Did you know that the King James Version (KJV) was a deliberate mis-translation written to undercut reform movements that might challenge established religious traditions?

King James actively used the official English church to advance his own power. To further that goal, he wanted a Bible translation that propped-up the existing church establishment that was under his control.

To do so, he ordered the translators to follow 15 rules. Rule #3 required that “The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation etc.”

This means the King James Version is purposely biased against the actual meaning of the original Greek text, especially where it might undercut prevailing, traditional notions of “church.”

Unfortunately, subsequent English translations often lacked the courage to remedy those biases, because doing so would upset people and hurt sales.

For example, the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the New King James Version (NKJV), and the English Standard Version (ESV) are all based on the King James Version …

A fact that they all explicitly acknowledge but is not widely known.

I’m not saying those translations should be avoided. I use some of them all the time. But I try to avoid taking them – and any other translation – at face value.

Fortunately, there are excellent resources – like comprehensive scholarly lexicons – which help free us from translation bias.

New Testament lexicons are much more than a concordance or dictionary. They provide an in depth analysis of a word’s context and meaning, in its original language, as commonly used in the vernacular of the day during the first century.

Good lexicons thus can help us understand the original intent of the New Testament, without translation bias, as actually written in the first century under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Doing so, however, requires an unsettling willingness to step outside of prevailing comfort zones and surrender to Scripture …

Based on what it actually meant when written.