Some suggest an indication of possible Episcopal bias in the KJV at Acts 20:28. In his history of Baptists, D. B. Ray noted the
following about Acts 20:28 in the KJV: "The word overseers in this passage is episcopous in the Greek--the word which is usually
translated bishops; but to have rendered it bishops in this place, would have shown that elder and bishop is the same office, which would have
condemned the church of the translators" (Baptist Succession, p. 292). Edward Hiscox quoted Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury in the Church of
England, as saying that the English Version [the KJV] "has hardly dealt fairly in this case with the sacred text in rendering episcopous, v. 28,
overseers; whereas, it ought there, as in all other places, to have been bishops, that the fact of elders and bishops having been originally and
apostolically synonymous, might be apparent to the English reader" (Principles and Practices for Baptist Churches, p. 90). Four times the KJV had
translated the same word as bishops (Phil. 1:1, 1 Tim. 3:2, Titus 1:7, 1 Pet. 2:25). In Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown's Commentary, David Brown asserted
that the reason the word was not translated "bishops" at Acts 20:28 was "to avoid the obvious inference that the same persons are here called
'elders' (v. 17) and 'bishops'" (III, p. 150). John Eadie wrote: "It has also been alleged, and not
without some reason, that in Acts 20:28, the rendering of the clause 'over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers' is a deflection from the
true translation, and conceals the identity of the 'elders' with the office-bearers usually named 'bishops'" (English Bible, II,
p. 271). The 1380's Wycliffe's, the 1535 Coverdale's Bible, the 1538 Coverdale's Duoglott New Testament, and 1582 Rheims had rendered it
"bishops" in this verse while the other pre-1611 English Bibles had "overseers."
Would the rendering "bishops" [plural] at Acts 20:28 for several "elders" [plural] of a church [singular] at one city (Acts 20:17) have
been a problem for the prelatic or Episcopal church government view that each bishop is over a diocese or district that may include several churches and that a
bishop has authority over elders or pastors? Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary gave as its second definition for bishop the following:
"in the churches maintaining apostolic succession, a prelate superior to the priesthood, consecrated for the spiritual government and direction of a
diocese, bishopric, or see" (p. 187). Would use of the rendering "bishops" at Acts 20:28 have conflicted with the hierarchical sense or
definition of the prelate or diocesan bishop? David Calderwood (1575-1650) maintained that "the prelate maketh a confusion of names that he may put
himself in the place of the apostle" (Pastor and the Prelate, p. 21). Calderwood noted that "the question is not
of the bishop, but of the prelate or diocesan bishop, whether he be the divine bishop" (p. 33). Calderwood observed that "the diocesan bishop is but
one, in a diocese, over many kirks [churches]" (p. 33). Calderwood asserted that "the diocesan bishop hath no particular congregation for his
flock" (p. 34). When quoting from Acts 20:28 in his book Perpetual Government of Christ's Church, Thomas Bilson, co-editor of the
1611 KJV, had quoted or rendered this word two times as "bishops" (pp. 211, 269) and once as "overseers" (p. 134).
