Apologetics · FaithLogic
Is the King James the Only True Bible?
Some hold that the King James Version (1611) is the only faithful English Bible and that modern translations corrupt Scripture. The real question underneath is which Greek text a translation follows.
What the KJV New Testament is based on
The Textus Receptus
The KJV New Testament translates the Textus Receptus — a printed Greek text descending from Erasmus’s edition of 1516. Erasmus worked quickly, from about six late-medieval (Byzantine) manuscripts, none earlier than the eleventh century. For the last verses of Revelation, where he had no Greek manuscript, he back-translated from the Latin Vulgate — producing Greek readings that appear in no Greek manuscript at all.
What modern versions use
The critical text
Modern translations (ESV, NIV, NASB, CSB and others) follow the critical text — NA28 / UBS5 — which weighs the entire manuscript tradition, including the second- and third-century papyri that Erasmus never saw and the early translations and patristic citations. It is not a “new Bible”; it is the same text base, reconstructed from far more evidence.
“Modern Bibles delete verses”
Which direction the difference runs
The famous cases — the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7), Acts 8:37, the longer ending of Mark, the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer — are places where the Textus Receptus has more than the earliest manuscripts, not where modern editors cut. Modern Bibles footnote these as absent from the oldest witnesses; they did not remove them from an original that had them.
What is and is not at stake
No doctrine moves
The Byzantine/Received text and the critical text agree on the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the atonement, and the Trinity — every disputed passage aside, the doctrines rest on many texts across many books. Someone reading only the KJV is reading a careful translation of a genuine, if later, form of the Greek. The disagreement is about which manuscripts, not about whether the gospel is there.
The KJV translators’ own view
“The Translators to the Reader”
The 1611 preface is candid: the translators used marginal notes to mark places where the meaning was uncertain, expected their work to be revised as knowledge grew, and held that even a poor translation still contains the word of God. They made no claim that their version was the final or only true English Bible — that claim was added by others, much later.
💡 KJV-Only — Reasonable Summary“The KJV translates the Textus Receptus, a printed Greek text built by Erasmus in 1516 from a handful of late manuscripts, with a few readings retro-translated from Latin. Modern versions use the critical text, which draws on the whole tradition including the earliest papyri. The disputed passages — the Comma, Acts 8:37, the long ending of Mark — are places the Received text has extra material, not places modern editors deleted from an original. No doctrine differs between the two text bases, and the KJV remains a faithful translation of a real form of the text. The KJV’s own translators expected to be revised.”
Related Sections
• 1 John 5:7 — The Comma Johanneum — the single most cited example, in detail.
• How Textual Criticism Actually Works — how the critical text is built.
• How We Know the New Testament Text — the manuscript base for both text types.
• Textual Variants in the “Jesus Is God” Verses — the deity passages across both texts.
• How Textual Criticism Actually Works — how the critical text is built.
• How We Know the New Testament Text — the manuscript base for both text types.
• Textual Variants in the “Jesus Is God” Verses — the deity passages across both texts.
This is part of the FaithLogic study library — the biblical, historical and manuscript case that Jesus is God, with every claim linked to its source. Open the interactive version for search, cross-references, read-aloud, and the full library.