSS. Look at it this way, say for approximate value, the KJV is 98% pure to the autographs while the newest translations are about 99.5%. We're not talking about a big difference and in NO CASE ARE ANY THEOLOGICAL ISSUES AT STAKE HERE. Heck, the main deal is the language and its readability for today. If another nation translated our Declaration of Independence, they would not try to use 17th century words from their language just to be realistic. They would, instead, use the latest words. And if it turned out that we had various copies and none of the autographs, (original documents) that nation would not want a translation based on just the most copies or even the one that "really dedicated Americans" liked--they would want a translation based on what the scholars deemed to be the most pure text back to what Jefferson actually wrote. And they'd want it in their language of today.
Hope that helps.
On the whole, the KJV is still a remarkably accurate work if for no other reason than all of the MSS of the NT are very accurate (same for the OT) as we discussed elsewhere. But, in fairness, for the more accurate Bibles, one would choose one translated based on ALL the MSS that we have and particularly on the oldest MSS. Look at it this way, say for approximate value, the KJV is 98% pure to the autographs while the newest translations are about 99.5%. We're not talking about a big difference and in NO CASE ARE ANY THEOLOGICAL ISSUES AT STAKE HERE. Heck, the main deal is the language and its readability for today. If another nation translated our Declaration of Independence, they would not try to use 17th century words from their language just to be realistic. They would, instead, use the latest words. And if it turned out that we had various copies and none of the autographs, (original documents) that nation would not want a translation based on just the most copies or even the one that "really dedicated Americans" liked--they would want a translation based on what the scholars deemed to be the most pure text back to what Jefferson actually wrote. And they'd want it in their language of today.
Hope that helps.
