[Fiver]

^ One of the things I find amazing about the King James Version is that, being based off the Textus Receptus for the New Testament, and the Hebrew Masoretic text for the Old Testament, it still matches up with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in 1947, and are far older. I've heard alot of people find the KJV to be confusing, since it was translated into old English, but I was raised reading it. I'm not against other translations, I just haven't used 'em much, so I have no room to speak on them.

As for the "Apocrypha", Catholic bibles include them. Protestants don't believe they are the inspired word of God as they believe the other accepted 66 books are, and the writers of these texts themselves never laid claim to this. Also, being raised as a Baptist, I can say that branch of Protestantism believes God gave His word to the Israelites to keep sacred and unchanged, and the Israelites took this deathly seriously. When copying the texts, if a single error was discovered in a manuscript, or some kind of blemish after use in public worship, the manuscript was promptly destroyed and the whole thing was re-transcribed. And those Apocryphal books? The Jews destroyed them when Jerusalem was reclaimed in 70 AD.

So, basically, what the Israelites accepted as canonical scriptures is what directed the decision to leave out the Apocryphal books.


Just thought I'd throw my two cents in regarding the Bible's validity and the accuracy of the translations available(Well, the KJV, atleast).