8. Early criticism of the King James Bible shows inaccuracies in translation from earlier texts.
When the King James Bible was being written, it was done so by committees, with six committees translating assigned portions. The majority of the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, with some sections from Aramaic. The New Testament was translated from Greek, and the books of the Apocrypha from Latin and Greek. Existing English bibles were used as references as well. All of the committees worked not for a word for word translation of the source documents, but from the view that the source documents were to be used to support the ecclesiology of the Church of England. This approach delivered significant differences between the resulting King James Bible and the Latin Vulgate Bible, as well as with existing English translations.
The highly esteemed English scholar of the Hebrew language expert (for his day) Hugh Broughton roundly condemned the approach taken by the translators, and the completed work as inaccurate, calling it an “abominable translation…foisted upon the English people.” Thomas Hobbes compared the new English translation unfavorably to the Latin, and in his critical work on statecraft Leviathan (the title taken from the Book of Job) he used biblical chapter and verse references from the Latin Vulgate, rather than those of the King James Version, which often did not correspond. King James ordered the printing of any other bible in English suspended for a time, ensuring the Authorized Bible’s use would increase.