The Auth KJV

From the 2nd through the 17th century, God's promise had been fulfilled as Scripture was preserved in the Greek Received Text (New Testament) and the Hebrew Masoretic Text (Old Testament), jointly titled the Textus Receptus or Received Text. D.A. Waite, author of Defending the King James Bible, documents the Textus Receptus, the text traditionally used as the basis for translation of the Bible into various languages, as being derived from the overwhelming majority of ancient Bible manuscripts which comprised the Traditional Text of the early Church. These 5,210 manuscripts (99% of extant or existing manuscripts) agree with each other, as opposed to only 45 (1% of extant) texts which form the basis of the Revised Version and other modern translations. (17)

The translation committee for an Authorised Version was composed of forty-seven scholars of the highest qualifications. No secrecy shrouded the work of the translators, who were accountable to one another and to the Church of England clergy and bishops. These learned men possessed all of the extant manuscripts which had been made available through the industry of Erasmus. Although there were counterfeit documents of the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus family among the authentic, these were rejected. Dr. Fuller notes that, not only did the translators possess profound erudition, they were men who "had gone through a period of great suffering for the Word of God . . . and were building upon a foundation well and truly laid by the martyrs of the previous century."

The method of translation used was "formal" or "verbal equivalence." Translations were meticulously made, word-for-word, by the translators. Zane Hodges, Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, describes this as the "continuous transmission of the original text from the very first." (18) Testimony of God’s preservation of His pure Word can be seen in the continuous transmission of the Textus Receptus through the centuries into many languages and ultimately into the English Authorised King James Version, which was published sans copyright in 1611 A.D.

It is important to acknowledge that the Authorised Version of 1611 contained the Apocrypha in an appendix, as did the English Bibles which preceded it: Tyndale's Bible (1525 A.D.), Coverdale's Bible (1535 A.D.), Matthew's Bible (1537 A.D.), Taverner's Bible (1539 A.D.), the Great Bible, (1539 A.D.), the Geneva Bible (1560 A.D.) and the Bishop's Bible (1568 A.D.). Apocryphal books were omitted from the AV in 1629 and by 1827 the Apocrypha was excluded permanently.

Landmarks of English Bible: Manuscript Evidence, by Robert Sargent, provides additional information about the Apocrypha with the following explanation pertaining to its inclusion in the Reformation Bibles:

"Many of the early English versions contained the Apocrypha for two basic reasons - because of the general acceptance of the Apocrypha during the Dark Ages, and/or (in case of the Authorised, King James Version) for Scriptural analysis. In each case, the Apocrypha were delineated either in an appendix and/or with an explanation showing them to be non-canonical." (19)