In recent days at his youtube channel, Mark Ward again compared the New King James Version (NKJV) with the King James Version (KJV).  This goes back a few years, when Ward wrote a blog post that said that the NKJV and the KJV came from an identical Greek New Testament text.  In the comment section, I started giving him examples of differences, five at a time.  I provided these examples after he made his claim.  His claim did not come from his own personal research.  After continuing to give examples about five at a time, that showed his claim was wrong, Ward admitted that the two texts were not the same in at least six places.

Systematic Search

The standard as to whether the NKJV and KJV are different, however, is not the few differences that I found in the little time after Ward made his claim.  Ward speaks about the differences as though there were just six that really don’t matter much to the meaning of the text.  He does not mention that he did not find these variations himself.  He also treats those six like they represent all of the differences. It’s just not true though.  I hardly looked for examples and found the few ones that I sent him without any systematic search.

Since Mark Ward won’t stop misrepresenting the issue of the differences between the text underlying the NKJV and the KJV, I decided to start a more systematic search in my spare time.  I began in Matthew 1 to start chapter by chapter through the New Testament, and I’m to the fifth chapter of Mark  So, this is just Matthew — one gospel — and then Mark 1-5.  That doesn’t mean that I found every example, because I don’t have a copy of the text for the NKJV.  Perhaps one doesn’t exist.

If someone were trying to study and teach from the NKJV and use the original languages, what text would he use for that study?  I’m asserting there is none.  It doesn’t come from the same text as the KJV so an underlying text of the NKJV, that same as that translation, is not available.  That’s a tough one, wouldn’t you say?

Examples

To find my examples, I had to look at the two translations and compare them.  When I saw differences, then I went to the Greek text to see if these differences were the result of a different text.  Again, Mark Ward didn’t do this work.  He doesn’t look for these examples.  How does someone report something like fact that he doesn’t even know?  All of the examples to which Mark refers came from my finding them for him.

Without further adieu, below are the most recent examples I found of differences between the underlying text of the NKJV and the KJV [CT=Critical Text, TR=Textus Receptus].

Matthew

1. 1:18—KJV, TR, ”as,” gar versus NKJV, CT, no “as,” no gar
2. 7:9-10—KJV, TR, “if he ask,” aorist versus NKJV, CT, “if he asks,” future
3. 9:17—KJV, TR, “perish,” future middle versus NKJV, CT, “are ruined,” present passive
4. 9:22—NKJV, CT, strepho, versus KJV, TR, “turned him about”epistrepho, “turned around”
5. 10:19—KJV, TR, “shall speak,” future versus NKJV, CT, “should speak,” subjunctive
6. 13:36—NKJV, CT, “explain,” diasapheo versus KJV, TR, “declare,” phrazo
7. 16:17—KJV, TR, kai, “and” versus NKJV, CT, no kai, no “and” to start verse
8. 18:6—KJV, TR, epi, about,” versus NKJV, CT, peri, “around”
9. 19:5—KJV, TR, proskalleo, “shall cleave” versus NKJV, CT, “be joined,” kalleo
10. 20:20—KJV, TR, ”of,” para, versus NKJV, CT, apo, “from”
11. 21:25—KJV, TR, para, “with” versus NKJV, CT, en, “among”
12. 22:10—KJV, TR, hosous, “as many as” versus NKJV, CT, hous, “whom”
13. 23:34—KJV, TR, kai, “and” versus NKJV, CT, eliminates kai, no “and”
14. 27:3—KJV, TR, apestrephe, “brought again” versus NKJV, CT, apostrepho, ”brought back”

Mark

1. 1:16—KJV, TR, de, “now” versus NKJV, CT, kai, “and”
2. 2:15—KJV, TR, to, “that” versus NKJV, CT, no to, no “that”
3. 2:21—KJV, TR, kai, “also” versus NKJV, CT, no kai, no “also”
4. 4:18—KJV, TR, no eisin, “they are” versus NKJV, CT, eisin, “they are” (in italics but in so doing accrediting the CT)
5. 5:6—KJV, TR, de, “but” versus NKJV, CT, no de, no “but”

These are nineteen more examples after looking at about one and a third New Testament books.  I don’t want to keep searching for these.  Rather, I would wish for the other side to defer and just admit that the NKJV translators did not use the same text.  In other words, I don’t want them to keep challenging this assertion.  The NKJV is not the NKJV.   It would come from the same text as the KJV, one would assume, if it were a “New” King James Version.  The NKJV comes from a less different text than most modern versions, but it does come from a different text.

Why Does It Matter?

Why does any of this matter?  It isn’t a translational issue in this case, but one of the underlying text.  This is presuppositional.  God promised to preserve every Word.  If that’s true, which it is, then this relates to the doctrine of preservation of scripture.  Mark Ward and others act like they don’t even understand it.  They rarely to never mention it.

In a recent video on this same issue, Mark Ward went on the offensive against the King James Version.  It wasn’t a new attack.  This is the point.  Textual critics say one short phrase in Revelation 16:5 wasn’t in any known manuscript, but was instead a conjectural emendation by Beza (read about this issue here).  It is not a phrase that appears in a majority of presently preserved Greek manuscripts.  I carefully wrote that last sentence, because a translation of the Latin of Beza doesn’t say it was a conjectural emendation, but instead he wrote:

Therefore, I am not able to doubt but that the true reading should be as I have restored it from an ancient manuscript [hand-written] codex of good faith, truly ο εσομενος.

Men like myself and others with our presuppositions from scripture believe this is what Beza did, not conjectural emendation.

A problem that Ward would not mention in his offensive against the King James Version is that almost all modern versions, ones that he supports, come from a minority of the manuscripts.  Not only that, but in hundreds of lines of text in the underlying text of the modern versions there is zero manuscript evidence.  They have no manuscript support.   Yet, Ward and many, many others, who deny the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation, have no problem advocating most for those modern versions that translate that text.

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Addendum

I don’t plan on continuing to keep looking up more examples.  It wasn’t as those examples did not present themselves as I looked.  This makes the point of variations in the textual basis between the NKJV and the KJV.  What made this tough is that the NKJV translators said, no differences, and yet there are.

If you trusted the translators, then you didn’t know the differences.  Perhaps you never checked.  Yes, there’s a difficulty sometimes in deciding translational differences.  I tried to find the ones where the differences would or could reflect a difference in the text.  A variant needed to exist for me to use the example.  It’s easy to come later and defend it as a translational choice, but there is a there, there.  If you want to criticize, you could try to do that, and I could just keep looking for more too.  This is something perhaps you haven’t done, that is, look on your own.

If you haven’t looked on your own, maybe you could do that, if it matters to you.  As I’ve said in the past, for a long time, I assumed the NKJV used Scrivener’s, the same text as the KJV in other words.  Then I read someone who said, no, so then I began looking a little and agreed that it wasn’t the same.  You really shouldn’t have it both ways, that is, a first way where you say there is no difference.  And then you have a second way, where when someone looks up examples and you attack the person doing that.  That is having it both ways.  It isn’t honest.