Most King James Bible Believers assume that God made the Bible so easy to understand that a child could read just the KJB (the King James Bible) and figure out everything He wants us to know in it, and, in fact, that looking at Scripture in the original Hebrew and Koine Greek to learn what a specific word in the KJB means is correcting the Bible. But is this really the case?
Well, while one can learn everything necessary for salvation (and then some) by just reading their King James Bible and nothing else (aside from an English dictionary, perhaps), the idea that that one can figure out everything God laid out in Scripture by reading just the KJB alone, with no study aids of any sort, is nothing more than an assumption they’re making — since the Bible just doesn’t say that anywhere on its pages — and it’s an assumption that is indeed contradicted by the Bible itself too, such as in Proverbs 25:2 which says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.” This tells us that God doesn’t necessarily make it easy to learn every scriptural truth without careful study, so it’s important to stop assuming that we know everything there is to know about the Bible just because we’ve read it in English.
You see, words in the Bible can be quite complicated, and often don’t mean what one might assume they do from a surface level reading. For example, certain words (such as the word “fire,” as just one example of many) are used literally in some passages while also being used figuratively in other passages (with this difference being a form of perspective found in Scripture).
And it isn’t just individual words that are used figuratively in the Bible. Scripture is full of figurative phrases too, including allegories, metaphors, idioms, and other forms of figurative speech that aren’t obvious from just reading the English text, not to mention the fact that many passages are coming from an absolute perspective while others are coming from a relative perspective (as a very simple example of this important hermeneutical principle, Ecclesiastes 11:3 tells us that the rain comes from clouds, while 1 Kings 17:14 says that God actually sends the rain, and we can understand that both of these statements are equally true when we recognize that God is indeed the origin of rain from an absolute perspective — since all is of God — even while the clouds are the origin of rain from a relative perspective). This means that if one isn’t familiar with the existence of a figurative word, expression, or other figure of speech in a specific passage, they can end up completely misunderstanding what that passage actually means.
Of course, none of that has to do with looking at words in their original languages in Scripture, but they are good examples of how the meaning of words and verses in the Bible aren’t always as straightforward as one might assume. As far as why one might want to look up the meaning of a word in the original Hebrew or Koine Greek, though, well, it’s also important to be aware of the fact that words known as False Friends exist in the KJB, which is a term that is sometimes used to refer to English words we still use today, but which can now mean something very different — in ways that the average reader is unlikely to be aware of — from what they could mean when our English Bibles were first translated. As a very simple example, “convenient” generally refers to “something which saves one trouble” when the word is used today, but when you read it in Ephesians 5:3-4 in the KJB it actually means “fitting,” because that’s what the word “convenient” meant back in 1611.
Another example that really demonstrates this point is the word “let,” which generally means “allow” or “allowed” when used today (and it often did in the KJB as well). However, when you read Romans 1:13 in the KJB, this word actually means the exact opposite of that. Rather than “allowed,” Paul actually meant “prevented” in that verse. This isn’t a mistranslation, however, but is instead another False Friend, because that was another meaning of the word “let” back in 1611, even if we don’t use that obsolete definition of the word today (and if you aren’t aware of this fact, the verse can be confusing, as many other verses that include False Friends can be as well).
I should add, in addition to being a False Friend, “let” is also an example of how the translators of the KJB often used the exact same English word to translate entirely different words from their original languages — with the first example of “let” we looked at being translated from the Greek ἔστω/“es’-to,” and the second example being translated from κωλύω/“ko-loo’-o” — words which could have the complete opposite meaning from one another in their original languages at times, and cases of this happening weren’t always because they’ve become False Friends in the 21st century either; in many cases, the reason for the translations seemed to be more for the sake of being poetic.
As another important example of a False Friend in the KJB, we have the word “heresy.” Even before getting into this one, however, it’s important to know that there are two different types of “heresies” when the word is used correctly, and that neither of them literally mean “incorrect doctrine” (just as “orthodox” doesn’t mean “correct doctrine” either) the way most people assume they do. The first type of “heresy” is the one that’s mentioned in the Bible, and it’s true that these types of “heresies” aren’t good things (at least when they take place within the body of Christ), but the literal meaning of αἵρεσις/“hah’-ee-res-is” — which is the Greek word that’s transliterated as “heresy” and “heresies” in the KJB — is simply “sect,” as the word is also translated in other verses, meaning “division” or “dissension,” and does not literally mean “incorrect doctrine” at all. In fact, “sect” was a meaning of the English word “heresy” back when the KJB was translated as well, and based on the meaning of the Greek word it was translated from, it becomes obvious that this is the meaning of the word “heresy” in the KJB, and that the word “heresy” is indeed another False Friend. That’s not to say that the specific sects referred to as “heresies” in the Bible aren’t meant to be avoided, of course, any more than it means that said sects aren’t based on incorrect doctrine, because they are on both counts. My point is simply that the word “heresy” just doesn’t mean what most people assume it does when it’s used in the Bible, which demonstrates why it can be important to look up the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words that our English words in the KJB were translated from.
This is also an example, by the way, of how the translators of the KJB sometimes used different English words to translate the exact same word from its original language (these are known as synonyms), and if one isn’t aware of what the Hebrew or Greek word that an English word in the KJB has been translated from is or means, they can get just as confused as when the translators used the same English word to translate different words from Scripture in its original languages (especially when these words have become a False Friend in modern times). And so, while I know that some King James Bible Believers will recoil in horror at this suggestion, and it is true that one often technically can determine when one of these two types of situations is happening simply by the context of a passage — as well as by when a literal (or figurative) interpretation of a specific word would contradict the literal (or figurative) usage of the same word in another place in the KJB — I would still posit that it’s wise to look up every single Hebrew or Koine Greek word when doing a careful study into a passage or topic, since, at the very least, you might miss out on some important nuance that isn’t obvious in the English translation if you don’t, but also because you might even find yourself completely misinterpreting a passage if you avoid doing so, assuming it means the exact opposite of what it actually means (and this happens all the time in real life).
And speaking of heresies, just like it doesn’t literally mean “incorrect doctrine” when it’s used in the Bible, the word “heresy” doesn’t literally mean that outside of the Bible either, just FYI. Instead, when used extrabiblically, it simply means “that which is commonly accepted to be incorrect.” And just as this type of “heresy” doesn’t literally mean “incorrect doctrine” any more than the biblical type does, the word “orthodox” doesn’t mean “correct doctrine” either, but really just means “that which is commonly accepted to be true,” and there’s always been plenty of commonly accepted error out there, just as there’s always been lots of commonly rejected truth (with much of that truth being labelled as “heresy” by Christians).
For example, Galileo was technically a heretic, according to the Roman Catholic Church, because he taught that the earth wasn’t the centre of the universe, but he was still quite correct that it wasn’t. Meanwhile, Rome considered their view that our planet was the centre of the universe to be the orthodox one, but they were entirely incorrect, and they even eventually admitted that Galileo’s heresy was true after all, many centuries later (thus proving that “orthodox” doctrines taught by the Roman Catholic Church can indeed be wrong and that the things they call “heresy” can be right; and it’s important to keep in mind that, if they can be wrong about even one thing when it comes to what they refer to as orthodoxy and heresy, they could then be wrong about anything they teach is either orthodox truth or heresy).
So remember that just because something is called “heretical” by a Christian doesn’t mean it’s necessarily incorrect, and that something being called “orthodox” by a Christian doesn’t necessarily make it true. Of course, even though they refer to something else altogether from what most Christians today mean when they use the word, the things referred to as “heresies” in the English Bible translations which do use the word (sects, in other words) are things to be avoided (although that doesn’t mean sects are inherently a bad thing in and of themselves; it’s only sectarianism within the church that we need to avoid as members of the body of Christ, while sects/“heresies”outside the church might be good or bad, depending on the reason for the division). But outside of those specific things, many of the things that Christians mistakenly refer to as “heresy” or as “heretical” (or even as “heterodox,” which basically means the same thing) are actually quite true. And remember also that Jesus and all of His followers were considered to be heretics by the religious orthodoxy of their day, so consider yourself in good company when someone calls you a heretic or refers to the truths you believe as “heresy.”
There are many more False Friends in the KJB that I could get into (and I did cover a fair number of them in my Rejecting Rome study), but the main thing to keep in mind is that anyone using only the KJB with no study aids definitely holds multiple false doctrines because of this fact. That isn’t to say the KJB is a bad translation. The words its translators used were pretty good for the time it was translated. One just needs to be aware that it’s not a particularly literal translation, but is actually a very figurative — and even poetic — translation in various places (many of which will surprise many of you if you read my Rejecting Rome study), and also of the fact that the definitions of words change over time, which all means that if one isn’t aware of a word’s definition in 1611 when it was first translated (as well as the fact that many of these words were translated figuratively), they’re going to unintentionally end up going astray.
This all means that just because you see a word in one passage, you shouldn’t automatically assume it has to be referring to the exact same thing as it does in another passage, or that you even definitely know what the word means to begin with, because it could be that it actually means something entirely different in that passage from what you’re assuming or have been taught it means. So when you’re studying your Bible, be sure to use all the study tools available to you — such as concordances, an English dictionary (I would personally recommend the Oxford English Dictionary over all others for the sake of discovering the meanings of False Friends in the KJB, because it covers definitions going back to the 17th century and even earlier), Bible dictionaries (including Hebrew and Koine Greek Bible dictionaries), internet search engines, and any other study aids you can get your hands on — in order to determine whether or not the interpretations you’ve always assumed were correct really are.
And don’t mistake any of this for correcting the Bible. Instead, realize that it’s simply studying to shew thyself approved, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (although, yes, “be diligent,” or “endeavour,” was another definition of the English word “study” in 1611, and since that’s exactly what the Greek word σπουδάζω/“spoo-dad’-zo” that it’s translated from in this verse means, it should be clear that this word is actually another False Friend in the KJB; that said, scriptural studying, as we use the word today, is still a good way to show our diligence).