The TR was the result of seeking the consensus reading of the manuscripts, and the KJV was the result of seeking a consensus translation of the TR. This printed Greek New Testament came to be known as the Textus Receptus (TR), or the “text received by all.” The TR represents the printed standardization of all those Bible manuscripts available to believers for millennia. These initial efforts were compared and revised many times subsequently (throughout the 1500s), with editors consulting hundreds of Latin and Greek Vulgate manuscripts, seeking the most common reading among them, and eventually a universal standard text of the New Testament emerged that was practically accepted by everyone as the source text for translations. Several editors set about to print a Greek edition of the familiar text, attempting to reconcile the Vulgates into a universally acceptable source Bible. The Latin Vulgate was considered preferable in a handful of places however, where the Greek Vulgate had significant omissions and the Latin text was well established. And with the invention of printing, the desire increased to print a universally accepted source text for the Bible so it could be translated into common languages.Ī consensus eventually developed in the Latin-dominant west among reformists that the Greek Vulgate was preferable to the Latin in most cases where they differed, because the Latin was originally translated from Greek copies, and because the Greek Vulgate came from the area where the New Testament had originated, and was more likely to have a better foundation. This caused a more frequent comparison of the two traditional texts, and sparked a desire for a reconciled Bible. These two traditions did not interfere much with each other until the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1543, after which many Greek scholars settled in the western Latin areas. But several major variations persisted between the Greek and Latin Bibles, which had been copied separately for over a thousand years. Most differences between one Bible and the next were minor, however, so by comparison and carefulness, the general text of the Bible became rather uniform over the centuries. Before the printing press Bibles were copied by hand, so variations between copies were not unusual.
The principles underlying the source text of the KJV also make it unique among modern Bibles. The KJV is the common Bible, taken from the common source text, translated according to common translation principles. Its claim to preeminence is its foundational purpose to provide one Bible accepted by all, not aimed at advancing any group’s particular agenda, but at translating the universally accepted text of the Bible in a way that could not be reasonably objected to. The King James Version (KJV) is a non-partisan translation of the traditional text of the Bible.
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