Why is the King James version of the Bible the most known

[liturgyluver]

liturgyluver,

Yes, the KJB did have quite an impact.

Peace,
Anna

Although the language is archaic I sometimes find that KJV translation makes readings from mass that are not always clear more comprehensible. Some of the newer versions have very long sentences and poor punctuation.

 

[Anna_Scott]

. . .I tend not to be concerned with persecution, but it is sad when it comes from other Christians.

Calgar,

I don’t understand this statement. Would you clarify?

Thanks,
Anna

 

[Calgar]

Calgar,

I don’t understand this statement. Would you clarify?

Thanks,
Anna

Saying the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church are straight out of the pits of Hell seems pretty rough to me.

Also, swissguy and texasroofer mentioned anticatholic sentiment as well as a few others.

many of the King James only Protestants preach the evils of Anglicanism. One website actually says the Anglican Church is straight out of the pits of hell (they say the same about Catholics); but they use the King James Bible authorized by King James, Monarch and head of the Church of England.

 

[Anna_Scott]

Saying the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church are straight out of the pits of Hell seems pretty rough to me.

Also, swissguy and texasroofer mentioned anticatholic sentiment as well as a few others.

Calgar,

I didn’t understand why you said, “I tend not to be concerned with persecution. . . .”

Anna

 

[gcnuss]

So much of our “sacred language” in English is based on the KJV…and it’s language is beautiful…especially when read by a talented orator…I rarely use the KJV any longer…I have my mom’s Bible and the family Bible…only when I take a trip down “memory lane” do I read the KJV.

I agree. Although I don’t use the KJV very often, there are certain passages that appeal to my sense of the poetic – Psalm 23, for instance. And, when reading the account of the Nativity in Luke, the reaction of the shepherds to the appearance of the angel is so much more descriptive when one reads “and they were sore afraid” rather than "they were terrified.
Then, too, I try to listen each year to the Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s College where the reading of the KJV text is sheer beauty to the ear even as one contemplates the birth of our Lord.

 

[Calgar]

Calgar,

I didn’t understand why you said, “I tend not to be concerned with persecution. . . .”

Anna

Personally. I deal with it in one form or another daily. What are you getting at?

 

[Anna_Scott]

Personally. I deal with it in one form or another daily. What are you getting at?

Calgar,
I think we are misunderstanding each other. I thought you meant you weren’t concerned about the persecution of others.

Anna

 

[Publisher]

I agree. Although I don’t use the KJV very often, there are certain passages that appeal to my sense of the poetic – Psalm 23, for instance. **And, when reading the account of the Nativity in Luke, the reaction of the shepherds to the appearance of the angel is so much more descriptive when one reads “and they were sore afraid” **rather than "they were terrified.
Then, too, I try to listen each year to the Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s College where the reading of the KJV text is sheer beauty to the ear even as one contemplates the birth of our Lord.

I love Linus’ scene in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”…when he recites the KJV nativity story.

 

[batman1973]

Is there an official bible for the Catholic Church? I saw an article on CA and they said to use a version that we’re comfotable with. I have several different translations, and I am preferental to the KJV, though yesterday I did recieve my first Douay-Rheims

 

[Filii_Dei]

Is there an official bible for the Catholic Church? I saw an article on CA and they said to use a version that we’re comfotable with. I have several different translations, and I am preferental to the KJV, though yesterday I did recieve my first Douay-Rheims

There are several approved Bibles for lectionary and personal use, but the only ‘official Bible’ of the Catholic Church is the Latin Vulgate. I’m sure you won’t be reading that.

Usually, people tend to pick whatever Bible edition is used by their particular diocese/episcopal conference for lectionary use, out of sheer convenience of being able to directly correlate what they hear at mass to what they read at home. Some others prefer to choose the editions they think are more correct or more suited for them. However, the very a Catholic should do is ensure that that the Bible is a ‘Catholic edition’ (meaning it contains the deuterocanonicals in canonical order), and it has an imprimatur from a bishop in good standing with the Church.

Beyond that, I would be venturing into the hazardous territory of which Bible edition is better. It’s a minefield, that topic.

 

[1AugustSon7]

Maybe this is just because I live in England (a Protestant country where the KJV was published) but I get the impression that some people think that the KJV is the only version (I had a relative who thought this)

It had the benefit of State approbation. Hence the “King Jame’s Version”.

A lot of anti-Catholic propaganda also has its origin, and persists to this day, because of the English state’s effective approbation of that propaganda, which was especially encouraged in Elizabeth’s time, whom James succeeded. The KJV is, in fact, loaded with Protestant-friendly translations. It also made use of the novel tradition, of Lutheran origin, of basing the Old Testament scriptures on the later Masoretic texts, which included the addition of what were essentially vowel markers to the original Hebrew. The original manuscripts had no such markers as they weren’t yet invented. They were applied to the Hebrew texts in about the 10th or 11th A.D century by Jewish rabbinacal scholars. They are likely the reason so much of the Old Testament appears to differ at times so wildly between Protestant and Catholic bibles and the Septuagint version.

 

[Anna_Scott]

It had the benefit of State approbation. Hence the “King Jame’s Version”.

A lot of anti-Catholic propaganda also has its origin, and persists to this day, because of the English state’s effective approbation of that propaganda, which was especially encouraged in Elizabeth’s time, whom James succeeded. The KJV is, in fact, loaded with Protestant-friendly translations. It also made use of the novel tradition, of Lutheran origin, of basing the Old Testament scriptures on the later Masoretic texts, which included the addition of what were essentially vowel markers to the original Hebrew. The original manuscripts had no such markers as they weren’t yet invented. They were applied to the Hebrew texts in about the 10th or 11th A.D century by Jewish rabbinacal scholars. They are likely the reason so much of the Old Testament appears to differ at times so wildly between Protestant and Catholic bibles and the Septuagint version.

Differences between Catholic Bibles and non-Catholic Bibles are not always so different. Some translations are pretty much identical, such as the RSV and the Catholic Ignatius Bible.

Peace,
Anna

 

[Anna_Scott]

There are several approved Bibles for lectionary and personal use, but the only ‘official Bible’ of the Catholic Church is the Latin Vulgate. I’m sure you won’t be reading that. . . .

Do you know why the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use an English translation of the Vulgate in the CCC? I never have really gotten an answer to this question. Maybe you can shed some light on this.

Thanks,
Anna

 

[Anna_Scott]

Personally. I deal with it in one form or another daily. What are you getting at?

Did you mean you are not concerned with persecution involving yourself or others? I never did really understand what you meant.

Anna

 

[batman1973]

There are several approved Bibles for lectionary and personal use, but the only ‘official Bible’ of the Catholic Church is the Latin Vulgate. I’m sure you won’t be reading that.

Usually, people tend to pick whatever Bible edition is used by their particular diocese/episcopal conference for lectionary use, out of sheer convenience of being able to directly correlate what they hear at mass to what they read at home. Some others prefer to choose the editions they think are more correct or more suited for them. However, the very a Catholic should do is ensure that that the Bible is a ‘Catholic edition’ (meaning it contains the deuterocanonicals in canonical order), and it has an imprimatur from a bishop in good standing with the Church.

Beyond that, I would be venturing into the hazardous territory of which Bible edition is better. It’s a minefield, that topic.

Thank you for your response. Can you buy the Latin Vulgate? I could always get Rosetta Stone and learn Latin

 

[Indiana_Jones]

Did you mean you are not concerned with persecution involving yourself or others? I never did really understand what you meant.

Anna

Anti-Catholic sentiment in the South was the issue which prompted this statement (and it’s still a very real thing …please pray about this, friends). I think he just meant that he, personally, when facing persecution of that nature, doesn’t let it bring him down.

 

[Indiana_Jones]

Thank you for your response. Can you buy the Latin Vulgate? I could always get Rosetta Stone and learn Latin

You definitely can. Some editions are rather expensive, although the Vulgate text can be found for free on the web.

 

[Rucas777]

Maybe this is just because I live in England (a Protestant country where the KJV was published) but I get the impression that some people think that the KJV is the only version (I had a relative who thought this)

KJV is the first English Bible version which was translate complete Bible. Before that first English Bible some of book was translated simple example of it,

Although John Wycliff is often credited with the first translation of the Bible into English, there were, in fact, many translations of large parts of the Bible centuries before Wycliff’s work. Toward the end of the 7th century, the Venerable Bede began a translation of scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Aldhelm (c. 639–709) translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English.

In the 10th century an Old English translation of the Gospels was made in the Lindisfarne Gospels: a word-for-word gloss inserted between the lines of the Latin text by Aldred, Provost of Chester-le-Street. This is the oldest extant translation of the Gospels into the English language.

The Wessex Gospels (also known as the West-Saxon Gospels) are a full translation of the four gospels into a West Saxon dialect of Old English. Produced in approximately 990, they are the first translation of all four gospels into English without the Latin text.

In the 11th century, Abbot Ælfric translated much of the Old Testament into Old English. The Old English Hexateuch is an illuminated manuscript of the first six books of the Old Testament. The Old English Heptateuch is a version without lavish illustrations but including a translation of the Book of Judges.

The English Bible was first translated from the Latin Vulgate into Old English by a few select monks and scholars. Such translations were generally in the form of prose or as interlinear glosses (literal translations above the Latin words).

Very few complete translations existed during that time. Rather, most of the books of the Bible existed separately and were read as individual texts. Thus, the sense of the Bible as history that often exists today did not exist at that time. Instead, a more allegorical rendering of the Bible was more common and translations of the Bible often included the writer’s own commentary on passages in addition to the literal translation.

 

[Nine_Two]

KJV is the first English Bible version which was translate complete Bible. Before that first English Bible some of book was translated simple example of it,

Both the Bishops Bible and the Geneva Bible predate the KJV as complete translations of the bible into English.

 

[Filii_Dei]

Do you know why the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use an English translation of the Vulgate in the CCC? I never have really gotten an answer to this question. Maybe you can shed some light on this.

Thanks,
Anna

Hi Anna,

An English translation of the Vulgate does exist. It’s called the Douay-Rheims Bible. However, the English translation of the Catechism references the RSV-CE. I agree with you that it is indeed a very curious situation, but it may not be that difficult to understand. I can’t speak for the Holy See, but I can speculate on their reasons for this.

The first and most compelling reason I can think of is this:

• Successive translations between languages are prone to altering the original meanings and intentions of the words. In principle, using a secondary translation (English translation of a Latin translation of the source texts) may be prone to introducing more errors than a primary translation (English translation from the source texts), and could obscure the authentic meaning of the source text.

However, there may be other reasons:

1. • There is no English translation of the modern Vulgate available. The DRB is an English translation of the 1592 Clementine Vulgate, whereas the Holy See now uses the 1979 Nova Vulgata. It may be argued that the Clementine Vulgate and the DRB did not benefit from modern critical biblical scholarship like the Nova Vulgata, and would be suboptimal for use. Instead, a new translation would be needed, which brings us to our next point.
   • It would be a hassle to commission a new translation of the 1979 Nova Vulgata into a new Douay-Rheims. It requires committing resources and translators. However, the Holy See’s official language is Latin, not English. As such, it is not particularly compelled to translate the Vulgate into English, as other communities of other languages (French, Spanish) may demand that they be given similar attention. Furthermore, no other organisation has made a high-quality English translation of the Nova Vulgata which it can use. All this is made especially stark in light of the next point.
   • In the past many years, many well-researched Bibles have been published and made available on the market. These have benefited from advances in biblical scholarship and the rediscovery of old texts, and it would be a waste not to use them.
   Of course, not everybody agrees with the arguments put forward here. There are some who believe that St Jerome’s 4th-century translation of biblical texts to produce the Latin Vulgate is in itself divinely inspired, and it should be used as the base for any revision or translation, not the Dead Sea Scrolls or any number of old Hebrew or Greek manuscripts. This is would be the Catholic counterpart to the Kings James Only movement, sometimes (pejoratively) called Vulgate Onlyism or Douay-Rheims Onlyism. It would everything I have said thus far moot, but I am not aware of the prevalence of this view within the Holy See.
   
   I hope this helps.