missing verses in KJV

[Kristin]

Programers – I contacted Support about this over the phone, and I was informed that I should mention this on the forum for the programers. With that said, here is the issue I discovered: While giving a lesson yesterday, I was trying to demonstrate some of the textual differences in the KJV compared to other versions. I thus had my ESV open and added the KJV and a few other English Bibles. I then looked up Mt 18:10, showing that as we continued to scroll, that only the KJV would include Mt 18:11. However, to my great surprise, the KJV was also missing Mt 18:11! I then looked up Mt 17:21, Mt 23:14, etc, etc, going through a fairly large collection, and the KJV was missing them all! I was mentioning this to a family member on the phone who suggested that the verses I was referring to were maybe only in the Catholic Bible. I said that was not the case, but I thus added the Douay-Rheims, which did include Mt 18:11, and now magically the KJV had the verse also, and further, the NASB had a footnote. I thought I was going insane. I could have sworn verse 11 was not there just seconds before. After opening a new window and repeating the process, lo and behold, Mt 18:11 was missing again! After becoming convinced that I was not hallucinating and that the verse really was coming and going, I called Support. Support explained that he saw what I meant, and explained that if I put the KJV first, that it would work, and Mt 18:11 would appear and show as a – for other versions. By contrast, if other versions are first it would just skip it since the parallel is going off of the first Bible listed. Since Mt 18:11 is not in the ESV, parallel mode just skips Mt 18:11, even in other versions which include it. This is a problem for a few reasons. First, I cannot guarantee that I remember each of the extra verses in the KJV, but with this system I would be forced to always keep the KJV (or Catholic Bible, I guess) first in order to capture the missing verses. Second, simply omitting verses which do not match the first version is not a true parallel. For example, if I want to compare Mt 18:10-Mt 18:14 in multiple versions, it is not an accurate comparison when ALL of the versions are missing Mt 18:11, even when the text includes it. Third, notice that with the KJV first the NASB acknowledges the verse in brackets, but with the ESV, the NASB simply omits it. Forth, it makes it very unclear which mss include it. The footnote of the ESV says "some mss include v 11." Maybe some do, but clearly not the TR, as the KJV does not have verse 11... or maybe it does. This obviously creates confusion. If I am only reading the ESV, for example, it seems fine to just omit the verse and have a footnote in its place, I guess, but when in parallel mode it is very important to have a – placed to be clear, just like it looks when the KJV is placed first. Thank you for any help you can provide concerning this.

 

[Joel Brown]

Hi Kristin!

 

I understand your concern over this, so let me clarify a few points:

 

1) Its important to understand *how* you are arriving at the verses to use.  Different texts, as you note, include different verses, but some texts even change the order.  Accordance has to make some decision which set of verses to use.  Thus, when you display a text in the top-left, you are telling Accordance to use that set of verses, period.  Thus, if you want to see how the KJV renders a passage, choose the KJV as your text in the top-left, just next to the search bar.  Since you had chosen ESV, you just asked for the verses ESV has, not necessarily any others.

 

2) That being said, we fully recognize that this can cause some confusion (and has, for over 20 years!).  A few years ago we added a fancy algorithm to add any extra verses found in other parallel panes, preventing this issue you are describing.  The system generally works well, but there have been a few glitches in a few cases, and I believe you stumbled across this glitch.  Good news: In the upcoming free update to 12.3.3, this has been reworked and seems to be working very reliably.

 

3) Often, as you know, the real goal is to find the right tool for the job.  The parallel panes you are using are an excellent way to compare verse by verse, and they are highly flexible.  But, if you are trying to do a cross-textual comparison across many versions, I recommend checking out the Text Browser. Its custom tailored to comparing verses very quickly across as many (or as few) different texts as you like.  You may enjoy how it would handle, as you say, Mt 18:10-Mt 18:14 in various texts.

 

I hope this helps!