I have to side with Kobolos on this one. Only one more reason I am cautious about reading the bible, there's five millionish translations, pick one and it's totally different than the next.
I know just a little on this, stemming from the fanatical "If it Ain't King James, It Ain't BIBLE!" stickers everyone has down in the south. Let's look at the differences:
Three important issues must be understood and addressed when discussing the translation of the Bible from one language to another: first, the reliability of the document being translated; second, the knowledge and skill of the translators and third, the philosophy of translation (formal or dynamic equivalence). On all counts, the King James Bible still stands supreme. In 1881, influenced by and sympathetic to the Darwinian theory of evolution, two men, Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton J. A. Hort brought forth a different version of the Greek New Testament - one which differed from the Textus Receptus (the underlying Greek text of the KJV) in over 5,700 places.
This Westcott-Hort Greek Text was later to become the basis for the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version. It gave great weight to two corrupted manuscripts-the Vaticanus (Codex B) which was found in the Vatican Library in 1481 and was known to the KJV translators but was not used by them, and the Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph) which was found in a monastery wastebasket at the foot of Mt. Sinai in 1844. The Vaticanus and Sinaiticus appear to have been copied from the same source in the 4th Century and held great weight with Westcott and Hort due to their antiquity. Tischendorf, who discovered the Sinaiticus manuscript, noted at least 12,000 changes that had been made on this manuscript by others than the original copyist. It is difficult to understand why such documents as these could lead one to ignore the simple fact that the Greek text underlying the King James Version, the Textus Receptus, agreed with 90-95% of all known Scripture- related manuscripts, numbering over five thousand.
In recent years, the proliferation of modem Bible versions has increased tremendously. New versions that are based primarily upon the United Bible Societies' 4th revised edition Greek New Testament and the Nestle-Aland 27th edition Novum Testamentum Graece include the New Living Translation (NLT), the New Century Version (NCV), the Contemporary English Version (CEV) and Eugene H. Peterson's The Message. Most of these versions and translations are not only based on an inferior Greek text, but are also thought-for-thought translations (which allow for greater interpretive freedom of the text by the translators) rather than literal, word-for-word translations.
And Last but not least....King James Version.
Release of the King James Version in 1611 sparked such a furor that the Pilgrims refused to take it on the Mayflower. They stuck instead with the Geneva Bible.
(and remember where I mentioned all the changes from the KJV earlier)
The Greek text which stands behind the King James Bible is curious in certain places. The man who edited the text was a humanist named Erasmus. He was under pressure to get it to the press as soon as possible since (a) no edition of the Greek New Testament had yet been published, and (b) he had heard that some monks were just about to publish their edition of the Greek New Testament and he was in a race to beat them. Consequently, his edition has been called the most poorly edited volume in all of literature. It is filled with hundreds of typographical errors which even Erasmus would acknowledge. Two places deserve special mention. In the last six verses of Revelation, Erasmus had no Greek manuscript (=MS) (he only used half a dozen, very late MSS for the whole New Testament any way). He was therefore forced to 'back-translate' the Latin into Greek and by so doing he created seventeen variants which have never been found in any other Greek MS of Revelation! He merely guessed at what the Greek might have been. Secondly, for 1 John 5:7-8, Erasmus followed the majority of MSS in reading "there are three witnesses in heaven, the Spirit and the water and the blood." However, there was an uproar in some Roman Catholic circles because his text did not read "there are three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit." Erasmus said that he did not put that in the text because he found no Greek MSS which had that reading. This implicit challenge-viz., that if he found such a reading in any Greek MS, he would put it in his text-did not go unnoticed. In 1520, a scribe at Oxford named Roy made such a Greek MS (codex 61, now in Dublin). Erasmus' third edition had the second reading because such a Greek MS was 'made to order' to fill the challenge! To date, only a handful of Greek MSS have been discovered which have the Trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7-8, though none of them is demonstrably earlier than the sixteenth century.
the King James Bible has undergone three revisions since its inception in 1611, incorporating more than 100,000 changes. Which King James Bible is inspired, therefore?
300 words found in the KJV no longer bear the same meaning-e.g., 'suffer the little children to come unto me.'
But King James had a special interest:
In the first year of his reign James induced the Parliament in London to enact the statute which, it was hoped, would help to uproot the 'monstrous evils of the enchanters': It said:"
"'If any person, shall use, practise, or exercise
any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent and purpose;
or take up any dead man, woman or child out of their grave, or the skin, bone, or any part of any dead person, to be used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment, or shall use any witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment,
whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof; that then every such offender, their aiders, abettors and counsellors
shall suffer the pains of death.'"
What does this mean to the Bible and editing it? Glad you asked:
James I was notorious for being paranoid about witches, spells, and so on. This was, in part, due to volatile politics of the time. He had good reason to be nervous.
"His" Bible (the King James Bible) was translated to keep him happy, so they translated the word chasaph--which is Hebrew for poisoner-- to mean "witch" instead. (remember his decree to Law earlier)
The real Biblical passage was about the disturbing crime of poisoning in the Jewish community. When that line was originally written, there may have been recent poisonings. Some historians point to this.
Here's an early document, written around 1580 at the time of King James I, protesting the translation of chasaph as "witch."
(And when good King James discovered what Reginald Scot had said in this book, James first wrote his own book, Daemonologie, a rebuttal to Scot's. Then James ordered his men to find every copy of Scot's book and burn them. It was too late. The Scot book was already in its third printing, widely distributed, and nine more chapters had been added.)
From The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot.
BOOKE VI
Chapter I - The exposition of this Hebrue word Chasaph, wherein is answered the objection conteined in Exodus 22. to wit: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, and of Simon Magus. Acts. 8.
(page 64) Chaspah, being a Hebrue word, is Latined Veneficium, and is in English, poisoning, or witchcraft; if you will so have it. The Hebrue sentence written in Exodus, 22. is by the 70. interpretors translated thus into Greeke, [note: I'll fill this in when I have a Greek font and more time], which in Latine is,
Veneficos (sive) veneficas non retinebitis in vita,
in English, You shall not suffer anie poisoners, or (as it is translated) witches to live. The which sentence Josephus an Hebrue borne, and a man of great estimation, learning and fame, interpreteth in this wise; Let none of the children of Israel have any poison that is deadlie, or preparted to anie hurtfull use. If anie be apprehended with such stuffe, let him be put to dfeath, and suffer that which he meant to doo to them, for whom he prepared it. The Rabbins exposition agree heerewithall. Lex Cornelia differeth not from this sense, to wit, that he must suffer to death, which either maketh, selleth, or hath anie poison, to the intent to kill anie man.
This word is found in these places following: Exodus. 22, Deut. 18, 10. 2 Sam. 9, 22. Dan. 2,2. 2 Chr. 33, 6. Eay. 47, 9, 12. Malach, 3,5. Jerem. 27, 9, Mich. 5, 2. Nah. 3,4. bis. Howbeit, in all our English translations, Chaspah is translated, witchraft.
The word "witch" appeared in Christian scriptures as maleficos, which is gender-neutral, until the mid-1500's. Then things took a nasty turn. In the "Luther Bible," the German line is "Die Zuberinnen soltu nicht leben lassen," which makes the word "witch" feminine. By 1566, in La Saincte Bible of Lyon, France, the word is even more clearly female, despite a footnote that the law applied equally to men.
Long winded I know, but I hope it was informative.