Why is the KJV Bible so controversial?

The five debates at a glance

For four centuries the King James Version has been praised and argued over in equal measure. Published in 1611 under King James I, it was generally accepted as the standard English Bible from the mid-17th to the early 20th century, and it is still widely read: a 2014 study reported by Christianity Today found that 55 percent of Americans who read the Bible used the KJV, against 19 percent for the NIV. The disagreements about it fall into five groups.

1. Its source texts: Textus Receptus vs critical text

The deepest disagreement is about the Greek behind the English. The KJV New Testament translates the Textus Receptus, or Received Text: the printed Greek editions that began with Erasmus in 1516. According to the Trinitarian Bible Society, Erasmus worked from six or seven manuscripts, the oldest from the 10th century, and the KJV translators relied mainly on the later editions of Stephanus (1550 and 1551) and Beza (1598).

Most English Bibles today, as the Trinitarian Bible Society itself notes, follow the critical text instead, which rests heavily on older manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus from about the fourth century; the ESV, for example, uses the United Bible Societies and Nestle-Aland Greek editions. Britannica calls the KJV’s Greek base “a poor one,” because the great early codices were not yet known in 1611.

Defenders answer that age is not everything. The Trinitarian Bible Society argues that God has providentially preserved His Word, that the Byzantine text behind the Received Text agrees with more than 95 percent of surviving manuscripts, and that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus disagree with each other more than 3,000 times in the Gospels alone. The difference shows on the page: many modern Bibles bracket or footnote passages such as Mark 16:9–20, which the KJV prints as Scripture. See why Matthew 17:21 is missing and NIV vs KJV.

2. The claim that it is the only true English Bible

A second debate is about what some readers claim for the KJV. The KJV-only view holds that it is the only trustworthy English Bible, and in its strongest form that its English wording is itself perfect; Britannica notes that by the late 20th century some English-speaking fundamentalists regarded it as divinely inspired.

Even among fundamentalists this was a minority view: when it spread in the 1970s, writes Kevin Bauder of Central Baptist Theological Seminary, the great majority did not accept it. The translators themselves made no such claim; their preface, “The Translators to the Reader,” says they set out “to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one.” We look at the movement, its arguments and the replies in Is the KJV the only true Bible?

3. Its 400-year-old English

The KJV’s English is the English of 1611, and some of its words have since changed meaning. In 1 Thessalonians 4:15 the living “shall not prevent them which are asleep,” where “prevent” means to go before; the World English Bible says they “will in no way precede those who have fallen asleep.” In 2 Thessalonians 2:7, “only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” uses “let” in its old sense of hinder, which the WEB renders “Only there is one who restrains now.”

The KJV’s strongest supporters acknowledge the problem. The Trinitarian Bible Society publishes a list of words in the KJV that are “no longer in everyday use, or now used with a different meaning,” explaining “prevent” as to go before and “let” as to hinder, and its reference Bible gives modern equivalents for such words in the margin.

Defenders also see strengths in the older forms. The Trinitarian Bible Society points out that “thee” and “thou” are singular while “ye” and “you” are plural, a distinction modern English has lost, so in Luke 22:31–32 a reader can see that Jesus prays for Peter alone. See also the timeless KJV.

4. Disputed renderings: “Easter” and the “unicorn”

Critics also point to individual words. Acts 12:4 says Herod put Peter in prison, “intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people,” although the Greek word is pascha, the Passover, and the WEB reads “after the Passover.” Numbers 23:22 says God “hath as it were the strength of an unicorn”; the Hebrew re’em, Britannica explains, means the wild ox, and the WEB reads “the strength of the wild ox.”

Defenders reply that these are questions of older English and older scholarship, not careless work. Britannica notes that many versions of the Bible rendered re’em as “unicorn” or “rhinoceros,” and the Trinitarian Bible Society’s word list explains the KJV’s “unicorn” as a wild bull. On Acts 12:4, a Trinitarian Bible Society article traces “Easter” to William Tyndale, who used it for the Passover season, and concludes that “passover” is to be preferred and that the one remaining “Easter” was probably left in by accident.

Misprints such as the 1631 “Wicked Bible” and the editorial changes made between 1611 and 1769 are a separate story: see King James Bible mistakes.

5. A king’s Bible: its royal and political origins

The KJV began at the Hampton Court Conference of January 1604, which James I held in response to the Puritans’ Millenary Petition for church reform. James rejected most of their demands, defending the bishops with the words “No bishop, no king,” but he accepted their request for a new translation of the Bible. The conference resolved that it should be as close as possible to the original Hebrew and Greek and printed without marginal notes.

That last point was aimed at the Geneva Bible, the favorite of the Puritans. James had found some of its notes “very partial, untrue, seditious” (spelling modernized), objected to one on Exodus 1:19 that in his view allowed disobedience to kings, and called the Geneva translation the worst he had seen. Richard Bancroft, bishop of London and later archbishop of Canterbury, oversaw the work; 54 revisers were approved and 47 scholars, in six companies at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge, took part.

The translators worked under written rules. The Bishops’ Bible was to be followed and altered as little as the original would allow; “the Old Ecclesiastical Words” were to be kept, so that “church” was not to be translated “congregation”; and no marginal notes were allowed except to explain Hebrew or Greek words. One reading is political: James believed the Puritans and the Geneva Bible were hostile to the monarchy, as a Brigham Young University library exhibit notes. Britannica stresses the other side, describing the rules as meant to curb individual preferences and keep the work scholarly and nonpartisan.

The 1611 edition also contained the Apocrypha: its table of contents lists “The Bookes called Apocrypha” between Malachi and Matthew. Some publishers now leave these books out; the Trinitarian Bible Society, for example, circulates the KJV “to the exclusion of the Apocrypha.”

What the debates mean if you are choosing a Bible

None of these debates settles the question for everyone. The KJV’s strengths are real: a word-for-word method, a text the churches read for centuries, and a marked influence on English style; Britannica calls it more faithful to the original languages and more scholarly than any of its predecessors. Its limits are real too: older vocabulary, a Greek text that, as the Trinitarian Bible Society acknowledges, the great majority of modern scholars do not follow, and a few renderings that even its defenders would change.

If you want the historic text and its language, the KJV remains a reasonable choice, and modern Bibles such as the ESV openly build on what its preface calls the “Tyndale–King James legacy.” If you need easier English, a modern translation may serve you better, or you can read two side by side, which is one reason we print the New Testament in both the KJV and the World English Bible. Compare the options in the most accurate Bible translations, and read the history in King James Bible explained.