Among my favorite King James Bible words is:
yea (adverb or noun), which means "yes," like a yes vote.
As Jesus said about the importance of clarity in life: “But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:37)
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Why God Is Still My Shepherd
The language of the KING JAMES BIBLE – so often described as “difficult” or “outdated” – once helped its readers to imagine and understand what we imagine and understand less of today. I’m talking about things like the soul, the afterlife, sin, spirits, and holiness. And it helped to frame ordinary ways that people once envisioned God: in the clouds, in a military victory, in the sunrise, as a baby lying in a cow’s feeding trough, or as a shepherd who cares for his sheep. These are lasting metaphors that often still make sense to me.
Many translators today insist that the old images and metaphors in the KJB should be discarded, or else, how are we to really understand what the text is trying to say? For example, translation theory today suggests that for a word such as the one for “shepherd,” ro’eh, as it is transliterated in Hebrew, we find an English equivalent that makes more sense in our culture and experience. If you have lived your life in the West and Global North, when was the last time that you actually saw a shepherd? Do you know what shepherds really do? Probably not. That’s the point, as one translator (Joel M. Hoffman, in his recent book, And God Said) suggests:
Our first warning sign that something has gone wrong in the translation is that a common, familiar word like ro’eh has been translated as a rare, unfamiliar one. While “ro’eh” was common in Hebrew, “shepherd” is uncommon in English. We know that this is always a mistake.
Really? I cannot understand something profound about God in Psalm 23 through the image of a shepherd? This particular translator—one of today’s best from Hebrew to English—goes on to suggest that English words such as Marine, fireman, lawyer, cowboy, lumberjack, and farmer would all be better than sticking with shepherd. The reasoning is that a shepherd is a protector or some sort of strong man, so I’m supposed to relate better to a cowboy or a lumberjack than a shepherd. Does that also mean that the baby Jesus should have been born in a portable crib instead of a manger? Let it never be so!
On the contrary, I believe that the very strangeness, slight foreignness, of the KJB—much more pronounced today than it was in the seventeenth century—is precisely what sometimes makes reading the Bible meaningful, beautiful, and memorable.
Many translators today insist that the old images and metaphors in the KJB should be discarded, or else, how are we to really understand what the text is trying to say? For example, translation theory today suggests that for a word such as the one for “shepherd,” ro’eh, as it is transliterated in Hebrew, we find an English equivalent that makes more sense in our culture and experience. If you have lived your life in the West and Global North, when was the last time that you actually saw a shepherd? Do you know what shepherds really do? Probably not. That’s the point, as one translator (Joel M. Hoffman, in his recent book, And God Said) suggests:
Our first warning sign that something has gone wrong in the translation is that a common, familiar word like ro’eh has been translated as a rare, unfamiliar one. While “ro’eh” was common in Hebrew, “shepherd” is uncommon in English. We know that this is always a mistake.
Really? I cannot understand something profound about God in Psalm 23 through the image of a shepherd? This particular translator—one of today’s best from Hebrew to English—goes on to suggest that English words such as Marine, fireman, lawyer, cowboy, lumberjack, and farmer would all be better than sticking with shepherd. The reasoning is that a shepherd is a protector or some sort of strong man, so I’m supposed to relate better to a cowboy or a lumberjack than a shepherd. Does that also mean that the baby Jesus should have been born in a portable crib instead of a manger? Let it never be so!
On the contrary, I believe that the very strangeness, slight foreignness, of the KJB—much more pronounced today than it was in the seventeenth century—is precisely what sometimes makes reading the Bible meaningful, beautiful, and memorable.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Creating a Mood
Modern translation theory does not allow for creating a mood. The translator is simply supposed to communicate in language most relevant to the new audience. Well, that is not all that the translators of the King James Bible, did, 400 years ago. They sought to also create a mood.
Other famous translations have done the same.
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton did so when he translated The Arabian Nights from Arabic into English in 1885. Rabindranath Tagore did, thirty years later, when he set out to translate his own work from its original Bengali into English. Tagore’s Gitanjali, which brought him a Nobel Prize in 1913, at times reads as if phrases were lifted directly from the KJV. “Here is thy footstool,” one verse begins. Another begins, “If thou speakest not …” and “Thou hast made me endless,” begins another. Neither Burton nor Tagore worked for what we might call a “modern” or “contemporary” idiom; instead, they deliberately retained what was older, and therefore alluring, about the original. Both of these became quick bestsellers in their first English translations precisely because they used language that was more, not less, florid and fantastic. They created a mood. Our newer translations today certainly communicate the text more clearly, but they don’t evoke as much of what it might feel like today to overhear Moses, David, Mary, Jesus, or Paul, speaking in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Koine Greek.
Another aspect of this mood in the KJV goes beyond idiom and language and enters into the arena of setting and scene. This is why great writers like Toni Morrison have fondly remembered the KJV being read in their family homes—precisely because the language, mood, and scenery were distinct from the world outside.
If you prefer to imagine Jesus talking with a crowd outside one of today’s shopping malls or with use of PowerPoint in a lecture hall, then the most contemporary English translations are your thing. But if you want to experience more of what it might have been like to be standing by the Sea of Galilee or in the Temple in Jerusalem, I believe that the older the English the better.
Other famous translations have done the same.
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton did so when he translated The Arabian Nights from Arabic into English in 1885. Rabindranath Tagore did, thirty years later, when he set out to translate his own work from its original Bengali into English. Tagore’s Gitanjali, which brought him a Nobel Prize in 1913, at times reads as if phrases were lifted directly from the KJV. “Here is thy footstool,” one verse begins. Another begins, “If thou speakest not …” and “Thou hast made me endless,” begins another. Neither Burton nor Tagore worked for what we might call a “modern” or “contemporary” idiom; instead, they deliberately retained what was older, and therefore alluring, about the original. Both of these became quick bestsellers in their first English translations precisely because they used language that was more, not less, florid and fantastic. They created a mood. Our newer translations today certainly communicate the text more clearly, but they don’t evoke as much of what it might feel like today to overhear Moses, David, Mary, Jesus, or Paul, speaking in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Koine Greek.
Another aspect of this mood in the KJV goes beyond idiom and language and enters into the arena of setting and scene. This is why great writers like Toni Morrison have fondly remembered the KJV being read in their family homes—precisely because the language, mood, and scenery were distinct from the world outside.
If you prefer to imagine Jesus talking with a crowd outside one of today’s shopping malls or with use of PowerPoint in a lecture hall, then the most contemporary English translations are your thing. But if you want to experience more of what it might have been like to be standing by the Sea of Galilee or in the Temple in Jerusalem, I believe that the older the English the better.
Friday, June 10, 2011
King James only Folks
Every translation since the KJV has attempted, in one way or another, to speak to modern readers. To some Christians, this smacks of giving in. My grandfathers would have pealed an amen! to the idea of standing fast on the KJV, but the average Christian today has little reason to consider the small differences between English Bible versions worth fighting for or sufficient to dictate doctrine.
In truth, not even the KJV translators themselves believed that the KJV was the single worthy translation of the Word of God. That's one of the misnomers of the KJV-only crowd. Nowhere do the translators claim that. Many of today’s most prominent evangelicals—men whom you might think would be traditionalist enough to advocate KJV-only, don’t. Important evangelicals of the recent past as diverse as Billy Graham, James Dobson, and Carl F. H. Henry haven’t taught that the KJV is the only true translation for at least a few decades.
In the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s first decade at Liberty University, other translations were endorsed. Even C. I. Scofield, a champion of the KJV (and my grandfathers’ preferred interpreter of the Scriptures), wrote in one of his thousands of footnotes to his once-popular Scofield Reference Bible:
"The writers of Scripture invariably affirm, where the subject is mentioned by them at all, that the words of their writings are divinely taught. This, of necessity, refers to the original documents, not to translations and versions; but the labours of competent scholars have brought our English versions to a degree of perfection so remarkable that we may confidently rest upon them as authoritative."
In truth, not even the KJV translators themselves believed that the KJV was the single worthy translation of the Word of God. That's one of the misnomers of the KJV-only crowd. Nowhere do the translators claim that. Many of today’s most prominent evangelicals—men whom you might think would be traditionalist enough to advocate KJV-only, don’t. Important evangelicals of the recent past as diverse as Billy Graham, James Dobson, and Carl F. H. Henry haven’t taught that the KJV is the only true translation for at least a few decades.
In the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s first decade at Liberty University, other translations were endorsed. Even C. I. Scofield, a champion of the KJV (and my grandfathers’ preferred interpreter of the Scriptures), wrote in one of his thousands of footnotes to his once-popular Scofield Reference Bible:
"The writers of Scripture invariably affirm, where the subject is mentioned by them at all, that the words of their writings are divinely taught. This, of necessity, refers to the original documents, not to translations and versions; but the labours of competent scholars have brought our English versions to a degree of perfection so remarkable that we may confidently rest upon them as authoritative."
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