I dont think kjv onlyists believe in magic?!
thats just an accusation thats a bit baseless. The thing with people who prefer KJV is that its scripture is inspired and they use it everyday, so all other bibles translations in comparison fall short.
KJV translators also had lots of mansucripts available to them at the time. Its mostly based on Tyndales translation. The team didnt have to resort to any latin because they he was translating from the ORIGINAL langauages, not from the latin. It as only some words that you cannot translate as one word into english, that are added or transliterated. These are in italics. Most editions have this.
If there is a better translation that most christians use, then name it, but for over four hundred years its been inspiring christians so I wouldnt knock it.
You state that the translators did not resort to using Latin texts, but I don't think that is accurate. Below is an article on the use of Latin as one of the text used for the KJV.
- From the beginning, some of the readings that became a lasting part of the TR tradition were Erasmus' translations from the Latin in places where he had no Greek text.
- Stephanus introduced the Complutensian readings into his marginal notes, which were chosen by the Spanish scholars based, in part, on their assumption of the superiority of the Latin text.
- Theodore Beza occasionally reconstructed texts to accord with the Latin rather than the Greek when the Latin reading made more sense to him
All of these factors had a direct influence on verses in the KJV. There were also places (though very few) that the KJV translators willfully sided with the Latin against Erasmus, Beza, Stephanus, and even the Complutensian. This was not always a poor decision on their part. For example, in
1 John 2:23, every printed Greek text the KJV translators had in front of them read "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father," and the verse stopped there. This is how Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Geneva Bible read as well, following the TR. Indeed, we now know that the majority of all of the thousands of Greek manuscripts contain only this short form of the verse, The KJV, however, reads:
"Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also," (
1 John 2:23, KJV).
This reading had been present in the two previous authorized version, the Great Bible and the Bishop's Bible, but always in brackets and smaller print to show that these words were lacking in the Greek text. The original KJV of 1611 likewise marked the text. It was a reading they found only in the Latin. Subsequent manuscript discoveries, however, have actually vindicated the KJV translators in this place, and every modern version agrees with the KJV here. While the
majority of Greek manuscripts lack the second half of the verse, all of the
earliestmanuscripts contain the longer form. So, in this case, the KJV translators' choice to follow the Latin over the Greek proved to be a solid deduction. That is, however, not always the case, as we saw in the KJV's following Beza in adopting the Latin reading at
Luke 2:22, which is
demonstrably incorrect. The point here is simply that, right or wrong, the KJV translators on some occasions chose to follow the Latin text against all of the available Greek texts. Frederick Schrivner, a scholar who carefully determined which Greek reading was behind each verse of the KJV (and thus created the form of the TR published and sold today), wrote that:
"in some places the Authorized Version [i.e., the KJV] corresponds but loosely with any form of the Greek original, while it exactly follows the Latin Vulgate."
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Thus, in addition to the handful of mostly late Greek manuscripts which lie behind the KJV, the Latin Vulgate is also a source which they took into account and at times relied upon when they thought it best.