#54-56: I already looked at this verse earlier, but I want to consider a different part of it: Romans 1:5-6 (KJV): "By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name; among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ."
And here it is again in the ESV: "through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ."
The KJV attaches "obedience to the faith" to "the nations," I believe as a way to say that God wants all nations, all people, to come to faith through the gospel. But notice that the ESV attaches "for the sake of his name" to "the nations," making it more about God simply wanting His name to be glorified among the nations.
I bring this up because I noticed the same change in Romans 16:26. The KJV says "but now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith." God's purpose for the scriptures (the gospel) was to lead all nations to faith (as in "all people everywhere").
But the ESV again separates "faith" from "the nations," saying instead "but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith." The ESV seems to say just that the writings have been made known to all nations to bring about faith (once again, in Calvinism, "bringing about" would simply be activating what was predestined, the "obedience of faith" of the elect), but not necessarily that God wrote the scriptures to bring about faith in all nations (as in "all people everywhere"). Maybe this isn't significant, but it stood out to me because it seems like the ESV keeps trying to separate "faith" from "the nations," for some reason.
And to show you this isn't a fluke, The ESV does something similar again in Colossians 1:6. The KJV says "[the gospel] which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringing forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth". But the ESV says "[the gospel] which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing - as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth."
According to the KJV, the gospel has come to them and to all the world. But according to the ESV, the gospel has come to them. Why leave out that the gospel came to all the world too?
Also note that the KJV says they "knew" the grace of God, while the ESV says they "understood" it. Calvinism teaches that God causes the elect to understand, to comprehend, the gospel when He regenerates them, and that the gospel will always be nonsense to the non-elect because God won't cause them to understand it.
But the Greek for this word does not mean "understand," as in to be made to comprehend/make sense of something. It means to "recognize, perceive, discern, to come to know by directing attention to." In this verse, it means that the people recognized the truth, perceived that it was true, came to know it by directing their attention to it. This is much more "free-will," much more "personally responsible for finding/embracing the truth," than God causing you to understand something you previously could not understand. It's not about gaining understanding, as Calvinists would say; it's about finding, recognizing, knowing, embracing the truth of the gospel that is there for all the world to see.
A note about the ESV vs King James:
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, read these articles about the men who wrote the Greek texts that the ESV is based on: "Westcott and Hort: Translator's Beliefs" and "Westcott and Hort and the Greek Text." The ESV is based on the RSV, which is based on the Greek Texts of these two men (who, it sounds like, rejected the infallibility of Scripture, despised evangelicals, questioned Jesus's divinity and an eternal hell, did not believe Genesis and the creation story was literal, affirmed Darwin and evolution, etc.), which is based on two corrupted manuscripts which differ from the majority of the more reliable manuscripts that the KJV is based on.
So when something says that the ESV has only made 6% changes, it means "from the RSV," meaning that it's 94% the same as the RSV it was based on, a translation which was based on two corrupted manuscripts that disagree with the majority of the manuscripts available. It would be like if a journalist interviewed 100 people about an event ... and 95 of them said the exact same thing, but 5 told a different story ... and the journalist decided to side with the 5 and print their story as fact. Raises some red flags, doesn't it?
In the course of researching this issue, and after not knowing for decades what to think of the whole "which translation is most accurate" debate, I now side with the King James. I mean, I have several other translations, and I think different ones are good for different reasons, such as readability, compare and contrast, to hear God's Word in a fresh way, etc. But when having to decide which one is more reliable and accurate, especially considering the significant differences like those above, I have to side with the KJV (not the New King James, just the King James). And I've never been more sure of it than now, after all this research.
