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Regarding Asaph (אָ֫סָ֥ף), why do certain online KJV texts remove his name from Psalms 73-83, such as Bible Gateway's?

If we only read the KJV, the Tehillim (Psalms) may appear to be written by King David. However if we read the Tanakh, we find authorship of Tehillim (Psalms) 73-83 is ascribed to Asaph of 1 Chronicles 16:37. We find in Asaph's name in the Hebrew Psalms but not in the English Psalms of KJV Bible.

Tehillim 73:1 [MT]: A song of Asaph. Truly God is good to Israel, to the pure of heart. (מִזְמ֗וֹר לְאָ֫סָ֥ף אַ֚ךְ ט֖וֹב לְיִשְׂרָאֵ֥ל אֱלֹהִ֗ים לְבָרֵ֥י לֵבָֽב )

Psalm 73:1 [KJV]: Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. (Bible Gateway)

Is this a textual choice they made for some editions of the KJV, or are there manuscripts that do not include the titles?

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    Certain (online or electronic) editions of the Bible (not just of the traditional King James Version) make it their mission in life to remove all chapter and paragraph titles, as well as epistle endings, since these are usually not in the original manuscripts, the obvious exception being the psalms. Indiscriminate removal then leads to situations such as the one presented in this post. In print, this is, in my experience, significantly less common; unless, of course, one were to actually print such censored copies of scripture.
    – Lucian
    Aug 20, 2020 at 11:58
  • Thanks, Lucian! Why would "Bible Gateway" omit words from verses even if they serve as paragraph titles? Is there any source to explain such omissions? - Your feedback has really helped to update this question now specifically related to online versions of KJV.
    – חִידָה
    Aug 20, 2020 at 12:26
  • @Dottard - The question has been updated to reflect digital versions of KJV Bible instead of the 1611 printed KJV to help clarify the point.
    – חִידָה
    Aug 20, 2020 at 12:43
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    BibleGateWay idenifies the KJV they use as "the 1987 printing".
    – enegue
    Aug 20, 2020 at 12:51
  • I edited your question to make it clearer and to remove unnecessary asides about Asaph in other parts of the Bible. Please don't roll it back.
    – curiousdannii ♦
    Aug 20, 2020 at 23:47

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There may be confusion as to what forms part of the text or not. This arises because the superscriptions in the King James are just part of the regular text in the Hebrew Bible, though they are presumably not part of the verse (as in poetry). These are sometimes part of verse 1 in the MT which becomes a superscription in the King James and are sometimes a whole extra verse and the MT has one added to the number of each verse.

But for what reason it was omitted from the biblegateway text that appears to come from the Project Gutenberg text, I don’t know. Texts I use suffer the same fault due to my laziness and incompleteness of processing the text.

You might have more success with the AKJV text on biblegateway but this looks like it may have different restrictions.

The text I would tentatively recommend for accuracy is the Pure Bible Search text.

The numerical signatures in the Authorised King James Version, suggest there should be 789,629 words plus 1034 in superscriptions making a total of 790,663 words.

Interestingly, the numbers 789 and 629 turn up in in shCherbak’s patterns in his paper:

shCherbak, Vladimir I. "Arithmetic inside the universal genetic code." BioSystems 70.3 (2003): 187-209.

which is more plainly exposed in: http://www.whatabeginning.com/Misc/Genetics/Genetics_VS.htm

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