Publisher: Cambridge University Press – 1,233 pages
Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram
In their Preface to the 1611 edition, the translators of the Authorized Version, known worldwide as the King James Version (KJV) of the Holy Bible, state that it was not their intention to make a new translation, but to “:make a good one better.” The translators have expressed their gratitude for the work of William Tyndale and others.
So, in the Preface to this New King James Version (NKJV), the editors write:
“In harmony with the purpose of the King James scholars, the translators and editors of the present work have not pursued a goal of innovation. They have perceived the present New King James Version (NKJV) of the Holy Bible as a continuation of the labors of the earlier translators, thus unlocking for today’s readers the spiritual treasures found especially in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures.”
Why is the Holy Bible so important to Mankind?
Two reasons are: the sheer number of Christians on earth and that Christians constitute nearly a third of all humans on our planet. See the numbers and percentages in the two illustrations below.
In a December 19, 2011 Pew Research Center article entitled Global Christianity–A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population, a comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries, it was found that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third (31.6 percent) of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion people. A more current, authoritative source of such information has not been found.
Christians numbering 2.18 billion, nearly a third of humanity in December 2011, were spread out widely worldwide, with large numbers living in some countries. Credit: Pew Research
As of now – December 28, 2020 at 2:30 pm on the US East Coast – there are 7,835,226,690 people on earth, according to World Population Clock. Using the same 31.6 percentage, we can assume that there are 2.476 billion Christians around the world. Below is a table based on world population numbers from about a decade ago, in December 2011.
The 2011 Pew Research study found that Christians are geographically widespread – so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be at the very center of global Christianity. In the United States, we can extrapolate that there are 262,350,000 Christians today, representing 79.5 percent (as in December 2011) of its 330 million people.
Where new translation has been necessary for the New King James Version, the most complete representation of the original has been rendered by considering the history of usage and etymology of words in their contexts.
This principle of complete equivalence seeks to preserve all of the information in the text, while presenting it in good literary form.
Each Bible produced by Cambridge University Press, the world’s oldest (for over four centuries) and the largest publisher of such books, is unique because it is made of leather, typically calf and goat skin, that is tanned to perfection and is hand-made by this company’s highly-skilled craftsmen. It is a valuable article, and when treated with care, this Bible will give and your family member many years of pleasure and satisfaction.
