2. The first edition of the KJV was heavily criticized for its translation of Hebrew
The King James Version of the Bible was translated from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic by committees made up of 47 scholars, all but one member of the clergy of the Church of England. They were divided into six committees, each assigned a section of the Bible to translate (for example, the First Westminster Company translated Genesis to 2 Kings). Among their surviving working papers are copies of the Bishop’s Bible, heavily notated and marked up as a result of their work. The text of the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible, was translated from that language and compared with earlier translations as part of producing the KJV. About 80% of the translation came from the previous work of Tyndale.
The most highly regarded English scholar on the Hebrew language, Hugh Broughton, was not included among the clergy who translated the books of the Hebrew Bible using Tyndale as their guide. When the KJV appeared, Broughton condemned both the method of translation (the translators had rejected a word-for-word approach) and the resulting text. Broughton called the translation “abominable” and protested that the work should not be “foisted upon the English people”. Broughton argued that the KJV was not a translation from the original languages as much as it was an adaptation of the portions of previous translations, focused on contextual changes rather than a faithful reproduction in the English language.