10. The New Testament’s translation in the King James Version sometimes isn’t even based on ancient text – they don’t know where it came from!
The chief source for the writers of the KJV New Testament was a Greek edition by Theodore Beza, which included a Latin translation of the gospels as well. A later noted biblical scholar, Frederick Scrivener, noted 190 instances where the scholars working on the King James Version deviated from the Greek and Latin texts, and opted instead to use the existing texts from other English translations. Scrivener noted numerous incidents – more than three dozen – where the resultant English text had no supporting Greek text from which it was translated. In other words, the King James Version contains many verses which do not appear in the translations of the original Greek.
Closer scrutiny of the original documents, or rather the oldest surviving manuscripts of the books of the New Testament, confirms many of the verses of the King James Version having no supporting source material, hence their omission or reduction to footnotes in subsequent versions of the bible. Supporters of the King James Version argue that such revision is in itself an abomination, since to them the King James Version is simply a translation of the word of God from its original ancient languages. In fact, the King James Version is a conflation of several different bible translations, from more than a dozen languages, compiled by 47 men in six committees.