The KJV is a Literary Masterpiece, and a Disaster Study Bible

Key takeaways

• The KJV wasn't the first English Bible and isn't a fresh translation from scratch. William Tyndale produced the first English New Testament from Greek in the 1530s and was burned at the stake for it; the KJV translators, working under King James I starting in 1604, mainly revised the Bishop's Bible, which itself descended from Tyndale's work. Most famous KJV phrasing actually originated with Tyndale.
• The KJV has been quietly revised multiple times since 1611, including a 1613 edition with 413 changes and modernized spelling updates in later centuries. The 1982 "New King James" keeps the original wording but updates grammar and spelling, meaning not all copies labeled "King James" are identical.
• Archaic vocabulary makes large stretches genuinely unreadable today. Ehrman lists words like "habergeon," "cracknels," and "ringstraked," plus mythical creatures like unicorns, satyrs, and cockatrices that appear because translators used period-appropriate (and inaccurate) terms for animals they didn't understand.
• A subtler danger is words that still exist but have shifted meaning, causing readers to misunderstand rather than simply get confused. Ehrman cites Philippians 3:20 ("our conversation is in heaven," meaning citizenship, not chit-chat) and Revelation 17:6, where John "wondered with great admiration" at the Whore of Babylon—"admiration" then meant astonishment, not approval.
• Theological bias shaped specific translation choices. In Daniel 3, the KJV has "the Son of God" walking in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when the Hebrew just indicates a divine being; in Isaiah 7:14, "a young woman" becomes "a virgin," reinforcing a messianic reading that isn't in the original Hebrew.
• The New Testament portion rests on late, unreliable Greek manuscripts compiled by Erasmus in the 16th century, which is why the KJV includes passages modern scholars consider later additions: the woman-taken-in-adultery story (John 7-8), the last twelve verses of Mark (snake-handling and poison-drinking), and the Trinity proof-text in 1 John 5:7. Printing-era typos compounded matters, most famously the 1631 "Wicked Bible," which omitted "not" from the seventh commandment, printing "Thou shalt commit adultery."

Notable moments

• "I personally enjoy it because it's the only translation that includes unicorns."
• Ehrman calls the KJV "arguably, linguistically, the superior translation" and says it has influenced the English language "more than Shakespeare."
• The reading of 1 Kings 21:21 in original KJV phrasing: God threatens to cut off "him that pisseth against the wall."
• On sermons he heard as a kid misreading Philippians 3:20's "our conversation is in heaven" as a ban on dirty jokes, when it actually means citizenship.
• The story of the 1653 "Unrighteous Bible," which mistakenly printed that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom; the opposite of Paul's meaning.
• Ehrman's verdict: the KJV is "one of the great classics of English literature" but also "one of the worst study Bibles that you can use."
• In the bonus Q&A, Ehrman traces the doctrine of original sin to Saint Augustine's fifth-century argument that sin nature is biologically transmitted through semen during conception; not a teaching of Jesus or the New Testament.
• On Origen's alleged self-castration based on Matthew 19:12, Ehrman notes church historian Eusebius reported it, but Origen's own writings suggest he did not take the verse literally and the rumor likely came from his enemies.

Time saved: 45 minutes.