Thus, when the final product was brought before the church in published form, there were no surprises. All was done in the open and above board. There were no smoke filled back room decisions made with regard to the ultimate translation. Indeed, profit was of no consideration. Over the years, several editions have been issued to correct typesetting errors, spelling, the addition of marginal references, italics in place of the original Roman typeface, and so forth. As these editions have been largely misreported, we must now address this matter.
The printing press was invented in 1450 by the German Johann Gutenburg. Although this was 161 years before the 1611 KJB edition, the printing apparatus had changed very little. The type was set by hand, one character at a time. The process was quite slow, difficult and tedious, hence frequent errors resulted in all publications. The first edition of the King James also contained such printing errors, but these were not the kind of textual alterations which freely occur in modern versions. These were obvious and simple printing oversights. The second printing published later in 1611 corrected about 100 such textual differences. Of course, such errors do not render a Bible or any other book worthless û they merely need to be removed in subsequent editions.
The first two alleged "major revisions" of the King James Bible took place within 27 years of its first edition. The 1629 edition was but a careful correction of earlier printing errors. Only nine years later, a second so-called major revision was distributed. Dr. Samuel Ward and John Bois,27 two of the original translators, participated in both of these undertakings. However F.H.A. Scrivener (see footnote below) describes this as merely being a reinstatement of words, phrases and clauses overlooked by the 1611 printers - thereby amending these errors. Thus, 72% of the approximately 400 textual corrections in the KJB were completed by 1638. Hence, we find that instead of two major revisions, there were two stages of a single process - namely, the purging of early printing errors. Similarly, the last two "major revisions" were but two stages in standardizing the spelling. Very few textual corrections were necessary for these two publications (1762 and 1769). Thus, the term "four major revisions" is a misnomer, and as such, is grossly misleading.
Much is made by the detractors of the KJB claiming as many as 75,000 changes in the King James Bible since 1611. At first glance, this does seem to be a problem. However, before citing examples, the reader is enjoined to keep in mind that the real issue at hand is that of final authority. Further, the reader needs to be appraised that the original King James Bible is very different in appearance than those published today. Were one to go to a museum to view an original, he would
1 Sir Frederick Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 5th ed. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958), p. 306.
2 Much of that which follows has been adapted from The King James Version of 1611, The Myth of Early Revisions, David F. Reagan, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Temple, Knoxville, TN. Also see McClure, The Translators Revived, op. cit., p. 194 (Bois read the entire Hebrew O.T. at age 5 and wrote Hebrew at 6, p. 200). Dr. Reagan utilized data from F.H.A. Scrivener's The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1611), 1884. Dr. Scrivener was a conservative and godly member of the 1881 Revision Committee (see page Error! Bookmark not defined.).
