This episode spells out the conservative approach of the translators of the King James Bible and demonstrates that the KJV relied heavily on previous translations. One word study found that 83.7% of the KJV was identical to William Tyndale's New Testament. Translators were instructed to methodically go through the Bishop's Bible and make any modifications based on the Hebrew or Greek texts. The translators relied on relatively late copies of both testaments, drawing from the Masoretic Text for the Hebrew (11th century). With respect to the New Testament, translators mostly relied on Erasmus' compilation of Greek texts (3rd to 5th editions), as well as collections of Stephanus and Theodore Beza. Together these copies make up the Textus Receptus, or Majority Text. The Majority Text depends on relatively late manuscripts (12th century) but is nevertheless very reliable when compared to modern translations, which depend on manuscripts as old as the second and third centuries.
