King James Bible: Difficulty to understand

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Alex_H said:
I have always struggled to understand older translations. As time goes on, languages change.

I remember, when I was searching for the right church, I attended a KJV-Only Baptist Church. It was an independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, very very conservative.

I told them that I had trouble understanding the KJV and they said that I might have a demon in me. So I stopped attending that church.
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They have trouble understanding it themselves. I once heard an IFB preacher hold forth on the text “Great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them,” applying it to say that a believer should not lose his temper when his car breaks down and he’s having trouble fixing it.

In fact, “offend” there means “cause to sin” in general, not specifically “make angry.”

Edwin
 
Pulvis said:
After doing some personal study on the issues between the Alexandrian sources and those used in the development of the KJV, i stayed away from the ESV.
The ESV is the newest revision of the RSV. There is a good bit of discussion on the web as to the High Critical method used for the RV( known here as ASV) which has carried through to the ESV, now with a 2nd edition.
The other issue i have, which is purely personal, is the team which worked on the ESV are mostly of the Calvinist/Reformed persuasion.
I decided to just stick with the KJV and the NKJV.
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There are those that love the KJV that demote the NKJV, and the converse. It seems that the issue there is that the NKJV has over a thousand changes from the KJV, however, comparing to the original languages, NKJV appears to be more accurate in word meaning. Also the original 1611 KJV is not what is commonly sold today. Similarly the commonly sold Douay-Rheims is not the original from 1582/1610 but a later revision called Challoner.
 
Vico said:
There are those that love the KJV that demote the NKJV, and the converse. It seems that the issue there is that the NKJV has over a thousand changes from the KJV, however, comparing to the original languages, NKJV appears to be more accurate in word meaning. Also the original 1611 KJV is not what is commonly sold today. Similarly the commonly sold Douay-Rheims is not the original from 1582/1610 but a later revision called Challoner.
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Correct! There are numerous AKJV only groups that reject most modern prints of the KJV. Some folks spend too much time staring at the tree and miss the forest. Such as:
av1611.org/kjv/knowkjv.html

As to the NKJV, there are some words and phrases that modifies/changed the interpretation of some passages. I use both for study, along with Blue Letter Bible app to get to the actual root text and the underlying Greek and Hebrew.
One thing I like about the NKJV is that when it was originally done, the translators chose to stay true to the KJV manuscripts used. They did give notes showing the different translations and how they differ. Very interesting what the Alexandrian manuscripts left out/modified/changed.
 
Contarini said:
They have trouble understanding it themselves. I once heard an IFB preacher hold forth on the text “Great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing shall offend them,” applying it to say that a believer should not lose his temper when his car breaks down and he’s having trouble fixing it.

In fact, “offend” there means “cause to sin” in general, not specifically “make angry.”

Edwin
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True Edwin. As a dispensationalist who believes in verbal plenary inspiration and the dispensational aspect of God’s dealing with His creation, much damage has been done in all Christian churches in regards to the misapplication of Scripture, especially to this age of Grace.
 
A lot of churches have changed to the New King James Version which is a little easier to understand. I read a lot of Shakespeare in high school and I would say Shakespeare is very hard to understand and I was an A student in English. The KJV was never my favorite to read. I had the NIV, the New living translation, and the Good News bible and I preferred having it in modern English because I just understood it better. But as its been said, language changes and so do translations
 
The KJV is outdated, hard to understand and a Protestant rip off of the real bible
 
It can be tough to understand, but so can many Rome-approved translations (Douay, etc.). I understand this isn’t a religious argument, as such … but not to know one’s KJV, backwards and forwards, is to be less than fully literate in English. That’s how essential the Authorized Version is to the sinews of our shared language. As with Shakespeare, the only solution is to get conversant in the KJV’s language, because the alternative is to be a sort of feral quasi-Anglophone, at best.
 
I’m a non-Protestant and don’t want to meddle in y’all’s business … but when Protestants insist on the King James bible it makes me think of RCs insisting on Latin for the mass.
 
The KJV was a great literal translation in its day, but that day was the 17th century! Many earlier and more accurate biblical manuscripts were discovered afterwards and most modern translations—including those produced by very conservative Christians—are based on them. The NKJV updates some of the 17th century language, and I like its literalness, but most of the time it relies on the same late and less accurate manuscripts that were available to the KJV translators in the 17th century.
Most biblical scholars consider the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) to be the all around best translation. Although there are a few other decent translations on the market these days, this one is fairly “literal” while maintaining a natural English style, and is the most accurate over all. “Literal” basically means translated “word for word” as much as possible. The guiding principle of a “literal” translation is “As literal as possible, as free as necessary.” The current and more correct scholarly terminology is “formal equivalency.” The other major philosophy of translating used to be known as “dynamic” but is now called “functional equivalency.” While every translation is an interpretation, “dynamic” or “functional equivalence” translations more freely paraphrase the Hebrew and Greek, proceeding “thought for thought” rather than “word for word,” often turning a few words in the source language into many in the target language. Sometimes this is necessary due to the unique idioms found in different languages, but it increases the risk that a translator will intentionally or unintentionally introduce his or her biases into the translation. In practice it has also reduced the range of possible meanings found in the original. More literal translations, technically known as “formal equivalence” translations, are preferred by most biblical scholars.
 
Pulvis said:
Michael you might be interested in how the “rip off” as you put it, came about.

greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/
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Didn’t read all of that because it looked very one sided. :mad:

Didn’t see anything about how protestants were also burning Catholic bibles throughout the ages.

Many of these bibles had errors in them. We see in modern times how correctly translated bibles in the wrong hands causes chaos and death. People in West Virginia drinking poison and handling snakes are a testament to this. Parents refusing med treatment for their kids as they stand in faith waiting for that TBN prayer to be answered. So just imagine how those error riddled bibles would have effected the people of that era. Like the “murderers bible” and what not:

didyouknow.org/printingerrors/

Let the children first be KILLED instead of filled (Mark 7:27)

Another bible had a error in it that said SIN ON MORE instead of sin no more. Many thousands of copies were released before they caught it.
 
Peter_J said:
I’m a non-Protestant and don’t want to meddle in y’all’s business … but when Protestants insist on the King James bible it makes me think of RCs insisting on Latin for the mass.
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KJV only have a solid reason for standing on that principle, though.

It’s not just words that are missing from other bibles, NIV, for example, has like 40 VERSES deleted.
 
I can’t find the exact quote, but Chesterton said that yes, the modern bible translators probably have a better knowledge of Hebrew and Greek than the translators of the KJV. But the KJV translators no doubt had a better knowledge of the ********English ********language.

It’s not “archaic” for a bible translation to have wording so memorable that hundreds of quotes have entered the permanent cultural memory of English speaking peoples. It’s not “modern relevant” for a bible translation to look and, especially, sound like it came out of a food processor.

With the KJV, one may find “difficulty to understand” but one also has the sense there is something important, worth the effort to understand, and remember. With the modern translations, the sense one gets is “why bother to understand”. How many modern translations have any wording worth quoting? Modern translations tend to take banality and the mundane, to new levels.
 
Lenten_ashes said:
Didn’t read all of that because it looked very one sided. :mad:

Didn’t see anything about how protestants were also burning Catholic bibles throughout the ages.

Many of these bibles had errors in them. We see in modern times how correctly translated bibles in the wrong hands causes chaos and death. People in West Virginia drinking poison and handling snakes are a testament to this. Parents refusing med treatment for their kids as they stand in faith waiting for that TBN prayer to be answered. So just imagine how those error riddled bibles would have effected the people of that era. Like the “murderers bible” and what not:

didyouknow.org/printingerrors/

Let the children first be KILLED instead of filled (Mark 7:27)

Another bible had a error in it that said SIN ON MORE instead of sin no more. Many thousands of copies were released before they caught it.
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The eighth paragraph from the end concerning the Apocrypha does not reflect badly on Catholics IMO. 🙂
 
jas84173 said:
The KJV was a great literal translation in its day, but that day was the 17th century! Many earlier and more accurate biblical manuscripts were discovered afterwards and most modern translations—including those produced by very conservative Christians—are based on them. The NKJV updates some of the 17th century language, and I like its literalness, but most of the time it relies on the same late and less accurate manuscripts that were available to the KJV translators in the 17th century.
Most biblical scholars consider the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) to be the all around best translation. Although there are a few other decent translations on the market these days, this one is fairly “literal” while maintaining a natural English style, and is the most accurate over all. “Literal” basically means translated “word for word” as much as possible. The guiding principle of a “literal” translation is “As literal as possible, as free as necessary.” The current and more correct scholarly terminology is “formal equivalency.” The other major philosophy of translating used to be known as “dynamic” but is now called “functional equivalency.” While every translation is an interpretation, “dynamic” or “functional equivalence” translations more freely paraphrase the Hebrew and Greek, proceeding “thought for thought” rather than “word for word,” often turning a few words in the source language into many in the target language. Sometimes this is necessary due to the unique idioms found in different languages, but it increases the risk that a translator will intentionally or unintentionally introduce his or her biases into the translation. In practice it has also reduced the range of possible meanings found in the original. More literal translations, technically known as “formal equivalence” translations, are preferred by most biblical scholars.
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Actually there is quite a bit of debate in Baptist circles concerning The KJV and the RSV. Based mainly on the source documents used for translation. My personal opinion, I stick with the KJV.
 
Peter_J said:
I’m a non-Protestant and don’t want to meddle in y’all’s business … but when Protestants insist on the King James bible it makes me think of RCs insisting on Latin for the mass.
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Just saying.
 
Peter_J said:
I’m a non-Protestant and don’t want to meddle in y’all’s business … but when Protestants insist on the King James bible it makes me think of RCs insisting on Latin for the mass.
Click to expand...
After my renewal experience, collecting Bibles was a kind of hobby for me before internet made things a whole lot easier. Though I kept a few copies of the KJBs in my collection, all hard covers, it is the one version that I did not open nor use because of the very reason - claim by Protestants that it is THE Bible. It was a pity really. I could have used some of the wisdom there, at least the English language itself.
 
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