The King James Bible and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom

For the last two decades, my church home has been mostly Episcopalian. Episcopalians aren’t really supposed to read the King James Version anymore. It’s almost embarrassing to tell someone that you do. It can feel like admitting that your favorite television show is still Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
But I grew up with King James language—I breathed it like air. I memorized long passages that remain with me. As a kid, I rarely said anything worth repeating, but when I did, my mother would remark to my father, “Out of the mouth of babes!” (Psalm 8:2). Today, I can no more unhinge some of these phrases and verses from my psyche than I can go back in time and undo the mistakes that I made in high school.
I still love the cadence and language of the KJV, though I cannot agree that the newer translations are deficient or unfaithful to the original text. In fact, I know the exact opposite is usually true. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) seems to be the preferred translation of today’s academics because of its contemporary scholarship, use of the most recent manuscripts—including those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls—removal of archaisms, attention to the differences between genres (typesetting poetry as poetry, presenting the Song of Songs as drama, and so on), and the use of appropriate gender-inclusive language. But of course there are many others. For example, I know that the New International Version (NIV) and Today’s New International Version (TNIV) are preferred by many pastors, and quite a few poets and writers are partial to the Revised English Bible (REB).
But the KJV is the only one that is a building block of our collective cultural heritage. It is like the characters in Dickens or the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (both fans). Where would we be without phrases like these: “the fat of the land” (Genesis 45:18), “eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19), “the apple of his eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10), and bunches more?

King James Bible Trust

If you haven't already seen this, the Brits have really done it right. The UK government established The King James Bible Trust in order to coordinate celebrations for the 400th anniversary across the country, through the media, in every way possible.

Their website is here, and includes a calendar of events (visit London this year!), as well as terrific video segments.

Ye, thee, and thou -- also good stuff!

Following up on my last post about how the less-familiar adverbs and pronouns of the KJV are actually good for you…let me add that from its very beginnings 400 years ago, the KJV was meant to be somewhat old-fashioned and classic. Its language and syntax were not always grounded in the spoken language of the day, and were instead a bit more literary. We see this in the way that the translators usually steered away from “you” for the 2nd person pronoun, using “ye” instead for the plural, and “thee” and “thou” in the singular. These had become fairly uncommon as pronouns by 1600; so “ye,” “thee,” and “thou” carried a bit of literary flair and lent more music to the KJV than was present in the earliest English vernacular Bibles. For these reasons, some scholars have called the KJV “a deliberate piece of social and linguistic engineering.” (The Bible: Authorized King James Version, Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008; xxviii.)

But those Jacobean adverbs and pronouns get in the way!

I want to convince you to try the King James Bible for the very reason that you may have avoided it in the past: those obscure, ancient words and phrases that get in the way of understanding. Behold … forasmuch … thence. I believe that, if you read slowly, those very words and phrases, as you pause over them and consider their meanings more deliberately than you do when reading other things, like a novel, will give you a whole new perspective on what it means to read “scripture.”
In contrast to the KJV, contemporary English translations – as they try so hard to make the Word of God accessible, can also make it seem ordinary. In their attempt to be faithful to the Hebrew and Greek originals, the translators of the KJV sometimes even chose language that was a bit old by the standards of their day. They didn’t always aim for what we might call “contemporary English.” Accessibility wasn’t their only intention. To reach people who feel that what the Bible has to say is already alien to their experience, most Bible publishers today often use language that’s made to read like a popular novel. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that these strategies have worked to find more readers, however. (One notable exception was the first publication of the complete Living Bible, paraphrased by Kenneth N. Taylor, who was at that time the director of Moody Press in Chicago. It was first published in 1971 and amazingly became the bestselling book – not just Bible or religious book – in the United States in both 1972 and 1973.) Does the average adult know the Bible better today, for instance, with our dozens of contemporary English translations, than a similar adult may have, say, 150 years ago? No way.

Free audio clip of Verily, Verily

Zondervan now has a free audio clip from my forthcoming book on the KJV's 400th anniversary: VERILY, VERILY. Pretty sure the voice is a computer, but it still seems to work!

Matthew's Gospel is great on blindness

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Mt. 23:24

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Mt. 15:14