The King James Bible translated into French
A special note to English speaking readers…
This website is dedicated entirely to the Glory of God for his wonderful gift of the King James Bible. It is my sincere desire that through this website, French speaking peoples of the world will be able to appropriate for themselves, the miracle of the King James Bible. I pray that they will find that the King James Française translation, along with the various articles and comparative chart, included on this website, will make the Holy Bible easier to read, easier to understand, and easier to memorize.
I started this translation as a personal Bible study in 1992, while living in France. One day, the pastor of the church that we were attending told us that the word “enfer” (hell in English) was not in the French Bible. That statement started my quest. I quickly checked several different revisions of the Segond version of the Bible, which had been the standard for French Protestants for many years. The pastor was right! Then, I began studying other versions of the Bible in French, which were readily available at that time. Using the King James Version as my guide, I found that not only were these versions not agreeing with the King James Version, they did not agree with each other! All of them were even quite different between each other. This made comparing them very confusing.
Then in 1996, a new revision of the Ostervald version of the Bible was published by some Americans, who promoted it as the King James Bible in French. Using different books written by Dr. D. A. Waite, Dr. Jack Moorman, G. A. Riplinger, and others as references, I started carefully comparing the 1996 Ostervald version with the King James Version. I found a great many serious differences. As an example, the word “enfer” (hell) had indeed been added back into the 1996 Ostervald in a few places. However, it was not used 54 times in 54 verses as in the King James Bible. The King James Française is the ONLY French translation of the Bible where the word “enfer” (hell) is found in these same 54 verses. This type of inconsistency gravely affects Bible doctrine and of course, any word search studies the reader tries to do.
I do not know any translations of the Bible in French, Spanish, or Italian, which are truly equivalent to the King James Bible. All French Bibles, especially the Segond, Ostervald, etc. read more often like the New International Version than the King James Version. This is the reason why for the last three years I have been meticulously revising and updating the King James Française text, verse by verse, and word by word. I have tried to translate the same English word with the same French word as much as I could. It is not always possible, as the English vocabulary is much richer than the Latin based languages.
Moreover, the King James Bible has its own special Bible vocabulary. For example, words like Heaven, Godhead, Holy Ghost, unto, etc., really have no equivalent in the French language. The King James Bible is undeviating and can be trusted completely. The other translations of the Bible, in whatever language, are not translations of the King James Bible, and therefore are not free from error. This is why it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do faithful word searches, and to compare “Scripture with Scripture” (1 Cor. 2:13), using any other French versions. Soon, the text of the King James Française will be available as one of the foreign language options which may be selected on the Pure Bible Search Engine www.PureBibleSearch.com
The same doctrine found in the King James Bible is not always found in the French Bibles, especially the modern versions. Olivétan, who was Jean Calvin’s cousin, was really the first one to translate the Bible into French. All other French translations that followed, the Bible de Genève, Martin, Ostervald, Segond, and their many revisions, were all translated by men who believed that the Christian church had replaced Israel. When you read the references to the Millennial Kingdom in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, you will find that frequently the verb tense has been changed in these versions from the future tense, as in the King James Version, to the present tense! There are so many discrepancies, it is incredible. Changes in the French Bibles like these make many of Paul’s letters hard to understand, and certain verses do not even make sense.
It appears, unfortunately, that most American missionaries are not familiar enough with the French language to detect these errors, not even the most obvious ones. For example, in the familiar verse John 3:16, we are told “For God so loved the world, that he gave his ONLY BEGOTTEN Son…”. All French versions replace “only begotten Son” with “Fils unique” which is their equivalent of “unique Son”. The King James Française is THE ONLY FRENCH TRANSLATION which rendered “his only begotten Son” as “son SEUL FILS ENGENDRÉ”. There is a tremendous difference between “unique Son” and “ “SEUL FILS ENGENDRÉ”. I have included an article explaining this difference on the website.
Many other helpful articles can be found on the site. For example, I have written about why I have used certain French words to say the same thing as the King James Bible. I have tried to explain why many of the words used in the present French Bibles and familiar to French Christians, had to be changed to make the statement agree with the King James Bible text. These articles will be of great assistance to missionaries who know the King James Bible, and are now working with French speaking people. It is important to remember that one must use different words in one language to make the EXACT statement in another language. Failure to use the necessary words would result in a personal interpretation or a paraphrase, but not a true translation! Look at the word “shewbread”. To say “shewbread,” in French, it requires four words: “le pain de consecration”. Another illustration of this would be the word “whales”. Most French Bibles use “poissons” (fish in English) and not the French word for whales which is “baleines”. Another word is “generation”. French Bibles use “généalogie” (genealogy in English). All these like in the American modern versions.
It should be noted that this website was badly hacked two years or so ago and became unusable. The text of the New Testament and most of the other parts of the website got badly messed up with viruses and malware. A wonderful Bible Believing friend at www.dewtronics.com was able to salvage and reconstruct the complete website.
I would like to call your attention to the chart on the website. This chart shows some of the major discrepancies found when comparing a small amount of verses of the 1910 Segond, the 1996 Ostervald, the Ostervald 2014, the Olivetan, the Bible de Genève, with the King James Bible and the King James Francaise.
The italicized words and punctuation are those of the King James Bible.
2016. Addendum Please read the chart and you will discover that some of the “particulars” about this French translation are no longer true, due to some plagiarism. Follow this link to read the Table of Comparison of Different Versions (with notes in English)