Posted on 08/17/2020 9:00:27 AM PDT by MurphsLaw
Bible Verses Missing in Modern Translations?
There are a lot of people today that are what we call “King James only“ Christians. They believe that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is the only inspired version and that modern translations are modernist. One argument for this is that there are some verses contained in the KJV which are not in recent modern versions.
The argument of KJV-only adherents only betrays their ignorance of the process of inspiration, transmission and translation. We sometimes joked that, “If the KJV was good enough for St. Paul, it is good enough for me.”
Examples of missing verses and passages are Mark 16:9–20, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, and 1 John 5:7.
We don’t have any of the original writings of the documents in the New Testament, only copies and copies of copies. There are thousands of fragments and manuscripts from the early centuries. The earliest is called the John Ryland fragment which contains a small portion of John 17 and 18. It is dated at AD 125 and was found in the sands of Egypt and written of papyrus.
The more ancient the manuscripts the more likely they are to be accurate to what the apostles actually wrote. And the more ancient manuscripts found to compare and analyze, the more accurate the translation will be.
The KJV was translated in 1611 by Protestant King James of England and was translated when we were still devoid of the best and most ancient manuscripts that testify to the original writings of the apostles. Over the last 400 years since the translation of the KJV there have been many newly discovered ancient and more reliable manuscripts. Modern scholarship uses the most authoritative and trustworthy manuscripts to update the text of Scripture to make it much more accurate to what the apostles actually wrote. These manuscripts were not available during the translations of the KJV.
So, it was discovered there were some verses added by copyists over the centuries so King James had these later interpolations included in his translation.
But modern translations do not include them as part of the text, because they were not part of the original texts. But, even though modern translators know that those verses are not in the original Greek text, they still often add them in brackets with comments like: “Early mss [manuscripts] do not contain this v [verse].” This note is from the New American Standard Bible which is the translation I was raised with in my middle years along with the KJV.
Commenting on the later interpolation, the NIV footnote adds, “Some less important manuscripts [add]…” The Catholic New American Bible, used for Mass in the US, footnotes, “Toward the end of the second century in the West and among the fourth-century Greek Fathers, an additional verse was known… This verse is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, including the original Vulgate. Its vocabulary is markedly non-Johannine.”
Anybody who claims that those verses are definitely part of the original writings — and that Bibles that don’t include them are modernist and in error — only show their ignorance and the whole process of inspiration, transmission, translation and hermeneutics.
For more on this check this Protestant but very good source: Why Are Newer Translations of the Bible Missing Verses? (https://www.gotquestions.org/missing-verses.html)
You may also appreciate my article What Translation of the Bible Should you Use - (https://www.catholicconvert.com/blog/2019/05/10/which-translation-of-the-bible-should-you-use/)
No.
“But modern translations do not include them as part of the text,”
So, yes. The answer is yes.
/s
bkmk
I use NKJV for study. My church uses KJV.
Are Verses Left Out of Modern Translations of the Bible?
No. Only the ones that weren't there in the original.
Augustine, in City of God, has some interesting insights on that.
The King James Bible was put together by the Government scholars of England. In other words, it is a government publication. The book of John 2 may have been a forgery to keep the peasants in line such as not to challenge the authority of the rulers. These statements are what I have been told. The Geneva Bible was written by a group of men who were kicked out of England because they were not completely loyal to the King of England. These men wrote a Bible which substituted the word tyrant for the word King. The Pilgrams(Puritans) carried the Geneva Bible with them on the Mayflower to the new World( Plymouth Rock). The US Constitution was influenced by the Geneva Bible and its negative attitude towards the concept of the Devine Rights of the King.
KJV was a translation of the “Vulgate” Latin bible which in turn was a translation of scripture written in other languages.
Which, parenthetically, means that the “Revised” and “Modern” KJVs are a translation of a translation of a translation.
I have a replica of the Geneva Bible, the one used by the Pilgrims when they settled in Massachusetts. However, the sixteenth-century typeface is somewhat hard to read. I also have a replica of the original KJV. The ones I usually use are the NKJB, NIV, and a translation by the American theologian Edgar Goodspeed.
Newer versions change the context of certain words, tenses, meaning of the sentences, etc. Look up on a search engine “morning star” and see the differences in the “newer” bibles.
The best way to see this is have a Bible with side by side comparisons with other versions.
Holhman’s Christian Bible actually seems pretty good if you’re looking for a modern vernacular study. NIV...naaaa.
It’s interesting that the KJV translators acknowledged in their introduction that they were dealing with a limited numbers of MS and encouraged future scholars to continue to revise the translation as more became available. Dr. James White has completely eviscerated the KJ only crowd.
There are very, very few verses under question, and they either do not change the meaning of the text, or contradict other passages on the same point, whether they are included or not. Mark 16:9-20 is one example of this.
That’s not true at all. The KJV was translated from Greek texts compiled by Erasmus, Beza and Stephanos. In the Erasmus texts some parts of the book of Revelation came from the Vulgate because there were no Greek texts available. He asked the Vatican to let him review the codex Vaticanus for these portions but was refused.
The Douay-Rheims *is* a very slavish translation of the Vulgate, to the point of keeping intact some Latin constructions that are normal rhetorical devices in Latin but sound clumsy or stilted in English.
Erasmus translated the Greek texts into what language?
“The King James Bible was put together by the Government scholars of England. In other words, it is a government publication.” Yes, and no. They were scholars in the church of England, which was a political organ, but used a process to ensure independence and accuracy by the Greek translators. However, when they came across a Greek word which that did not fit with CoE teachings, they made one up. “Baptizo” is one example. They transliterated the word into “Baptism” as a cover for the practice of pouring or sprinkling, and did not simply translate BAPTIZO literally because scholars knew that means “to immerse.” In Hebrew it is referred to as a MIKVEH - an immersion.
He translated some Latin passages from the Vulgate back into Greek, because he didn’t have access to any other Greek source.
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