The New King James Version (NKJV) is an English translation of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

. The complete NKJV Bible was published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson, now

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

. The NKJV is described by Thomas Nelson as being "scrupulously faithful to the original, yet truly updated to enhance its clarity and readability."

History

The NKJV translation project was conceived by Arthur Farstad. It was inaugurated in 1975 with two meetings (

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and th ...

and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

) of 130 biblical scholars, pastors, and theologians. The men who were invited prepared the guidelines for the NKJV. The aim of its translators was to update the vocabulary and grammar of the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...

, while preserving the classic style and literary beauty of the original 1769 edition of the King James Version. The 130 translators believed in faithfulness to the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew texts including the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

. Also agreed upon for most New King James Bibles were easier event descriptions, a history of each book, and added dictionary and updated concordance. The text for the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

was published in 1979; the

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...

in 1980; and the full Bible in 1982. The project took seven years in total to complete.

Features

According to its preface, the NKJV uses the 1967/1977 Stuttgart edition of the '' Biblia Hebraica'' for the Old Testament, with frequent comparisons made to the Ben Hayyim edition of the Mikraot Gedolot published by Daniel Bomberg in 1524–25, which was used for the

. Both the Old Testament text of the NKJV and that of the KJV come from the ben Chayyim text. However, the 1967/1977 Stuttgart edition of the ''Biblia Hebraica'' used by the NKJV uses an earlier manuscript (the Leningrad Manuscript B19a) than that of the KJV. The New King James Version also uses the Textus Receptus ("Received Text") for the New Testament, just as the original King James Version had used. As explained in the preface, notes in the center column acknowledge variations from

Novum Testamentum Graece (''The New Testament in Greek'') is a critical edition of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek, forming the basis of most modern Bible translations and biblical criticism. It is also known as the Nestle–Aland edition after its m ...

(designated NU after Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies) and the

Majority Text In the textual criticism of the New Testament, the Byzantine text-type (also called Majority Text, Traditional Text, Ecclesiastical Text, Constantinopolitan Text, Antiocheian Text, or Syrian Text) is one of the main text types. It is the form fo ...

(designated M).

Translation philosophy

The translators have sought to follow the principles of translation used in the original King James Version, which the NKJV revisers call "complete equivalence" in contrast to " dynamic equivalence" used by many contemporary translations. The task of updating the English of the KJV involved significant changes in word order, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. One of the most significant features of the NKJV was its replacement of early modern second-person pronouns, such as "thou" and "thine"; and corresponding verb forms, such as "speakest"; with their twentieth-century equivalents. The Executive Editor of the NKJV, Arthur L. Farstad, addressed textual concerns in a book explaining the NKJV translation philosophy.Arthur L. Farstad, "The New King James Version in the Great Tradition," 2nd edition, 1989, Thomas Nelson Publishers, . While defending the Majority Text (also called the Byzantine text-type), and claiming that the Textus Receptus is inferior to the Majority Text, he noted (p. 114) that the NKJV references significant discrepancies among text types in its marginal notes: "None of the three extualtraditions on every page of the New Testament ... is labeled 'best' or 'most reliable.' The reader is permitted to make up his or her own mind about the correct reading."

Related publications

The NKJV is the basis for the Orthodox Study Bible. The New Testament is largely the same, being based on the Textus Receptus (which the

Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or " canonical ...

consider most reliable). Although the Old Testament was translated from the Academy of St. Athanasius Septuagint (which the Orthodox consider an inspired text), it has been rendered in the NKJV fashion. In addition, the deuterocanonical books are included, which is the first time they have been modeled according to the New King James style, as the original NKJV, being a largely Protestant translation, did not include them.

Circulation

The NKJV translation has become one of the best-selling Bibles in the USA. it is listed as the sixth best selling Bible by the ESPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association). An unabridged audiobook version called "The Word of Promise Audio Bible" has been produced by the publisher. It is narrated by well-known celebrities and fully dramatized with music and sound effects. Gideons International, an organization that places Bibles in hotels and hospitals, at one stage used the NKJV translation along with the KJV, offering the KJV as the default translation and offering the NKJV when an organization asked for a Bible in newer English to be used. After

' acquisition of Thomas Nelson, however, the Gideons have chosen to start using the

English Standard Version The English Standard Version (ESV) is an English translation of the Bible. Published in 2001 by Crossway, the ESV was "created by a team of more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors." The ESV relies on recently published critica ...

(ESV) instead of the NKJV.Klein, Peter. ''The Catholic Source Book'', p. 146, Harcourt Religious Publishers, 2000.

Notes

References

External links

Official webpage
{{Authority control 1982 books 1982 in Christianity Bible translations into English