These translations have underlying manuscripts that they are translating from. The KJV is an English translation of the Textus Receptus, which is a Greek translation of the Vulgate, which is a Latin translation of the older Greek manuscripts. As such, the text includes passages and renderings that have been added in over time.
There are actually entire books missing from the protestant bible not just a few verses, in the 1500's queen Elizabeth removed x10 books from the Bible that were originally part of the canon of scripture, Here are the names of those books:
I read some of the apocrypha as a protestant many years ago, I especially enjoyed the book of Enoch but I can understand why it was not canonised like Saint Augustine says, we dont know the sources of these books, so the church was wise not to canonise them, book 3 of the book of Enoch for example can seem a bit dodggy in the way it was written.
As a protestant before I was even married I remember the Bible mentioning some books that were not in my Bible, for example, when I read 2 Samuel I think its in chapter 1 or 2 it mentions the book of Jasher that its recorded some events, it makes reference to the book, I also remember the book of Jude in the new testament that it mentions the prophesies of Enoch so clearlt Christians read something about his prophesies yet we dont have Enoch in our Bible, I know the Ethiopian Bible has it though.
Same thing in Numbers, which makes reference to the Book of the Wars of the Lord, which is completely lost.
This has been exactly my take on the Apocrypha for years, as a Protestant. But some Orthodox that I've listened to seem to think the removal of the books from the canon was the result of (((dubious motivations))). In particular that the history in Maccabees is essential. Have yet to follow up on that by re-reading those books but this discussion is a good reminder to do so.
There's a lot of bad history and conspiratorial thinking flung against the Protestant Canon, but there's a reason the early church labeled these books as deuterocanonical (secondary canon). There were Catholic cardinals in Luther's day who agreed with him on the Apocrypha. Not to mention that his German translation of the Bible still included all the apocryphal books, which doesn't stop people from lying by saying that he took them out of the Bible arbitrarily. Think about that, Luther painstakingly translated them into German, which is far more than his detractors ever did for the books they are defending. The term 'Apocrypha' itself was first used by St. Athanasius about many of these same books.
Yes, we can still read them but they not part of scripture but they were still read, there are many Christians even today that still write books and we read them but they not canonized
The problem with the adulterous woman, the pericope adulterae, is that the story shifts around in the manuscript tradition. Some manuscripts even place it in the Gospel of Luke. The rest of John's Gospel is rock solid, everything stays in place, except for this. Not to mention that the text does not show up in the manuscript tradition until the 5th century. It is a wonderful story, and I believe it can be read in a way to not conflict with the rest of the Gospel, but I wouldn't preach from it.
It sounds like you are more well-versed in this stuff than I am.
Yeah, I don't believe they should overthrow your faith in anyway, or that they somehow prove Christianity is false or anything like that. Recognize them for what they are because the liberals who do know them will use them to attack the veracity of the rest of the text. The Word of God is not so flimsy that it is undone by textual variants.
Yes, it would. I believe the Bible is 100% the Word of God and that we can trust it with our very souls. That is not the same thing as saying that every letter and grammatical punctuation in the King James Version is perfectly preserved. The King James Only movement largely came as a reaction against this. To put it simply, we know more and have more access to ancient manuscripts than the King James translators did in their day.
I see a couple of questions in this. One is that it assumes the story is authentic. Can you really say that the story is "enshrined" in the Gospels if it was not contained in the original Gospels? If the story was indeed added in the 5th century, then for the majority of Christians prior to the 5th century, the story was not "enshrined" in the Gospels at all. It's hard to appreciate that from where we're standing, it's much easier to assume anachronism, that it was always the same before our time, not recognizing the development of things as they played out along the way. To the second point, what is stopping someone from seeing this as God's way of "removing" something from the Gospels that should not have been added on in the first place?