The monumental nineteenth century concordances of the English King James Version of the Bible ("KJV") have established that many thousands of words in the KJV are mistranslations of the corresponding words in the Hebrew Old Testament ("OT") and the Greek New Testament ("NT") sources. The errors in question are far more serious than mere faulty style, or failure to use the best possible word in translation. Rather, the errors consists in the extensive use of English words that completely alter and falsify the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words translated, resulting in substantial corruption of biblical text and doctrine.
The eminent bible scholar Robert Young, author of "Analytical Concordance to the Bible," and "Literal Translation of the Holy Bible" published in 1887, provided in his Preface to the Revised Edition of the Literal Translation his summary testimony concerning the KJV that (1) "there are scarcely two consecutive verses where there is not some departure from the original;" and that (2) "these variations may be counted by tens of thousands, as admitted on all hands."
A further persuasive witness is furnished by James Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (KJV), with his companion Hebrew/English and Greek/English dictionaries of all the words used throughout the KJV, published in 1890. Every Hebrew word and Greek word in these two dictionaries has been numbered, to create an easy reference system for anyone, even lacking knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. For example, Hebrew word H-120 is the word for "Adam." Greek word G-1484 is the word for "nation." The prefixes H and G, though not used by Strong, are introduced here to avoid confusing two references having the same number, but different language, such as H-1484 (Hebrew for "whelp"), and G-1484 (Greek for "nation").
Aided by Strong's Concordance, the student can easily check the KJV translation of various words for correctness and consistency. When this is done, the alarming error incidence reported by Robert Young (above) is quickly confirmed. Two examples are now presented, to show how Strong's Concordance can be used to check the KJV English translation of a given Hebrew word in the OT for
(1) correctness; and (2) consistency.
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Example 1: Is "LORD" (all uppercase), as it appears in the OT of the KJV, a correct translation of the Hebrew source word?
Solution:
(a) Look up "LORD" (all uppercase) in Strong's Concordance. Notice the thousands of listed occurrences, all referencing the Hebrew source word H-3068.
(b) Look up Hebrew word H-3068 in Strong's companion Hebrew Dictionary, and verify that it means "Jehovah," the personal name of the Creator. ("Yahweh" will be used here, instead of "Jehovah," reflecting a more accurate translation of the sacred name, according to this editor's assessment of the literature on the question.)
Conclusion: "LORD", as it appears in the KJV, is not a correct translation of the Hebrew in the OT. The correct translation of the Hebrew word H-3068 is "Yahweh".
Note: This error in the KJV translation of H-3068 occurs 6,831 times in the OT, resulting in the nearly total suppression of the sacred name "Yahweh" from the KJV Old Testament.
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Example 2: Does the KJV inconsistently translate the same Hebrew source word, sometimes as "grave", and sometimes as "hell"?
Solution:
(a) Look up "hell" in Strong's Concordance. Notice that there are 31 occurrences of "hell" in the OT, all translations of the same Hebrew word H-7585, whose pronunciation is found in the Hebrew Dictionary to be "sheol".
(b) Look up "grave" in Strong's Concordance. Notice that there are 31 occurrences of "grave" in the OT which refer to same Hebrew word H-7585 ("sheol").
Conclusion: The KJV is inconsistent and incorrect, to the extent that it translates the same Hebrew OT source word H-7585 ("sheol") as both "grave" and "hell."
Note: The KJV mistranslation of H-7585 ("sheol") 31 times as "hell" is a corruption of the scripture, and has the effect of introducing into the Bible the unbiblical and pagan concept of "hell" (i.e., a terrible place of eternal conscious suffering). Since the existence of any such place as the pagan "hell" is not attested to anywhere in the books of the Old Testament, it does not exist. Therefore, all 31 instances of "hell" in the KJV OT must be corrected to "grave." The word "hell" cannot appear in an accurate English translation of the OT.
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The corruption of biblical doctrine caused by KJV translation error to the vast extent described above must be remedied by correcting the KJV to produce a version substantially free from, if not all, at least the most important errors. This matter is further developed in the following section.
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