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Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

The KJV is a Literary Masterpiece, and a Disaster Study Bible

Sep 22, 2026 · 45m

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On this episode

About this episode

The King James Bible is arguably the most influential book in the English language, and Bart thinks it's a literary masterpiece. He also thinks it's one of the worst Bibles you can study from. In this episode of Misquoting Jesus, Bart and host Megan Lewis trace where the KJV came from, starting with William Tyndale, whose translation it largely reuses and who was burned at the stake for making it. They look at why its unicorns and cockatrices trip up modern readers, and why the words you think you understand, like "conversation," "strange," and "admiration," are more misleading than the ones you don't. They cover the theological choices its translators made, the late Greek manuscripts…