By Pastor Emanuel Rodriguez
One of the flawed arguments of promoters of the 1602 Valera Purified (or 1602P) against the RVG is the complaints of “modernizations” in the RVG. This is an attempt to apply the same type of argument that we King James Bible-believers use against those who claim the KJB should be updated today. However allow me to explain why this line of argumentation doesn’t work in regards to the Spanish Bible.
The 1602P project has been around longer than the RVG. Yet the amount of native Christians in Spanish-speaking countries who are using the 1602P pales in comparison to the amount using the RVG. There are reasons for this. One of the reasons why I believe the 1602P will never surpass the RVG in terms of acceptance amongst HISPANIC Bible-believers, especially those who are natives living on foreign soil, is because the full development of the Spanish language is not represented in the 1602 Purificada.
The U. S. American brethren who support the 1602P make much of the antiquity of the Castilian vernacular found in the original 1602 Valera Bible. The most outspoken of them is Robert Breaker, a graduate of Dr. Peter S. Ruckman’s school (PBI) and the founder of a non-denominational Internet church that he calls “The Cloud Church”. Breaker loves to exaggerate about how beautiful the old archaic Castilian Spanish is to the ears of the native Spanish speaker. Yet has anyone ever noticed that we never hear of any actual native Spanish speakers talking that way?
Breaker says in his writings that they endeavored to preserve the old Castilian Spanish in their revision. They appeal to the older style of English that is preserved in the King James Bible for their line of reasoning. This comparison doesn’t work, however. Also, it is doing nothing to attract national Spanish-speaking Christians on foreign soil.
First off, to compare the antiquity of the original 1602 Valera to the Elizabethan English of the KJB is comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same thing.
A common misconception is that the KJV was written in Old English. That’s technically not true. The Old English era was around 500 to 1100 AD. The Middle English era was around 1100 to 1500 AD. The Modern English era began around 1500 AD and continues to this day.
Therefore, English was a fully developed language during the time that the 1611 KJB was released. Scholars consider the English language to have reached a peak of excellence in those days. Since that time English has devolved rather than improved.
In fact what many Bible-believers don’t realize is that the type of English used in the KJB was not a type of English ever really used at all by the common English-speaking man in any time period in English history. (See chapter 6 of the book The Unbroken Bible by Dr. Phil Stringer) English-speakers were not saying “thee” and “thou” in the early 1600s. They said “you” just like we say “you” today. The type of English used in the KJB was more of a literary style of English, much like that which was used in Shakespearean plays. The other TR-based English Bibles (Geneva, Tyndales, Bishops, Coverdale, etc) were written in the English of the common man. The style of English in the KJV was unique, unprecedented, and represented the very best of the English language.
On the other hand, Spanish back then was not as fully developed. The Royal Academy of Spain (or RAE for “Real Academia de España”) was founded in 1713 for the purpose of further developing and standardizing the Spanish language. RAE’s establishment was over a century AFTER the publishing of the original Reina Valera Bible. Casiodoro de Reina completed his work in 1569. His friend Cipriano de Valera finished the first revision of Reina’s work in 1602.
Reina and Valera did not use a version of Spanish different from that of the common Spanish-speaker. What the KJV translators did with the style of language they chose was different than the rest of the Protestant translators, which is one of the things that set it apart from not only other TR Bibles in English but all Bibles in general.
Secondly, understanding that the type of Spanish used in the original Reina and Valera Bibles was not as far removed from that of the common Spanish-speaker as was the English of the KJB will help to explain why more Bible-believing native Spanish speakers in foreign countries are choosing the RVG instead of the 1602P even though the 1602P project has been around longer than the RVG. As mentioned earlier, the Spanish language was still not fully developed at the time Valera finished his work in 1602. This fact helps to explain why there are some peculiar usages of words in the original Reina Valera Bible such as the use of the word “salud” (which today is exclusively used for “health”) to translate the word “salvation” rather than the universally common word “salvación”.
Speaking of which, it is interesting to note that the 1602P revisers have totally changed the use of the word “salud” for “salvation” by replacing it with the word “salvación”. I believe this is a good change and the RVG has the same change. But it is interesting that the 1602P revisers did this for 3 reasons:
1602P supporters criticize the RVG revisers for “updating” or “modernizing” words in the RVG. They claim that this is wrong. Yet in the instance of salud/salvación (and many others) they also have “updated” or “modernized” the 1602 Valera text. Why was it ok for them to do this but not ok for the RVG revisers to do it?
1602P supporters criticize the RVG revisers for having readings that sometimes match the wording of the 1960 revision yet in this instance they are guilty of the exact same thing. For it was the 1960 revision committee that introduced the idea of exclusively replacing the word “salud” for “salvation” with the use of today’s more common word “salvación”. They condemn the RVG for this but somehow its ok for the 1602P.
1602P supporters claim that the RVG and other revisions of the Reina-Valera have no right to bear the names of Reina and Valera since changes were made that was different from the word choices of those 2 men. Yet as we have already mentioned the 1602P has changed Reina and Valera’s word “salud” to “salvación”. This is not the only change. There are many others in the 1602P. Another example can be found in all the places the 1602P has the word “Jehová” exclusively changed to “Señor”. (Note: The RVG retains the word choice – Jehová – of Reina and Valera in all the instances where the 1602P had it changed.) In the first edition of the 1602P's Old Testament they used the word "mujer" (woman) for "esposa" (wife) just like Reina and Valera. But in later editions they updated and changed the word "mujer" to "esposa". I agree with this change. The RVG had it this way before they did. But the point is that if it is wrong, as 1602P supporters assert, for the RVG to bear the names of Reina and Valera due to changes of the text they initiated, what gives the 1602P the right to retain Valera's name considering all the drastic changes made in their text? They are being hypocritical.
However, despite all the inconsistencies of 1602P supporters and promoters, they boast of their preservation of the original Castilian wording as found in the original 1602 Valera. Yet this presentation of the Spanish scriptures “won’t cut it” with the vast majority of today’s native Spanish-speaker. The 1602P promoters lack of understanding of the sociolinguistic landscape of Latin America prevented them from realizing that the majority of today’s Spanish speaker is not going to be as willing as they think to go backwards in time to accept a form of Spanish that was not fully developed yet.
With all due respect to the original Reina Valera Bible the underdevelopment of the Spanish language back then forced Reina and Valera to have to borrow words from the fully developed English language. For example, instead of the common Spanish name for “Bethlehem”, which is “Belen”, the original 1602 reads “Bethlehem” which is 100% identical in English (Gen. 35:19). Instead of the common Spanish name for “Joseph” which is “Jose”, the 1602 Valera says “Joseph”, totally identical to its English equivalent (Mat. 1:16). And these are just 2 of many other examples. I notice that the latest of edition of the 1602P has updated these 2 words. That's good but do you see the can of worms they have opened unnecessarily. To catch up with the RVG linguistically they are going to have to reinvent the wheel and do a whole bunch of work that has already been done over the span of 3 and half centuries. In other words, in trying to preserve the old Castilian vernacular of the original 1602 Valera text, the 1602 “Purificada” revisers managed to also preserve many undeveloped renderings that in Valera’s day still lacked a standardized Spanish designation, especially in regards to names of people and places.
So what you have in the 1602 Valera Purificada is a Spanish Bible that has been improved in some textual and doctrinal issues but went backwards linguistically. Dr. Humberto Gomez and his collaborators were wise to use a Spanish base text (the 1909 Antigua) that was 3 centuries more advanced linguistically than the original Reina Valera. The RVG is presented in a fully developed Spanish. The 1602P is not.
Native Hispanic people should not be forced to accept a step backwards in language. They are the target audience. They deserve to have a Bible in their fully developed language.
The 1602P crowd adopted an “older is better” philosophy in translation and in so doing they wound up going too far backwards. Now they are stuck with a Spanish Bible that is over 3 centuries behind the RVG in regard to grammar and linguistics. It will require a MASSIVE undertaking to catch it up. They are going to have to go through the 1602P with a fine tooth comb, which we know they have not done yet because we at the RVG Bible Society keep finding deficiencies in their text. Not to mention that any amount of work they put into updating the 1602P will be a big waste of time since all this linguistic work has already been done and is already represented in the RVG.
This linguistic aspect is one of the reasons why the 1602P will continue to fail in gaining any significant momentum of acceptance amongst native Spanish-speaking Bible-believing Christians on foreign soil.
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