You have given me a new tool: the concept/term “high-context culture.”
The Church was definitely the “high-context culture” in which Scripture emerges; the intersitces (sp) in the written word were not blank. The Catholic Church today remembers what fleshed-out the interstices.
Rather, the Catholic Church WAS such a culture. From the pew’s-eye-view today, we need to do a lot of repetition and filling in blanks that were once part of the background.
This is an interesting idea that seems to have some merit. Let me run with it some and play.
So it then might be legitimately said that the Protestants in producing KJV in an old English colloquialism and font have changed the intersitces and committed fraud by not only embellishing the word of God through the Old English sans-serif but also abruptly changed and hijacked the traditions by recasting The Church to social mannerisms of a middle-age motif.
I think its fair to say that Protestants KJV looses something in the translation by projecting Jesus into an out of era vernacular and motif. It is not too extreme to say that KJV drapes the Good News in the tones, manner, social cloth and speaking airs more common to an English Lord and “Gentleman” than they are to a sandled Jew speaking Aramaic. I wonder how many impressionable 1500’s era children (and later) hearing a recitation of KJV imagined Jesus walking about in coat tails, top hat and leather boots knocking door to door and inviting sinners to tea?
And certainly the obtuse Old English fonts and lofty linguistic mannerisms in KJV present an unnecessary opportunity for new artifacts and error. After-all, the “thee’s” and “thou’s” and “thy’s” embellish not only the intersitces and other nuances but impose or encourage new private interpretations of traditions to be found hiding amidst the more flowery sans-serif. I wonder just how many years it will take modernist publishers to get to a revised KJV edition to produce a phrase like: ‘wouldst thou be favorably advised to partake of tea and crumpets in memory of me’ as a substitute for the last supper?
A dyed in the wool fundamentalist Sola Scruptura’st, should see that KJV taken alone without tradition easily defeats the traditionally conveyed white space seen and heard in the “ah’s”, "uhm’s, sighs, hand waving and other body language that are implicitly but conspicuously present (and therefor integral with the traditional faith) in the oral rendering of God’s word. At least the Catholics know to go to tradition to see and hear all that. But perhaps the impassioned hand waving with plain speech is an Italian thing?
Bottom Line: I think that the point about the quiet words hiding in the white space and the intersitces is a valid point. Without benefit of tradition how would anyone even be able to translate the bible into modern words and semantics? I believe that any published Bible has to some degree incorporated an assumption of tradition in its translation. Therefor there is no valid concept of Scripture without Tradition since they are so co-joined that they can not ever be fully seperated anymore so than blood can be seperated from the living body.
Perhaps the more honest question that we need to ask here is “just what ‘Scriptura’ are we talking about” when we discuss “Sola Scriptura”? We Catholics think KJV is 7 books shy of truth. And I don’t think it is legitimate to discuss Sola Scruptura without co-discussing the associated Protestant Tradition of Private interpretation.
That said I’ll use the KJV rendering of scripture to recall the warning about those who would change the bible. Does KJV condemn itself here or is this a matter of deference to the Protestant tradition of private interpretation and pretending there is none?
Biblical Warnings About Changing The Word of God:
Deut. 4:2, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”
Deut. 12:32, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.”
Prov. 30:6, " Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar."
Rev. 22:18-19, "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book."What was the literal warning John gave in Revelations to those who would add to God’s word?
James
