Nansings,
You
have a very interesting story.
The times when my taxes were audited, it
went well, and so I never had any interaction with the
division that you worked for.
You mentioned that you had a brother that
went to Bob Jones University.
It is also interesting that Bob Jones
University purchased expensive, old facsimiles of Codex
Vaticanus & Codex Sinaiticus.
The old testament of Vaticanus is
considered to closely approximate the Greek
Septuagint of the old testament.
The newer ones, the LES, and soon, the
NETS are billed explicitly as the Septuagint.
The new testament Greek used in many newer
Bibles is Nestle-Aland’s, which is close to the
UBS, and the new ECM.
Nestle-Aland has been based primarily upon
the Alexandrian family, and is very close to Vaticanus,
but sometimes favoring Sinaiticus variants.
(Although, the INTF claimed, NA 27 displayed “prejudice against the Byzantine tradition”,but beginning with NA 28, it recognized the “reliability of the mainstream tradition", it is still essentially Alexandrian, not Byzantine.)
The Authorized Version was translated between
1604 and 1611, by 47 translators, using primarily the
Masoretic old testament, not the Alexandrian Septuagint.
For the new
testament, they used the Greek text which was
primarily Byzantine.
They did not
actually use Erasmus' Greek text.
In 1516
Erasmus published his 1st edition of the Greek new
testament, with the limited number of manuscripts
available to him at that time.
Afterwards, he travelled around Europe, to research,
locate, and acquire more manuscripts.
He would then
update his Greek text in subsequent editions, as he
located more manuscripts.
His 5th
edition was completed in 1535.
Also, William Tyndale
used a copy of Erasmus' Greek text,
presumably the 3rd edition.
Next came Robert
(Estienne) Stephanus who completed 4 editions of the
Greek new testament.
"he printed his first Greek New Testament in 1546. Despite its similarity to the works of Erasmus, Estienne did not credit Erasmus and rather claimed to be influenced by ancient codices"
However, for his 1st two editions, Stephanus used
a text very similar to Erasmus' 3rd edition.
For his 3rd edition, Stephanus had access to more
manuscripts, which validated the work of Erasmus, as
Byzantine.
Then, Theodore Beza published a Greek
new testament based on Robert Stephanus' 3rd edition, yet
with more manuscripts available.
Beza's 1598 Greek new testament was the
one primarily used by the translators of the Authorized
Version.
The translators also had access to two
ancient manuscripts of the Bible, the
Syriac Peshitta, and the Vetus Latina (old Latin, not
the Vulgate).
They also compared the previous English
translations, primarily Tyndale's, with about 7 tenths of
the English words in the AV new testament, were those used
by Tyndale.
In addition to the old and new testaments
of the Bible, there was also placed, between the two
testaments, but not as part of either, were the
non-canonical books of the apocrypha.
This is similar to how maps and
concordances are placed in printings, today, yet are not
part of the text of the Bible itself.
The king of England, James I (James VI of
Scotland) commissioned the translation work to the 47
translators (54 were originally invited).
James, himself, was not one of the
translators.
However, he presented to the translators, a list of 14 rules to be observed in the translation.
As to things removed from the Bible, e.g.
the last 12 lines of Mark, whether the catholic church had
anything to do with it, these things are missing
according to the Alexandrian.
However, these missing things, like those
last lines of Mark, are in the Byzantine, and thus in the
Authorized Version.
The catholic church did not want the
Byzatine text, over the centuries, but especially when
Bibles translated from them were at the beginning of the
Reformation.
That priest, Damian, that you mentioned,
would have had no ability to affect all those manuscripts
comprising the Byzantine Majority Text.
Nor would he have been able to
simultaneously affect Martin Luther's German translation,
as well as the Authorized Version translation, and
translations in other countries.
None of the translators of the Authorized
Version were named Damien, and there no catholic priests
on the translation committees.
Notice, that in the rules, the king did
not request removal of lines about John the Baptist and
Elijah.
Neither did the king request the
translation work to be affected one way or the other
regarding certain sins of the flesh.
The work was dedicated to the king, but it
did not require his signature, since it is the word of
God.
It was called the authorized version,
because the translation work was commissioned in 1604, and
it was appointed to be read in churches.
It was first printed in 1611, with a large
font type, which is very different than the font types we
are all used to:
(see the above picture:)
The 1611 printings were large, used in
churches.
In 1612, smaller printings were made for
personal use, with the much easier on the eyes,
roman-quarto type font.
Then there were printings in 1613 and
1617, which were all before the king died in 1625.
.