If the King James is not a good translation does this mean for 100's or years people believed wrong?

Well...the KJV is "not a good translation" when comparing to modern, scholarly translations.

In it's day (1600s) it was (in my opinion) a very respectable translation, definitely out-doing the other translations of its time in most (not all) ways. It was *the* scholarly English translation from the original languages (important characteristic) for nearly 300 years.

So: during those 300 years, I guess you can accurately claim that English-speaking Protestant Christians believed **some** wrong things about God and Biblical history, those beliefs based on translation errors found in the King James Version, or source text errors that were included in the King James Version.

Then we have the creation of the "critical text" in the late 1800s and the corresponding production of a new, indisputably superior translation (from the viewpoint of scholarship), also the first English Bible translation to be authorized by the Church of England in almost 300 years, the Revised Version of 1895 and its companion the American Standard Version of 1901.

Then the many following English translations that were similarly

a - based on critical source texts

b - the work of accredited Biblical language scholars, usually entire teams of scholars

At that point a new "wrong" belief sprung up: King James Onlyism. Many sects had doctrines that (for nearly 300 years) had depended on the wording of the King James Version in particular. Any alternate wording - even if it was a more accurate translation - was a threat to at least some of those doctrines (and that continues to be the case).

My thanks for re-asking the question!

I've never heard of someone disputing the authenticity of the King James Bible. To my knowledge, it's the most accurate translation there is.

No, I think we just need to read more of the bible and do more research. Religious archaeologists and anthropologists might help.