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.