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by E. Thomas
Never before or since has there been such an aggregate of scholarship and spirituality that existed when 47 learned men came together to translate the King James Version. Out of the 47, 4 were college presidents, 6 were bishops, 5 were deans, 30 had doctor's degrees, 39 had master's degrees, 41 were university professors who were all Greek and Hebrew students, 13 were highly skilled Hebrew scholars of a type that rarely has existed since, 10 were Greek scholars of rare scholarship, 3 were Eastern linguists that were as much at home with Arabic and the Eastern languages as their own English. A literal dynamo of spiritual power, all of them believed in the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible, the divinity of Christ without equivocation, and all of them were men of prayer. Some prayed as much as 5 hours per day during the entire course of their Christian lives. Only God could have prepared this group of men for such a monumental task, the results of which were, in the providence of God, needed for the great evangelistic and missionary thrust of the succeeding centuries.
These men were divided into six companies and each assigned a portion of scripture to translate. Each man translated each portion, then met to compare results. The results were transmitted to each of the other companies for review and consent. A select committee then went over the whole work, and finally a committee of two of the best experts in linguistics were assigned the task of final review and approval. The results were the best Bible the world has ever possessed which has been used more than any other Bible to bring the world to Christ. It still stands as a masterpiece of scholarship and literary art unexcelled in the history of the world.
The English of the King James was the resultant of
the translator's skill of preserving the style and accurate meaning of the Greek and Hebrew texts; and was not, as some think today, strictly 17th century English.