‘I believe every word in the Bible!’ With such an emphatic statement, odds are that the reference is to the King James version. During our travels in the United States, my wife and I once encountered a group of Bible college students on an outing, who had no idea there was any translation of the Bible other than the KJV. Many years ago, if looks could have killed, my interlocutor would have murdered me for suggesting that there were mistakes in the KJV: “How dare you question the inspired word of the Lord!” – more inspired, presumably than the original

Y es, there are mistakes/mistranslations in the KJV, just as there are in all other versions. In the case of the KJV, though, I would offer mitigating circumstances: lacking though they were in the ‘implements’ available to more modern translators, those scholars apparently had great reverence for the Word – which does not seem to be the case with the other versions. As it is, translators of the Bible seemingly relied more heavily on the Septuagent [LXX] than on the Masoretic...