New King James Version
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For other uses of King James Version, see King James Version (disambiguation).
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The NKJV was published in three stages:
- New King James Bible, New Testament; 1979
- New King James Bible, New Testament and Psalms; 1980
- New King James Version of the Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments; 1982
Gideons International, an organization that places Bibles in hotels and hospitals, uses the NKJV translation.[3]
Contents[show] |
[edit] Beginnings
The NKJV translation project, which was conceived by Arthur Farstad, was inaugurated in 1975 with two meetings (Nashville and Chicago) of 130 biblical scholars, pastors, and theologians. The men who were invited to these meetings prepared the guidelines for the NKJV. The New Testament was published in 1979, the Psalms in 1980, and the full NKJV Bible in 1982 taken a total of 7 years to complete.[4]The aim of its translators was to update the vocabulary and grammar of the King James Version, while preserving the classic style and literary beauty of the original 1611 KJV version. The 130 translators believed in unyielding faithfulness to the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew texts including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Also agreed upon for most New King James Bibles was, easier event descriptions, history of each book, and added dictionary and updated concordance.
[edit] Update to King James Version
According to the preface of the New King James Version (p. v-vi), the NKJV uses the 1967/1977 Stuttgart edition of the Biblia Hebraica for the Old Testament, with frequent comparisons made to the Ben Hayyim edition of the Mikraot Gedolot published by Bomberg in 1524–25, which was used for the King James Version. Both the Old Testament text of the NKJV and that of the KJV come from the ben Asher text (known as the Masoretic Text). However, the 1967/1977 Stuttgart edition of the Biblia Hebraica used by the NKJV uses an earlier manuscript (the Leningrad Manuscript B19a) than that of the KJV.The New King James Version also uses the Textus Receptus ("Received Text") for the New Testament, just as the King James Version had used. The translators have also sought to follow the principles of translation used in the original King James Version, which the NKJV revisers call "complete equivalence" in contrast to "dynamic equivalence" used by many other modern translations.
The task of updating the English of the KJV involved significant changes in word order, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. One of the most significant features of the NKJV was its abandonment of the historic second person pronouns “thou”, "thee", “ye”, “thy”, and “thine”. Verb forms were also modernized in the NKJV (for example, "speaks" rather than "speaketh").
[edit] Criticisms
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[edit] Underlying texts
One major criticism[by whom?] involves the fact that the NKJV New Testament is based, as noted above, solely upon the ancient texts available during the time of King James and not on earlier manuscripts and documents which have since been discovered.[citation needed] Since these earlier manuscripts, most of which (for the New Testament) reflect an Alexandrian text-type, are argued by most of today's biblical scholars[who?] to be more reliable (see for example D. A. Carson: The King James Version Debate), the NKJV's adherence to the Textus Receptus seems to many to violate the spirit of open scholarship and open inquiry, and to ascribe a level of perfection to the documents available to the 17th century scholars that they would not have claimed for themselves.[5]The Executive Editor of the NKJV, Arthur L. Farstad, addressed these textual concerns in a book explaining the NKJV translation philosophy.[6] While defending the Majority Text (also called the Byzantine text-type), and admitting that the Textus Receptus is inferior to the Majority Text, he noted (p. 114) that the NKJV references significant discrepancies among text types in its marginal notes: "None of the three [textual] traditions on every page of the New Testament ... is labeled 'best' or 'most reliable.' The reader is permitted to make up his or her own mind about the correct reading."
[edit] King James Only belief
Proponents of the "King-James-Only Movement" see the New King James Version as something less than a true successor to the KJV. Proponents view the NKJV as making significant changes to the meaning of the KJV translators.[citation needed] For example, Acts 17:22, in which Paul in the KJV calls the men of Athens "too superstitious",[7] is interpreted in the NKJV to have Paul call them "very religious".[8]At the same time, many churches and evangelical groups have embraced the NKJV as an acceptable compromise between the original KJV and a Bible that uses a more modern syntax.[citation needed]
