Featured How many Looking toward the Legacy Nasb version?

I have never claimed that KJV I use is the 1611 KJV. I know that it is not.

The NLT keeps changing, even beyond the announced changes. If a Sunday School teacher prepares lessons with it, the lessons will only match the printing that s/he used and s/he will have no idea which other printings match or not. The Living Bible, maybe because it is a paraphrase by one author, is taken as seriously as an "unabridged" copy of Huckleberry Finn.

When we make less effort to standardize the Bible than we do the novel Huckleberry Finn, something is wrong, very wrong.

Other than the KJV and Living Bible, having a worn well-used Bible is an "outdated" one????

I like how Dave G discussed the word "standard".

 

I think so. That is why I think of it as something my grandpa left behind as a commentary to help me through the tough parts.

 

Plimoth Plantation had the Geneva Bible on the bookshelves of the little cottages in their living museum. Also Greek and Latin translations in a couple cottages. And a Psalter: I cannot remember which version.

The museum was a reenactment of 1627, and the people had been in some other country (I forget which one) before crossing the ocean in 1620.

When I asked the reenactors about the Bible version, they told me that they were not rejecting the KJV, but just did not have access to it, or the funds to replace the Bibles that they already had and were familiar with. The KJV was new, very new to them.

 

I went there when I was a kid in the early 80's.

Saw the MayFlower II at the age of 15 and what's left of Plymouth Rock in a deep pit...
It's only about 30 miles from where I was born at South Weymouth.

They used Henry Ainsworth's Psalter:
Faith of the Pilgrims | Plimoth Plantation

Leiden, in the Netherlands.

When Mayflower sailed, it was the late summer of 1620...and the AV had only been in print for about 9 years.
It took a while for people to make the switch, especially because they couldn't afford to buy books from their meager earnings.

We Americans and other "Westerners" are surrounded by books now...
But most people on the Continent and elsewhere back then were very poor and went into debt for years, even indentured servitude...especially to pay off things like ocean voyages and re-settlement.

Bibles were very precious commodities to believers from that time period.

 

Sure it was, Dave.

Here in America it was the standard from roughly 1680 to perhaps 1990, depending on which denomination(s) one was part of or visited.
From about 1700 until about 1900 it was pretty much all that any of the denominations used,
both in England and in other English-speaking areas like here in America;

Unless you were a Catholic...
they didn't use "that Protestant Bible".

When I was a child and into my teens in the 1970's and early 1980's, most Baptist churches I knew of still used it,
and I cannot remember one where I went that didn't use it.

 

Strong's, Matthew Henry, the original Halley's handbook, Smith's Dictionary: almost every reference book used the KJV, didn't they?

 

Software that links all these KJV based reference books to the KJV words use less sophisticated search features that make fewer mistakes and take less power to run. They cost less to create and maintain and work on older computers that cost less.

We are commanded to memorize scripture. How do we best do that?

 

Are these still available in hardcopy? Are they issuing new hardcopy volumes for each change in the translations?

I have seen new ebook versions that are quite pricey and must be repeatedly repurchased as editions become incompatible with the software that reads them as they are declared "outdated" and become unavailable to purchase. With the same software, the publishers must update the KJV Strong's tagged ebooks for free, because the content has not changed, just the technology. Not so for translations that changed: they can abandon them after a period of time.

I have never seen a definition of "standard" that includes a clause about "never changing". There are different words for that.

 

I think we have established that, and we are all in agreement. But there are decades and centuries between the changes; things settle down and result in MORE standardization that with other translations.

At the very least, standardization reduces the cost of resource books, inside and outside the church. We are expected to be stewards of the resources provided to us. I am not trying to be "right". I am just trying to be a faithful servant with what was entrusted into my care.

 

@kathleenmariekg :
See what I mean, Kathleen?

I'm not trying to pick on him ( and I happen to agree with him, in principle, with what he stated here ), but I think that Dave's post above illustrates a bit of the problem that I'm trying to highlight...
As I see it, there seem to be a great many Christians who think that a group of translations is OK, even though they don't all read the same way;
They also cannot seem to agree on a standard that we as believers should use.

What I believe is even worse is, I'm not aware of any other book that has been hacked, revised, updated, and purposefully re-translated so badly, as God's word has...
Especially in the past 70 years or so.
It's also as if hardly anyone is really paying much attention, but have just come to accept the situation.

While I respect Dave's ( and many others' ) opinion on varying subjects, we definitely see things differently on the textual side.
To me, there should be one translation in each language, updated minimally every so often ( perhaps every 200 years or so ) to account for major changes in a language...
Instead of many translations developed from several textual bases and all competing for "market share".


The Bible is God's word to His people...
Not another book written by men, to men.

 

The number of translations and updates to translations (with and without transparency) is growing exponentially. People that did transition to newer versions are reverting back to the KJV; I have not seen anyone convert from the KJV to a newer translation in a very long time.

Even in secular books, the "unabridged" version is the one that survives, not all the retellings made for children.

When situations reach a certain level of mess, they implode upon themselves.