What is the difference between the Catholic Bible and the King James Version?

Answer 1

AnswerTo correct additionally: KJV was not the first English Bible (the Coverdale Bible was). And the Coverdale translation was HIGHLY influenced by Tyndale's NT. (Tyndale was killed before completing the OT). The KJV was made years later 1611. And has seen numerous changes since that time. You are correct that the KJV authors were not the best translators (especially Hebrew) but, given the time and the tools at their disposal, the did an admirable job. The New King James Bible is a recent translation based on the Majority Text (they take the majority of Greek texts as the best possible reading, unless other reasons would dictate. The KJV (not the NKJV) is based on the Textus Receptus... and that is based on the limited number of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts (as well as Catholic Latin ones) that they had in the late early 1600's. Answer

While most of the below answer is correct, I would like to point out that the King James Bible was the FIRST English Bible and was written using the closet possible original texts in Greek and Hebrew but was translated by Englishmen who had poor understanding of Hebrew and did not ask for help doing it.

AnswerThe Bible used by Catholics includes other books, called the Apocrypha and the Deuterocanonical books, at the end of the Old Testament. The validity of these books is often questioned by Protestants.

The additional books found in the Catholic Bible are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and I & II Maccabees.

The official Bible of the Catholic Church is probably the Vulgate, a fifth century Latin translation largely the work of St. Jerome. The Duoay-Rheims version, which is an English translation of the Vulgate, served as the Catholic English Bible at the time of the translation of the King James Version (aka the Authorized Version), published in 1611, under the direction of King James I of England. Since the time of Henry VIII, when the Church of England split with the Catholic Church, the Geneva Bible and the Bishop's Bible were being used. King James wanted a new, better translation to make us of the contemporary Bible scholarship going on at the time and to provide uniformity to the English liturgy. The King James Version, while drawing freely from previous English Bibles, stands alone as a work of literary beauty. It is also pretty faithful to the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures (though not without errors, which were corrected in the later Revised Versions). Early King James Bibles included the Apocrypha, though most Protestant KJV's of today do not. Modern Catholic versions of the Bible in English include the Jerusalem Bible, first translated into French, and the New American Bible.

Catholic Answer

It was Protestantism that removed these "deuterocanonical" books from the Bible, many centuries later. And contrary to the myth, the early Church did indeed accept these books as Scripture.

The seven disputed books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), and Baruch. Catholic Bibles also include an additional six chapters (107 verses) in Esther and three chapters (174 verses) in Daniel.

According to major Protestant scholars and historians, in the first four centuries Church leaders (e.g. St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, St. Irenaeus) generally recognized these seven books as canonical and scriptural, following the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, following the Council of Rome (382), and general consensus, finalized the New Testament canon while also including the deutercanon, in lists that were identical to that of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

There's a scholarly consensus that this canon was pretty much accepted from the fourth century to the sixteenth, and indeed, the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament: the Codes Sinaiticus (fourth century) and Codex Alexandrinus (c. 450) include the (unseparated) deuterocanonical books. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran did not contain Esther, but did contain Tobit.

According to Douglas and Geisler, Jamnia (first century Jewish council) was not an authoritative council, but simply a gathering of scholars, and similar events occurred afterward. In fact, at Jamnia the canonicity of books such as Ester, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon was also disputed. Since both Protestants and Catholics accept these books today, this shows that Jamnia did not "settle" anything. The Jews were still arguing about the canonicity of the books mentioned earlier and also Proverbs into the early second century.

And St. Jerome's sometimes critical views on these books are not a clear-cut as Protestants often make them out to be. In his Apology Against Rufinus (402) for example, he wrote:

When I repeat what the Jews say against the story of Susanna and the the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us (Apology Against Rufinus, book II, 33)

Significantly, St. Jerome included the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible, (And he defended the inspiration of Judith in a preface to it.) All in all, there is no clear evidence that St. Jerome rejected these seven books, and much to suggest that he accepted them as inspired Scripture, as the Catholic Church does today. But St. Jerome (like any Church father) does not have the final authority in the Church. He's not infallible. The historical evidence, all things considered, strongly supports the Catholic belief that these books are inspired and thus indeed part of Holy Scripture

from The One-Minute Apologist by Dave Armstrong; Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2007

THE DIFFERENT

The catholic bible was written in the 4 century, the KJV was written in the 1600`s , so there is a big different.