Vatican City (CNA/EWTN News).- A new interfaith exhibition that opens this week at the Vatican reveals how the roots of the 1611 King James Bible are almost entirely Catholic – despite the fact that the translation was often viewed as a highpoint of Protestant European culture.
“If it had not been for the Catholics of the 1500s there would be no King James Bible,” exhibition organizer Cary Summers told CNA.
“Many of the original Bibles that formed the basis of the King James Bible came from Catholic priests. Very few changes were made. The ancient writings that the King James writers actually mimicked and copied were by Catholic priests,” he explained.
The “Verbum Domini” (Word of the Lord) exhibition runs from March 1 to April 15, coinciding with the seasons of Lent and Easter. The organizers describe it as a “highly contextual, interactive format” exhibit that aims to celebrate “the dramatic story of the Catholic contribution of the most-banned, most-debated, best-selling book of all time.”
They have also collected rare Jewish, Protestant and Orthodox artifacts to manifest a “shared love of God’s word” [common ground] that exists among those religions. For that reason, the first room visitors enter is a scaled reproduction of the mid-third-century Synagogue of Dura Europos in Syria. Another exhibition highlight is the earliest known fragment of the book of Genesis, which comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Summers gave CNA a preview tour of the exhibition on Feb. 22. The exhibition takes visitors through eight galleries, and concludes with a replica of the Jerusalem Chamber in London’s Westminster Abbey, the place where the King James Bible was completed 400 years ago.
“Most people don’t understand the history of the King James Bible. There is a rich history, a very positive history of Catholic contribution to the creation of it,” Summers said.
The King James Bible was commissioned by King James VI & I in 1604, only a year after the Scottish monarch ascended to the throne of England. A copy of the book was gifted to Pope Benedict XVI earlier this month by the current U.K. prime minister, David Cameron. (Continue reading)
In the attempt to draw Protestants back to the Roman Catholic church, by finding 'common ground', they feel it is important to change history to help improve their image. It is their feeble attempt to appear legitimate. The truth is that the KJV was taken from previous translation works, then perfected by 54 Greek and Hebrew scholars from the Church of England, being made up of different factions.
It is estimated that about 90 percent of the New Testament in the 1611 King James Bible was the work of Tyndale [1], the translation that caused him to be declared as a heretic and burned at the stake by the Catholic church.[2] The Catholic Church "eliminated the competition" by burning all of the original Vulgates along with their owners. It was the Vatican's way, since they were opposed to members reading interpretations the Bible apart from the teaching authority of the Church. Nothing changed after the KJV was published.
The following trailer gives you a dramatized depiction of how it all came down.
(YouTube link)
