Berean Fact Sheet Number 010

This Fact Sheet is best viewed in Times New Roman font. It is also available in PDF format. For more information, click here.

Revelation 22:19 in the King James Version
Copyright © 1999, 2003, 2006 by Larry G. Overton

A few years back a brother wrote in to an online discussion list that I am a member of, asking the following question:

I have read that some of the KJV renderings in Revelation come from Latin rather than Greek manuscripts. Does anyone have access to any information on this?

I posted a response to the list, as did others. In my post, I said that Revelation 22:19 is perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon of KJV renderings in the Apocalypse that are of Latin (rather than Greek) origin. Let’s take a look at this particular passage, starting with the way it is rendered in the King James Version. Except for the old Gothic or “blackletter” typeface, here is Revelation 22:19 as it appeared in the 1611 edition of the KJV.

And if any man ſhall take away from the wordes of the booke of this propheſie, God ſhal take away his part out of the booke of life, and out of the holy citie, and from the things which are written in this booke.

The phrase “…God shall take away his part out of the book of life…” is the portion in question here. The reading of that phrase according to the first edition of the printed Greek text of Desiderius Erasmus is aphairēsei ho theos to meros autou apo biblou zōēs [α̉φαιρήσει ο θεὸς τὸ μέρος αυ̉του̃ α̉πὸ βίβλου ζωη̃ς]. Translating that strictly according to the order of the words in Greek would read “…shall take away the God the part of him from the book of life...”

In preparing his Greek text of the book of Revelation, Erasmus had access to only one manuscript that contained the Apocalypse (a 12th century cursive formerly identified as Apoc. 1 or simply 1r, now renumbered as 2814). The final leaf in this manuscript was missing, which contained the last six verses. To finish his Greek text of the Apocalypse, Erasmus translated these verses from the Latin Vulgate into Greek.

The eminent nineteenth century textual critic F. H. A. Scrivener, commenting on what he called Erasmus’ “self-made version,” said “Erasmus in his Annotations fairly confesses what he did…” He then quoted from Erasmus’ Latin Annotationes on this subject: “quanquam in calce hujus libri, nonnulla verba reperi apud nostros, quae aberant in Graecis exemplaribus, ea tamen ex latinis adjecimus.”† Roughly translated, this means “However, at the end of this book in our Greek transcripts, you must discover several words which are absent, that we nevertheless cast out of the Latin.”

As a result of this back-translating, Erasmus’ Greek text of Revelation 22:16-21 contains readings that are not found in any Greek manuscripts. This phrase in 22:19 is an example of this fact. There are several points of difference between the Erasmian text and the true readings of this phrase in Greek.

The very first word in this phrase in the Greek translation of Erasmus reads aphairēsei [α̉φαιρήσει] , which is the third person singular future indicative active form of the verb aphaireō [α̉φαιρέω], to take away, remove; cut off. This Erasmian reading is not found in the Greek manuscripts. The readings supported by the Greek manuscript evidence are: apheloi [α̉φέλοι], the optative aorist active, third person singular form of the verb aphaireō; or aphelei [α̉φελει̃], the second future indicative active third person singular form of aphaireō .

The second point of difference between Erasmus’ Greek translation of this phrase and the reading supported by the Greek manuscripts is also relatively minor. It involves the restoration of the definite articles ( tou [του̃] and tēs [τη̃ς]) before the words xulou [ξύλου] or “tree” and zōēs [ζωη̃ς], “life,” respectively.

And speaking of this Greek term for “tree,” that is the third and most famous aspect of textual variation in this verse. Erasmus’ translation has biblou [βίβλου] here, which of course means “book” or (more literally) “scroll.” Out of all the Greek manuscripts that have this verse, only two—both very late, perhaps even contemporaneous with Erasmus’ text—have the reading biblou in this phrase. One other late manuscript supplies that reading in its margin. The rest of the Greek MSS read xulou. The evidence of the Greek manuscripts, therefore, is overwhelmingly clear: the correct reading here is xulou, the Greek term for “tree.”

One might well ask, “How did Erasmus make such a mistake? How did he get ‘book’ instead of ‘tree’?” Simply put, the edition of the Latin Vulgate in Erasmus’ day had the reading libro (“book, volume”) instead of ligno (“tree”), and that’s what he back-translated into his Greek text, hence the reading biblou. As for the reading libro in the Latin Vulgate, it isn’t difficult to see how this transcriptional error took place. Here is the verse in the Latin Vulgate of that day.

et si quis deminuerit de verbis libri prophetiae huius auferet Deus partem eius de libro vitae et de civitate sancta et de his quae scripta sunt in libro isto

As seen in the above quote of the Vulgate, the Latin word for “book” occurs in the opening and closing phrases of Revelation 22:19 (libri and libro, respectively). What’s more, the expression “book of life” is found five times in the Apocalypse (Revelation 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:15; 21:27), each time translated into Latin as libro vitae. At some point during the intervening centuries, from Jerome’s time to that of Erasmus, some scribe erroneously (but understandably) copied libro instead of lingo. In so doing, he unconsciously made the reading conform to the forms libri and libro found in verse 19, as well as to the expression “book of life” (libro vitae) so familiar to the book of Revelation.

At any rate, the conclusion of the matter is that the King James Version contains readings that are incorrect, readings that come from a Latin translation rather than the Greek manuscripts. This verse is just one example of that fact. The KJV was in its day a good translation of the Bible into English, but it was far from perfect. This information is particularly applicable to those involved in the debate over King James Onlyism. If you are struggling with this false doctrine, I hope this Fact Sheet will be of help to you. If you are an advocate of King James Onlyism, you would do well to reexamine your position, to do your homework and then make your views conform to the facts.

† Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, For the Use of Biblical Students, Vol. II, pgs. 183f.