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THE AV 1611: PURIFIED SEVEN
TIMES
By Dr. Laurence M. Vance
http://www.biblebelievers.com/Vance5.html
Vance
Publications, P.O. Box 11781, Pensacola, FL 32524, USA.
Phone: (850) 474-1626. Vance Publications also specializes in finding out-of-print books. Please direct any
questions or comments for the author to Vance
Publications. Placed on the Internet by permission of the
author. Dr. Laurence M. Vance's e-mail address is:
vancepub@juno.com
"The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." (Psalm
12:6)
As any student of English Bible history knows, the Authorized Version of 1611 was not the first Bible to be
translated into English. But even though hundreds of complete Bibles, New Testaments, and Scripture portions
have been translated into English since 1611, it is obvious that the Authorized Version is the last English
Bible; that is, the last English Bible that God "authorized."
Because the Authorized Version is the "last" English Bible, and because its defenders believe it to contain the
very words of God, various schemes have been contrived to make the English Bibles up to and including the
Authorized Version fit the description in Psalm 12:6 of the words of the Lord being "purified seven times." The
problem is that the Authorized Version is not the seventh English Bible -- it is the tenth one.
Although there were some attempts during the Old and Middle English period to translate portions of the Bible into
English, the first complete Bible or New Testament in English did not appear until the fourteenth
century.
John Wycliffe
(c.1320-1384) is credited with being the first to translate the entire Bible into English. It is to be remembered
that no Greek or Hebrew texts, versions, or editions were yet fabricated. Wycliffe did his translating primarily
from the only Bible then in use: the Latin Vulgate. He is often called the "Morning Star of the Reformation" for
his opposition to ecclesiastical abuses and the Papacy. Wycliffe's New Testament translation was completed in 1380,
and the entire Bible in 1382.
William Tyndale
(c. 1494-1536) has the distinction of being the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into English. He
early distinguished himself as a scholar both at Cambridge and Oxford, and was fluent in several languages. Tyndale
soon advanced both his desire and his demise, as seen in his reply to a critic: "I defy the pope and all his laws;
if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plough in England to know more of the
Scriptures than thou doest." The Bible was still forbidden in the vernacular, so after settling in London for
several months while attempting to gain approval for his translation efforts, Tyndale concluded: "Not only that
there was no room in my lord of Londons palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to
do it in all England, as experience doth now openly declare."
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