21st Century King James Version

The 21st Century King James Version is a conservative modernization of the King James Version, updating archaic vocabulary while seeking to preserve the cadence and textual base of its predecessor. It is a complete Bible, and its source language is English: rather than working from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, it takes the King James Version itself as its base text, and therefore does not constitute a fresh translation from the original languages. Its translation philosophy is one of light modernization, and it is properly categorized as a revision, with the KJV serving as both predecessor and base translation. Among its distinctive features is that it is far less radical than the New King James Version, another twentieth-century effort to render the 1611 Bible in more accessible language. It thus belongs to the long line of revisions through which the King James tradition has been carried forward for successive generations of English readers.