The KJV Translators Superior Language Skills

[TCassidy]

Not to mention they lived and worked in the era of William Shakespeare.

 

[rsr]

There's that. But it's not clear to me that the translators owed much to the language of Shakespeare. The Bard's English was a boisterous cacophony of experimentation and double and triple entendres. The translators were more Tyndale and Rogers than Shakespeare, IMO. And if you read Helwys' A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity you will see the same plain, muscular English of Tyndale and Francis Bacon.

 

[Logos1560]

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When closely compared, the KJV has verses in it that the others don't.

That is a glaring problem, IMO.

Do you claim that it is a glaring problem that the 1539 Great Bible has verses in one of the Psalms that the KJV does not have?

Do you claim that it is a glaring problem that several of the pre-1611 English Bibles of which the KJV is a revision did not have verses which are found in the 1611 KJV?

Perhaps it is a glaring problem that you subjectively assume that one English translation is the standard for trying other English Bibles

 

[Logos1560]

Because the people of the English-speaking world accepted the KJV for quite awhile, and have used it to point to and say, " that is God's word."

The same could be said for the 1560 Geneva Bible.

The common people of the English-speaking world accepted the 1560 Geneva Bible as the word of God in English for over 50 years [several KJV-only authors acknowledge that it was accepted for around 100 years]. The makers of the KJV even acknowledged that the pre-1611 English Bibles such as the Geneva Bible were the word of God. It was the Geneva Bible that is usually quoted as the word of God in English in the preface to the 1611 KJV. Several of the KJV translators continued to preach from the Geneva Bible for years after 1611.

The makers of the KJV made many changes, including some significant ones and doctrinal ones, to the 1560 Geneva Bible, this previous accepted standard for the word of God in English. Renderings in the 1560 Geneva Bible that were understood to teach Presbyterian church government or congregational church government were changed in the 1611 KJV to be more favorable to the Church of England's episcopal church government views.

Would a consistent application of your stated reasoning suggest that the Church of England makers of the KJV were wrong to make significant changes to the pre-1611 word of God in English?

 

[Rippon]

Just as, before the KJV, they pointed to the Bishops' Bible, and before that the Great Bible and before that the Cranmer Bible, and before that the Geneva Bible and before that the Tyndale Bible and said the same thing.

You got some things mixed up in the above.

The so-called Cranmer Bible was best known as The Great Bible. There were not two separate translations.The Great Bible was first published in 1539 and prepared by Myles Coverdale.

The Geneva Bible was first published in 1560 --21 years after the Great Bible. The last edition of the Geneva Bible was made in 1644.

 

[Yeshua1]

Perhaps because their efforts were full time for the King and they didn't take time off to make a living.
Ok I get that.

I think it's time I bow out of these discussions about translations, and just let people be convinced that anything they use is going to be "good enough", even though the words differ...even in meaning.
Example:

Philippians 2:6.

" who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:" ( Philippians 2:6, AV )

" who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped," ( Philippians 2:6, ESV )


The difference is amazing, yet most people I talk to don't seem to have a problem with it.
I have a personal problem with "textual criticism", and I don't like the fact that there was a "snowball effect" after 1881 that's resulted in dozens of English translations that say things different ways.

May God bless you all.

NONE of them though in ways that affected any eseential doctrines though!

 

[Yeshua1]

Dave I am KJV Guy, but Ph 2 is not as bad as you claim. The ESV has the sense of he didn’t see equality with God to be grasped because you don’t need to grasp what you already have. You are reading it with the common English idiom if being unable to grasp something. The text in the ESV is saying he didn’t need to reach out and take equality with God. I do however believe the KJV translation is better. But I’m not sure technically the ESV is really that wrong. You are forcing one interpretation of the word grasped onto the text. The modern version have plenty of real problems, Ph 2:6 is not one of them.

The Esv, along wiht other modern versions, are all stating that Jesus did not see Himself as needing to stay as He was, and refusing to incarnate and become a Man!

 

[Yeshua1]

Same for Acts 8:36-38.

Gentlemen, these are questions with genuine concern...
I want to know why God's word is being messed with, and for what purpose.

Either tell me why the KJV translators made mistakes that are being corrected after 1881, and are taking next to forever to get it right, or tell me why I should believe that today's translators are interested in getting to the heart of the matter, and simply haven't arrived yet.

Other than riding on a money train, what motive is there for the dozens of English translations of the Bible that have surfaced within just my lifetime of 52 short years ( prior to my birth, one could almost count the number of English translations on one hand, now it's unbelievable )?

If it was scholarship, that bird should have come home to roost ages ago.
I know of engineers that have confessed that the internal combustion engine, that will never be any more efficient than 35%, was perfected within the past 50 years...yet modern scholars would have us believe that the Bible is in constant need of updating.

For what purpose?

The differences are due to which Greek text is being used as the translation basis, and again, one holding to the CT could say that the TR addedto the Original text itself. When those holding to TR say moder transaltionssubract from scriptures, are always assuming the TR got it always right!

 

[Yeshua1]

I can point to all of them, compare them with the KJV, and show you differences....are you telling me that God sponsored those differences?
I'm not talking about language usage...I'm talking about missing verses.

Again, there would be missing IF the TR got the txt right reagrding what the originals stated, but what the TR was wrong in places?

 

[Yeshua1]

Personally, I really would like to the King James Version put into modern English, I have not been satisfied with the attempts like the NKJV, the MEV, or the Modern KJV though.

My understanding was that the HCSB wasto have been translated from the Majority Greek text, but when the Editor died, it switched to CT. that would have been inteersting if stayed on MT!

 

[Yeshua1]

I am not entirely satisfied with any of those you mention either. My major concern with the NKJV is how they translated the present passive participle as a continuing action rather than a state of being. See 1 Cor 1:18, 1 Cor 15:2, and 2 Cor 2:15 for examples.

But I highly recommend both the WEB and the EMTV. The WEB is an update of the American Standard Version of 1901 using the Byzantine textform. The EMTV is a new translation of the Byzantine textform and is very, very good, in my not entirely humble opinion.

Either version able to be purchased, or still online only?

 

[Yeshua1]

Since we're entertaining not entirely humble opinions, let me venture that the KJV translators were better English stylists than translators.

The truth is that the very best Hebraist in England was excluded from the translation for the eminently reasonable objection that he couldn't play well with others. And while the KJV scholars (as good scholastics) knew Greek, they cut their teeth on Classical Greek, not Koine. They were indeed versed in Latin, but that may have induced them to look to the Vulgate, rather than the Greek, in translational choices.

None of this is to traduce the translators; it is simply to acknowledge that they were men of their time and education.

The translators, blessed with the work of Tyndale, paid special attention to how the text sounded because they knew that most of their flocks were illiterate. The cadence of the King James Bible influenced English for centuries; you can hear the cadence of the King James in Lincoln's speeches.

But that came at the cost of absolute adherence to the texts. In I Corinthians 15:55, the KJV translators write that "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" That's from the Geneva Bible, which is a (stylistic) improvement upon Tyndale's rendering and the Bishops Bible. The KJV translators had the good sense to write English, not Greek. If the 1881 translators were better with Greek than English, it is perhaps true that the KJV translators were better with English than Greek.

Would think that being expert in Koine Greek would be better than classical greek when it came to transaltion, and still have never red when the 1611 team thought that either their Bible was inpired, or was perfect.

 

[robycop3]

Read the physical characteristics of the "unicorn" in the bible and you will quickly see they do not match a mythical magic horse, but rather what they really were, the rhinoceros unicornis,(from the Greek: ρινό- ("rhino-" — nose) and -κερος ("-keros" — horn of an animal, and Latin: "uni-" meaning single and "-cornis" meaning horn) mentioned in the bible but not placed in the Taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus until 1758.

But the horse-like unicorn was depicted on KJ's coat-of-arms, & also on the coat-of-arms of Britain itself. While there's nothing I know of from the AV men explaining what they believe a unicorn was, I'm figuring they went by their king's coat-of-arms.

Quite-likely, most of those man had never seen a real lion either, but had no reason to doubt their existence.

I'm not faulting the AV men for believing in the nexistence of horse-like unicorns, satyrs, or cockatrices, as the had no intel otherwise, but I'm just reminding us that their knowledge was quite sparse compared to ours. The wisest of them would've been astounded by an everyday flashlight.

 

[Yeshua1]

But the horse-like unicorn was depicted on KJ's coat-of-arms, & also on the coat-of-arms of Britain itself. While there's nothing I know of from the AV men explaining what they believe a unicorn was, I'm figuring they went by their king's coat-of-arms.

Quite-likely, most of those man had never seen a real lion either, but had no reason to doubt their existence.

I'm not faulting the AV men for believing in the nexistence of horse-like unicorns, satyrs, or cockatrices, as the had no intel otherwise, but I'm just reminding us that their knowledge was quite sparse compared to ours. The wisest of them would've been astounded by an everyday flashlight.

They did the best with what they had to work with, but there have been real advancementsmade in the biblical languages and historical/cultural facts since 1611!

 

[Rippon]

Would think that being expert in Koine Greek would be better than classical greek when it came to transaltion, and still have never red when the 1611 team thought that either their Bible was inpired, or was perfect.

Never 'red' is right. Try spelling inspired correctly as well as translation.

 

[Jerome]

Oh, the irony!:

On the contrary, it's all there in balck and white. Do you wish to reverse your position...

 

[Rippon]

Oh, the irony!:

No irony. You have not quoted anything of mine from this thread.

 

[Yeshua1]

Never 'red' is right. Try spelling inspired correctly as well as translation.

Do you agree with what was said about the translation practice then?

 

[Logos1560]

The so-called Cranmer Bible was best known as The Great Bible. There were not two separate translations.The Great Bible was first published in 1539 and prepared by Myles Coverdale.

There were several editions of the Great Bible. As I understand it, there are some actual differences/revisions between the 1539 edition, the 1540 edition, the 1541 edition.

At least one edition of the Great Bible was printed with a preface by Archbishop Cranmer, and that edition is sometimes called the Cranmer Bible.

 

[HankD]

Of all peoples of the earth, English speakers have been overly and richly blest with an abundance of English Bibles.

Of any given passage of Scripture I can align over 20 English renderings on my screen (even more if I so chose).

To whom much is given... ?

Ya, ya ya I'm a white supremacist, white privileged, white Anglo Israeli, white whatever blah, blah ad naseum ...
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa... oh wait thats Latin!