Saturday, February 11, 2012

Restoring a fine painting

David Norton, who probably knows more about the KJV than anyone else, is the editor of The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.  After many years of meticulous research, he has produced an edition of the KJV that restores the text to that envisioned by the forty-six Church of England clergymen (and one layman!) who made the translation. 

Most people assume that the text of the KJV has remained unchanged since its publication, but this is not the case.  In a scholarly book entitled A Textual History of the King James Bible, Norton explains how minor changes were made to the text between 1611 and 1769 with the intention of improving or correcting it.  But Norton, like a man restoring a fine painting, would rather trust the original translators than second-guess them.  The NCPB, he declares, “is the translators’ Bible.”

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