The KJV translators did not condemn the study of Hebrew and Greek. The KJV translators maintained that the original language texts were the standard for the making and evaluating of translations.

According to its title page and its preface, the KJV professes to be translated from the original languages. According to its title page for the New Testament, the 1611 KJV's New Testament was "newly translated out of the original Greek." The first rule for the translating referred to “the truth of the original.“ The sixth rule and fifteen rule referred to “Hebrew” and to “Greek.“ Lancelot Andrewes, a KJV translator, wrote: "Look to the original, as, for the New Testament, the Greek text; for the Old, the Hebrew" (Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 59). Gustavus Paine pointed out that another KJV translator John Rainolds "urged study of the word of God in the Hebrew and Greek, 'not out of the books of translation'" (Men Behind the KJV, p. 84). In a sermon on Roman 1:16, Miles Smith referred to “the fountain of the prophets and apostles, which are the only authentic pen-men, and registers of the Holy Ghost” (Sermons, p. 75). In the preface to the 1611 KJV entitled "The Translators to the Reader," Miles Smith presented the view of the KJV translators as follows: "If truth be to be tried by these tongues [Hebrew and Greek], then whence should a translation be made, but out of them? These tongues therefore, we should say the Scriptures, in those tongues, we set before us to translate, being the tongues in which God was pleased to speak to his church by his prophets and apostles." In this preface, Smith wrote: “If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New.“ Earlier on the third page of this preface, Smith referred to “the original” as “being from heaven.“ D. A. Waite acknowledged that the preface of the 1611 "had the approval" of all the KJV translators (Defending the KJB, p. 64). William Savage asserted that “the preface was written and affixed by the king’s command” (Dictionary, p. 39). Laurence Vance indicated that Smith wrote the preface “in the name of all the translators” (King James, His Bible, p. 52). Vance cited the report of the British delegates (including KJV translator Samuel Ward) to the 1618 Synod of Dort that included a reference to “the truth of the original text” (p. 47). John Eadie noted that the account of the Hampton Court conference written by Patrick Galloway, the king’s Scottish chaplain, [“an account revised by the king himself”] stated “that a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek” (English Bible, II, p. 179).