Featured Bible Reading Comprehension Tests

Most of the English in the KJV came from the 1500's English Bible translations. There are a good number of differences between the English in the KJV and present-day English

The English in the KJV is Elizabethan English or Early Modern, which is not actually the same as present-day English. Modern English covers a period of too many years for Early Modern to be identical to present English. There have been many actual changes to English during 500 years.

 

There have not really been too many changes in the last 400 years to say that KJV is not modern because KJV is modern. And it is 400 years since England produced the KJV 400 years ago.

I think that the problem is that American English is a dialect. You point out that Americans would not know what a wood was and that is true because we have the poetical Robert Frost saying that he stopped by a woods on a snowy evening. American pronunciation also differs from English pronunciation, as you know, and this is another reason to say that American English is a dialect and does not represent the English of England.

 

I have posted that the reading level is not that high for the KJV. However, KJV is not the American dialect, which additionally does not observe English pronunciation, as you know. One cannot truthfully say that UK pronunciation is obsolete when it is the standard. I also disagree that KJV-ONLY is cultic. Finally, I am not KJVO and I think that KJV will fade out of American Christianity fairly soon, don't you?

 

12th grade may be above the American average. I don't think that it is that high or ever was because it is written in everyday English for everyday people. The problem probably is that the American dialect does not cope because it is a colonial dialect artificially developed after the American Revolution. Modern American culture developed in the late 19th century and American society has not produced much in the way of fine arts but has mastered existing achievement worldwide.

 

If the Elizabethan English used in the King James Version of the Bible is "modern English," why hasn't it been spoken by the English people in over 400 years?

 

That's illogical. The classification is based upon linguistic science.

 

Caution, don't fall for such ruses.

Because that most American of writers, Robert Frost, also said this:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by"

!

But Mr. "I never heard the word used that way" knows better, does he? LOL

 

Oh, it is about compulsion and control I suppose. Are you talking about Frost's ending his sentence with a preposition? That rule went from a matter of style to compulsion also. Someone said that such criticisms he could not up with put.

 

I learned a very long time ago that many of the most Christ kind people I knew barely could read the Bible. Their theology was messed up, but they loved Jesus and loved people.

Some of the meanest, most arrogant, most bitter, "christians" I knew were Bible scholars and had perfect Baptist theology.

When I was a kid, my pastor used to say "Its better to understand 10% of the Bible and live it than understand 95% of it and spend all your efforts trying to understand the other 5%."
I find that profoundly true. People become lovers of knowledge at the expense of being doers of the word

 

Gordon Campbell observed: “The language of the KJV is deemed to be British English, and so it is in its origins. English is now, however, a world language, and in many ways the pace in the development of the language is set in America” (Bible, pp. 272-273). Gordon Campbell even indicated that “there is no serious sense in which Britain has a prior claim” on the KJV over America (p. 273). Campbell suggested that “in many ways the English in America is closer to the language of the KJV than is British English” (p. 273).

In his article entitled “A Question of Preference in English Spelling“ that discussed some spelling differences, Edwin Bowen asserted: “In the case of most of these words, we submit that the American spelling is nearer the historical spelling, simpler and more logical than the British method” (Popular Science Monthly, May, 1904, p. 41). Bowen also claimed: “It is evident, then, that our [American] way of writing these words is quite as logical and as much warranted by the history of our tongue as the British spelling” (p. 42).

David Norton edited a new modern spelling edition of the KJV for Cambridge University Press in 2005 and with a few more changes in 2011, and he evidently found a good number of words in the KJV whose spelling needed updating to match present standard British spelling.

 

What arrogance! English is spoken all around the world so the English no longer set the example but the Americans. What garbage. American chauvinism should be in decline as is American economic and military power not to mention popular American culture.

 

As you seem to jump to a wrong conclusion, do you display your own possible arrogance?

Gordan Campbell is not an American. Campbell is a British author, a professor at the University of Leicester. His book: Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 was published by Oxford University Press in Great Britain.

 

My bad! I should have said what patronizing drivel.

 

My English 101 professor told us something our first day in class that I see as very true. "We dont speak English. We speak American. This class should be named American bastardized language 101."

 

America and England are two countries, separated by a common language.