A Comment on the Greek text of Romans 7:6

Greek NT Manuscript (image from WikiMedia Commons) 

I have known for a long time that in Romans 7:6, the KJV reads differently from almost every other modern version.  Here is how the KJV reads:

But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

 However, here is how the ESV reads:

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

You might notice the difference: whereas the KJV tells us that the law died ("that being dead"), the ESV tells us that we died ("having died to that wherein we were held").  The difference is really just one Greek letter: the reading behind the KJV is ἀποθανόντος whereas the reading behind the ESV is ἀποθανόντες.  

Which is right?  It turns out that the KJV is incontrovertibly wrong at this point. And here's why: as far as I know, there is no known Greek manuscript that contains this reading.  Now before you get your TR out, let me remind you that the TR is a printed Greek text that did not exist before the sixteenth century. When I say that no Greek manuscript has the reading of the TR, I am referring to the mass of almost 5800 hand-copied manuscripts from the second to the sixteenth century of either a part or the whole of the Greek New Testament.  None of them have it.  Not one.

Now the plot thickens, for when someone claims that the TR has this reading, you really have to ask, "Which TR?"  Erasmus' Greek text?  His fifth and final edition reads with the ESV (and though I haven't checked them, I assume his previous four editions read the same way).  Stephanus' 1550 Greek text?  It reads with the ESV.  But these are both considered part of the family of the Textus Receptus!

It turns out that, as far as I can tell, it shows up for the first time in history in Beza's 1598 Greek text.  Why?  Henry Alford explains why in this following note in his Greek Testament Commentary: "the reading ἀποθανόντος cannot even be brought into discussion, as it appears to be only a conjecture of Beza’s, arising from a misunderstanding of the text (and of Chrysostom’s commentary, who did not read it)."   

What Alford is basically saying is that Beza did a bit of conjectural emendation when it came to this part of the text of Romans 7:6.  That is, even though he knew not a single manuscript has the reading ἀποθανόντος, he still thought this is what the text ought to have said. And so he changed it to suit his taste, without any external evidence.  

Now, I'm pretty sure that Beza is the culprit here (in other words, that Alford is right in assigning to him the blame for this) because prior to his 1598 Greek text, other prior English versions agreed with the ESV at this point.  For example, here is how Tyndale's 1534 NT reads at Romans 7:6:

But now are we delivered from the law, and dead unto it, whereunto we were in bondage, that we should serve in a new conversation of the spirit, and not in the old conversation of the letter. 

Notice that in Tyndale's version, we are the ones who die to the law; the law is not the one that dies, in agreement with the ESV (and most other modern English versions).

The 1568 Bishop's Bible similarly translates:

But now we are delivered from the law, and dead unto it wherein we were in bondage, that we should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

Again, we are the ones who die, not the law.

But, by the time you get to the 1599 Geneva Bible, things change:

But now we are delivered from the Law, he being dead in whom we were holden, that we should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. 

What changed?  The Greek text didn't change.  Remember that the Geneva Bible has that name because it was translated by English exiles in Geneva.  Theodore Beza, who was Calvin's successor in Geneva, is the one who published his 1598 Greek text the year before the Geneva Bible came out.  There is little doubt that the Geneva Bible translators were highly influenced by Beza and his text.  And so were the translators of the 1611 KJV. 

And that is the story why a reading got into the TR that has zero manuscript evidence for it, a reading perpetuated in the KJV.

Now I believe that God has preserved his word.  And given the amount of manuscript evidence for the Greek text of the NT, it just is insane to do the kind of textual emendation that Beza did at Romans 7:6, imagining that somehow the true reading was not preserved through history, but that it had to be "rediscovered" by him.  

And it turns out, this actually confuses the argument of Paul anyway.  The previous verses show that Paul does not imagine the law as dying, but rather that the believer does through Christ: 

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.  (Romans 7:4)

Paul is not saying that the law has died (it most certainly has not), but that we have died in Christ to the law.  This is consistent, not only the with immediate context, but going back to the context of chapter 6 which is what provoked Paul's discussion about the law in the first place (see Rom. 6:14-15, for example).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his sermon on this passage, agrees that this is a mistaken translation for all the above reasons.  He writes [in Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 7:1-8:4, The Law: Its Function and Limits (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1973), p. 86]:

This translation as found in the Authorized Version is most unfortunate. There is nothing to be said in its favour.  It is one of the few cases where the translators of 1611 really have done something which has no justification.  Not only are the manuscripts against them, but the whole parallelism and the argument of the chapter indicates that they are wrong.  This is virtually agreed by all.  The translation should not have read 'that being dead wherein we were held,' but 'we having died to that where in we were held.'  It is we who have died.  

By the way, if you have a center-column reference Cambridge or Oxford King James Version of the Bible, you have notes many of which were put there by the translators, and the note at Romans 7:6 gives as an alternate reading, “Or, being dead to that.” That’s exactly how I think it should read.  And the translators themselves seem to admit that this is an acceptable reading of the text.  

One of the takeaways from this has to do with the KJV-Only debate.  King James Only advocates like to tell us that the Greek text underlying the KJV in the New Testament is superior to the Greek text underlying all modern versions. However, part of the KJV-Only position is not only to defend this proposition generally, but to argue that this is true without exception.  That is, they argue that the KJV is always based on a superior reading in the Greek textual tradition.  

But this is simply not true.  What we have shown is a counter-example to such a claim.

Now I affirm without hesitation and without reservation that God's holy word is inspired, infallible, and inerrant.  But that does not imply that every translation is inspired and infallible. The KJV translators were not inspired and their work was not inerrant, as they themselves admitted in their introduction to the translation. This verse is a key example of a place where they erred in giving an incorrect reading.

This does not of course mean that the KJV is a bad version.  I love the KJV and still memorize and preach from it.  But we must beware of treating it like the Roman Catholics did the Latin Vulgate and elevate it above the actual Greek and Hebrew in which God's words are written.  Verses like Romans 7:6 are good reminders of that.