Why I Made the KJRM

Please note: The KJRM remains in draft form. I have completed an initial writing, but there is still a lot of work to do.

If you've started reading through this study, you've probably already noticed — this isn't quite the KJV. It's not the ESV either. So what version of Revelation is this?

The answer is simple: the KJRM — the King James Revelation Modernized.

I made it. It is not an official translation. It is not Scripture — that distinction belongs to the Greek manuscripts themselves. The KJRM is a personal effort, built because nothing else quite fit what I needed for this study.

Why Not Just Use the KJV or ESV?

The KJV is a masterpiece, but it's hard to read. The ESV is clear and easy on modern ears, but it's copyrighted. And both of them, in different ways, make translation choices that can smooth over details you actually want to see when studying a book as precise as Revelation.

You don't have to go far to see it. In Revelation 1:14, the ESV reads: "The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow" (Revelation 1:14, ESV). That makes it sound like just the hairs are white. But the Greek makes clear that both his head and his hair are white — a detail the KJV and NASB preserve but the ESV loses. And the KJV has its own problems. In Revelation 1:12, it describes "golden candlesticks" — but the Greek word is lampstands, not candlesticks. The KJV translators used the word that made sense in 1611. It doesn't make the same sense now.

When you're trying to do a rigorous study of Revelation, like me, and these kinds of translation issues are ever-present in the text you're reading, it gets a little irritating after a year or so of studying.

The point is this: we can't get one chapter into Revelation before our English versions start having trouble. And real translation work is well beyond my ability. But I can spot issues, make personal notes about them (I have over 2,300 of them just from side-by-side study of Revelation, not including the over 600 internal references I've found and much more), and update my working copy to reflect what I see in the Greek — for myself, not for use by others as a definitive version. Think of the KJRM as my notes on how I read the text, not a statement about what the Greek is exactly. English can't do that. If you really want to get into Revelation, learn Greek — those are the real versions of Revelation.

So I took a different path. The KJRM starts with the KJV as its English foundation, updates the language to modern English, and adjusts the text to reflect the Critical Text and manuscript evidence that the original KJV translators simply didn't have access to.

The result is a study text that's readable, rooted in the KJV tradition, and aligned with the best available Greek evidence. You'll still find the KJV and ESV referenced throughout this guide — the KJRM doesn't replace them. It sits alongside them.

What Makes the KJRM Different?

The KJRM works hard to preserve the prophetic intent of the Greek text. That means resisting the urge to flatten or expand Greek words when translating into English. The ESV does this sparingly, and English itself sometimes forces it, but the KJRM pushes back wherever possible. This study found, again and again, that the Greek needed to be followed more strictly than either the KJV or the ESV have done — and the translation reflects that conviction.

Every verse was consulted side by side across the ESV, KJV, Nestle-Aland, the Textus Receptus, Codex Sinaiticus, and available fragments. Countless readings of Revelation, cross-checked against many Greek sources, to get at what I could find as actually being there.

An Honest Disclaimer

I am not a scholar. I am a dedicated student of Revelation. I have read this book countless times, and I have done my best to engage the sources carefully and honestly. But translation is genuinely challenging work, and this text will still fall short in places. Every translation does.

The KJRM is not meant to be a translation of the Bible or even of Revelation in any official sense. It is a personal effort — an attempt to build a study text that takes the wording of Revelation seriously. Nothing more, nothing less.

A Caution on English and Prophecy

Advanced study of prophecy demands careful attention to the original languages. English should never be treated as original or prophetically precise. In prophecy, word order and specific terms carry significant weight, and translation inevitably disrupts word order — Greek word order is flexible and driven by emphasis, while English is rigidly Subject-Verb-Object. On top of that, exact English equivalents for many Greek and Hebrew terms simply don't exist.

Use English with caution when it comes to prophetic accuracy. The KJRM is grounded in deep work with the Greek texts and does its best — but even at its best, it will fall short too.