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Welcome to the online version of the King James version of the Holy Bible, New Testament.
This online bible is being constructed so you can browse by book and chapter as well as find references to certain topics that are covered in the Bible. Use the drop down menu to navigate to the book that you wish to review, when you get there you will see the front page of that book will have listed topics that are covered in the book as well as a drop down menu to take you to any of the chapters that are included in the book.
At the bottom of each chapter page you will see a link to the next chapter and the previous chapter of the book you are in. (Still finishing this feature and you won’t see it on all pages, yet.)
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Introduction:
There is more manuscripts support for the New Testament than for any other body of ancient literature. Over five thousand Greek, eight thousand Latin, and many more manuscripts in other languages attest the integrity of the New Testament. There is only one basic New Testament used by Protestants, Roman Catholics and Othordox, by conservatives and liberals. Minor variations in hand copying have appeared through the centuries, before mechanical printing began about A.D. 1450.
Some variations exist in the spelling of Greek words, in word order, and in similar details. These ordinarily do not show up in translation and do not affect the sense of the text in any way.
Other manuscript differences such as omission or inclusion of a word or a clause, and two paragraphs in the Gospels, should not overshadow the overwhelming degree of agreement which exists among the ancient records. Bible readers may be assured that the most important differences in English New Testaments of today are due, not to manuscript divergence, but to the way in which translaotors view the task of translation: How literally should the text be rendered? How does the translator view the matter of biblical inspiration? Does the translator adopt a paraphrase when a literal rendering would be quite clear and more to the point? The New Testament King James Version follows the historic precedent of the Authorized Version in maintaining a literal approach to translation, except where the idiom of the original language cannot be translated directly into our tongue.
The King James New Testament was based on the traditional text of the Greek speaking churches, first published in 1516, and later called the Textus Receptus of Received Text. Although based on the relatively few available manuscripts, these were representative of many more which existed at the time but only became known later. In the late nineteenth century, B. Wescott and F. Hort taught that this text had been officially edited by the fourth century church, but a total lack of historical evidence for this event has forced a revision of the theory. It is now widely held that the Byzantine Text that largley supports the Textus Recptus has as much right as the Alexandrian or any other tradition to be weighed in determining the tex of the New Testament.
Since the 1880’s most contemporary translations of the New Testament have relied upon a relatively few manuscripts discovered chiefly in the late nineteenth and ealry twentieth centuries. Such translations depend primarily on two manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, because of their greater age. The Greek text obtained be using these sources and the related papyri (our most ancient manuscripts) is known as the Alexandrian Text. However, some scholars have grounds for doubting the faithfulness of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, since they often disagree with one another, and Sinaiticus exhibits excessive omission.
A third viewpoint of the New Testament scholorship holds that the best text is based on the consensus of the majority of existing Greek manusscripts. This text is called the Majority Text. Most of these manuscripts are in substantial agreement. Even though many are late, and none is earlier that the fifth century, usually their reakings are verified by papyri, ancient versions, quotations fron the early church fathers, or a combination of these. The Majority Text is similar to the Textus Receptus, but it corrects those readings which have little or no support in the Greek manuscript tradition.
Today, scholars agree that the science of New Testament textual criticism is in a state of flux. Very few scholars still favor the Textus Receptus as such, and then often for its historical prestige as the text of Luther, Calvin, Tyndale and the King James version. For about a century most have followed a Critical Text (so called because it is edited according to specific principles of textual criticism) which depends heavily upon the Alexandrian type of text. More recently many have abandoned this Critical Text (which is quite similar to the one edited by Wescott and Hort) for one that is more eclectic. Finally, a small but growing number of scholars prefer the Mafority Text, which is close to the traditional text except in Revelation.
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