The following thesis by a modern manuscript scholar, now deceased, protests the omission of the Translators’ Preface to the 1611 King James Version (the text is included below) from King James Bibles for the past 100 years. We are left to wonder why it has been left to a “modern” scholar to issue this compelling and legitimate objection to the removal of the Translators’ Preface. What other book would be published without its preface, the preliminary essay in which the author or authors explain their intentions and methods of research, define the scope of their work and present invaluable background information to the reader? Why is it that a modern scholar endeavoured for years to restore the Translators’ Preface to the King James Bible, but among the multitude of KJV-Only leaders who claim to defend the KJV, not one has so much as registered a complaint about the removal of the Preface and demanded its restoration by the publishing houses and Bible societies – nor have any of them independently published King James Bibles which include the Preface.

Neither do the so-called defenders of the 1611 King James Version educate KJV readers as to the contents of the Translators' Preface; nor do they cite the Translators’ own words in their defense of the KJV, but invent dishonest explanations concerning the various translation issues. Why? We submit that dissemination of the Translators’ Preface would provide Christians with invaluable facts concerning the translation of the 1611 KJV – facts that would enlighten and protect them against the great quantity of false and misleading information that has issued forth from the leadership of the KJV-Only movement. It is for this reason that we offer Professor Edgar J. Goodspeed’s “Thesis on the Translators' Preface” – not as an endorsement of modern scholarship – but to inform our readers of the ramifications of the disastrous and, we believe, deliberate suppression of the Preface to the 1611 King James Version.

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Poster Comment:

Long interesting document.