Is the KJV the only true Bible?

What “KJV-only” means

“KJV-only” is a name for the belief that the King James Version is the only acceptable English Bible and that modern translations should be set aside. It is not one single position. Views that are grouped under the name range from holding to the Greek and Hebrew texts behind the KJV to holding that its English words are themselves perfect, and the sources below describe at least these, from mildest to strongest:

• Received Text. The Trinitarian Bible Society uses only the KJV in English because it translates the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Received Text, which the Society believes God providentially preserved. Yet it says it “does not claim perfection” for the KJV, only that it needs no textual revision.
• Preserved, not inspired. Some KJV-only preachers call it the preserved word of God rather than an inspired translation. Evangelist Samuel Gipp told Christianity Today in 1995: “I call it the preserved Word of God.”
• Perfect in English. Some churches teach that the KJV itself is the perfect, inerrant word of God. A researcher who studied one such congregation in Ohio summed up its reasoning: a perfect God not only inspired a perfect Bible but also preserved one.
• Above the Greek. The strongest form, associated with Peter Ruckman, founder of Pensacola Bible Institute, holds that where the KJV and the Greek manuscripts disagree, the KJV should be considered authoritative.

These are very different claims, and much of the confusion in the debate comes from treating them as one.

Where the movement came from

According to historian Jeffrey Straub of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, the KJV-only movement grew largely out of opposition to newer translations: first the Revised Version of 1881 and the American Standard Version of 1901, and later the Revised Standard Version of 1952 and those that followed.

Several books shaped it. B. G. Wilkinson, a Seventh-day Adventist, wrote Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, which a committee of his own church reviewed critically in 1931. Edward Hills’s The King James Version Defended (1956) was, in the view of Kevin Bauder of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, less a KJV-only book than a defense of the Textus Receptus, and Peter Ruckman’s The Bible Babel appeared in 1964. Bauder calls David Otis Fuller’s Which Bible? (1970) the first major evangelical book to set out the KJV-only position for ordinary readers.

In 1978 a small group of KJV-only advocates organized the Dean Burgon Society. In 1993 Gail Riplinger’s New Age Bible Versions argued that modern translations reflect a widening apostasy; Christianity Today reported in 1995 that about 100,000 copies were in circulation, while critics such as James R. White faulted its use of quotations, and a 1994 review in the Christian Research Journal also rejected its arguments.

Where KJV-only is found today

Britannica notes that by the late 20th century the KJV had become the favored translation of English-speaking Christian fundamentalists, some of whom regarded it as divinely inspired. The evangelical writer Trevin Wax, who grew up among KJV-only believers, has described the controversy as raging in some fundamentalist circles of independent Baptist life.

It is a minority view even there. Bauder writes that when it spread in the 1970s the great majority of fundamentalists did not accept it. Speaking at Baylor University in 2011, Straub described KJV-only churches as a resilient subculture within American fundamentalism and said the internet has made even its most extreme forms accessible worldwide.

The movement is much smaller than the KJV’s readership. A 2014 study reported by Christianity Today found that 55 percent of Americans who read the Bible used the KJV, and Britannica notes that it remains the favored translation of a number of Protestant churches and denominations.

The case its defenders make

The most careful defense of the KJV starts with the text, not the English. The Trinitarian Bible Society argues that God “has providentially preserved His Word through all generations,” so that the church cannot have relied on corrupt manuscripts for nearly two thousand years. It notes that the Byzantine text behind the Received Text agrees with the great majority of surviving Greek manuscripts, more than 95 percent by its count.

Defenders add that the two oldest great codices, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, disagree with each other thousands of times in the Gospels, and that modern Bibles built largely on them omit or bracket familiar passages such as Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11. They value the KJV’s word-for-word method, its italics for words supplied in English, its “thee” and “thou,” which mark the singular, and its place as a shared standard among English-speaking Christians for centuries.

From this the stronger forms of KJV-only draw a further conclusion: if God preserved His word perfectly, there must be one perfect form of it in English today, and that form is the KJV. Critics who themselves think well of the KJV, such as the scholar Daniel Wallace, reject this step in particular, as the next section shows.

The main replies

The strongest reply comes from the KJV’s own translators. They did not see themselves as producing the first true English Bible but as revising earlier ones: their first rule was to follow the Bishops’ Bible and alter it only as far as the original required, and they relied heavily on the work of William Tyndale. In their preface, “The Translators to the Reader,” they wrote that their aim was “to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one.”

The same preface defends having several translations. Citing Augustine, it says that “variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures,” and the translators set alternative renderings in the margin where the text was not clear, because “diversity of signification and sense in the margin” must do good. They even affirmed that “the very meanest translation of the Bible in English” made by people of their own faith “containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”

Critics also ask which KJV is meant. The text was revised in 1629 and 1638 at Cambridge and again in 1762 and 1769, and the 1769 Oxford revision by Benjamin Blayney is the form most people read today. The 1611 edition also included the Apocrypha, listed between Malachi and Matthew, which the Trinitarian Bible Society now excludes from the KJV it circulates.

Finally, scholars point to what has been found since 1611. Britannica notes that the great early Greek codices were not known or available to the translators, and scholar Daniel Wallace told Christianity Today that the manuscripts behind newer translations raise no doctrinal problems, while calling the KJV a fine translation but not the only legitimate one.

Quotations from the 1611 preface follow the modernized spelling of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library transcription.

What most churches and scholars hold

Outside the KJV-only movement, the common view is that the KJV is a faithful translation but not the only one. In the 20th century many mainstream Protestant churches turned to newer translations such as the Revised Standard Version, the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version, Britannica notes, and Catholic readers came to use approved translations such as the Jerusalem Bible and the New American Bible, Revised Edition.

Even the KJV’s firmest institutional defenders do not claim a consensus. The Trinitarian Bible Society acknowledges that the great majority of modern biblical scholars hold to the critical Greek text, and it claims for the KJV not perfection but that it is a thoroughly accurate translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts behind it.

For most Christians, then, the answer is no: the KJV is not the only true Bible, but it is a careful and historic translation that many still read with confidence. We print the New Testament in both the KJV and the World English Bible. If you are weighing the KJV against modern Bibles, see the most accurate Bible translations, NIV vs KJV and why the KJV is controversial, and for its history, King James Bible explained.