"Did you know," a bright-eyed young woman breathlessly exclaimed to me, "that when King James wrote the Bible, he didn't actually put everything in?!" I was riding the D.C. metro a few weeks ago when she sat down beside me with this information. Since people don't normally talk on the train (unless it's a first date or someone you work with), I might have suspected that the conversation would take an odd turn. King James did not, of course, write the Bible. He didn't even write the version that got his name. My commuting companion was right, in a way, though: the King James Version didn't happen out of the blue and from scratch but depended on other versions and the input of a lot of people.
This is a big year for the King James Version (KJV, for short). Blow out the candles before the house goes up in smoke, the KJV is 400 years old. Ironically, especially in light of the young woman's misunderstanding, the story of the translation's development is not so very different from the Bible's earliest beginnings: it evolved over time (though a much shorter period); a lot of people were involved; and those people had a variety of texts "to hand," some of which they included, others they rejected and all of which required repackaging.
But who cares about the old KJV, except for a few Bible nerds such as ? Well, for one thing (venture capitalists, take note) the business of translating the Bible into English really got humming with the KJV. Now a multimillion dollar industry, people are snapping up any number of versions from the eco-minded Green Bible (for the college bound vegetarian daughter), the graphic novel Manga Bible (for her comic book crazy brother), The Teen Study Bible (from well-meaning god-parents lost in the world of Xbox, Lady Gaga and Wii), variations on the ever-beloved Children's Bible, and the Good News Bible (for the baby boomer sibling's shelf of hippie nostalgia). For the buyer, inclined toward the most popular modern English translation, a dilemma: go with the new, gender-inclusive NIV or stick with the man-means-everybody-dammit version. The Bible is a perennial best-seller and not in the Hebrew and Greek of its origins.
Second, the King James Version shows up at least as often as any other in pop culture references to the Bible, despite its thees and thous and sometimes impenetrably antique vocabulary and syntax ("peradventure," anyone?). From its beginning, the KJV has been the gold standard of Bible-sounding language. Why? Not only is it lyrical with a cadence beautiful to our ears, but its very strangeness makes it sound the most Bible-y of all translations, and that has been a self-perpetuating condition. Some of its turns of phrase and word choices were out of date even in its own time. The original translators themselves chose archaic language, intending a version that evoked the endurance and wisdom of age and that transcended the vulgar and ordinary to sound dignified, yea, even divine.
Third, its development makes a mighty fine story. It began in 1604, when King James I convened a conference for theological debate whose agenda did not include what would become its most famous item -- an authorized version of the Bible endorsed by the king himself. Several predecessor English versions (the anti-monarchy notes of the popular Geneva Bible contributed to James' endorsement of a new translation), three committees (at three English centers of learning), and a few printing missteps later ("thou shalt commit adultery" being perhaps the most unfortunate ... or fortunate, depending on whom you asked), we finally had "a still small voice," "the root of the matter" and "to every thing there is a season."
In the end, knowing these things about the KJV reminds us that translating the Bible has never been simple (there's no single original Bible from which to work, for one thing); can always be dangerous (God help the person suspected of tampering with God's Word); and is ultimately doomed (our own language is constantly changing, regularly requiring new translations). Miles Smith declared in his preface to the King James Version, "Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light." The light that shines through the KJV has been refracted by the centuries, yet it streams through a whole new opening in what had been for ordinary folks an impenetrable wall of foreignness.
Kristin Swenson is the author of 'Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time' (Harper, 2010), now in paperback (Harper Perennial, 2011), and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Follow Kristin M. Swenson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kristinswenson
David Lose: What Kind of Book Is The Bible?
Authorized King James Version - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John 1 (New International Version, ©2011)
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 5 (New Living Translation)
39 “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40 Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.
The 400 years old should be a big hint that it's way out of date....and useless.
Sep·tu·a·gint   
[sep-too-uh-jint, -tyoo-, sep-choo-]
–noun
the oldest Greek version of the Old Testament, traditionally said to have been translated by 70 or 72 Jewish scholars at the request of Ptolemy II: most scholars believe that only the Pentateuch was completed in the early part of the 3rd century b.c. and that the remaining books were translated in the next two centuries.
dictionary.com
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That said, Happy Birthday, King Jimmie - the best thing ever done by a committee! How can you beat the imagery of God in the language of Isaiah (KJV):
"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall ... prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."
space is an illusion there is no such thing as space. it is now called dark matter and dark energy. better to call it unknown matter and energy. all is vitality and substance.
likewise there is no such thing as nothingness, even the term emptiness can be misleading. that emptiness is "pure infinite awareness". consciousness is the expression of this infinite awareness; from this buddhist "emptiness" to a dynamic universe of unique expressions. count yourself as one of those expressions. :-)
the Infinite is what existed and continues to exist before and after and "outside" the big bang. the universe is expanding into the Infinite not into space. so called space is unknown vitality and substance expanding into Infinite.
it is the origin of consiousness that might be called awareness. awareness is primary, consciousness is secondary and this is contrary to what most teach, even what the so called enlightened ones teach.
there is cosmic consciousness and before cosmic consciousness: Infinite Awareness.
Anybody else wondering who researcher is quoting here? Just me?
Matthew 1:23 in Greek uses 'parthenos' which correctly translates as 'virgin'. Matthew ties his gospel to the OT and apparently used the Septigant which uses the same word to translate 'alma' Hebrew (young female- girl) to 'parthenos' in Isaiah 7:14. The writer of Matthew was using a bad translation, this is not a translation error made in the KJV in 1611 but one made in 325 BC by the 70 translators in Alexandria and used by the author of the gospel.
IF it was an error in 325 BC.
As for the date of the Septuagint, you are to be congratulated on dating it with such certainty and precision - a feat that has eluded Western scholarship for over two millennia. Modern scholars date the various elements of the Greek OT everywhere between the third to the first centuries BCE. The fourth century is not a serious contender for various reasons, not least the fact that the compilers of the LXX had a ready mastery of Greek and a good feel for the language, a situation which could not have easily been the case as early in the Hellenistic period as 325. BCE.
The author of Matthew working in Greek was most probably using the Septuagint, not a bad translation of it. And it did translate the Hebrew young girl into the Greek virgin. When the KJV translates the Greek 'parthenosÂ' into the English 'virgin' they were not making a mistake.
The idea that the Gospel According to Matthew was a translation from some lost Aramaic gospel is even less likely than that Matthew wrote this gospel. .
"Do yoy think daily chapel does much for our boys?"
"I don't know if it helps their spiritual development, but daily exposure to Cranmer does wonders for their prose."
A fortiori-- The KJV.
Walter Lee
What both the religious and the materialist miss is the origin, meaning, and purpose of suffering."
”Of course you have proof of this? You sound pretty certain”.
The origin of suffering has been known for over two thousand years. Do your research on the Buddha’s realization. Not what most Buddhists teach, but what the Buddha realized. This takes time and effort to see past the symptoms of the origin of suffering and most important; one’s sincere seeking without bias.
Now the meaning and purpose of suffering: This is a long journey that must be done by the individual seeker. To provide evidence is a waste of time because both the religious and the materialist will reject it before any investigation. The paradigm effect is that powerful.
This was an excellent follow-up question. One can only find answers to these questions when their cup is near empty. Minds with full cups of knowing will reject any evidence and not sincerely seek past their cherished beliefs and hidden paradigms.
Purpose and suffering are perceived sensations; Buddha would probably agree with me.
If the KJV were actually trying to teach the sort of humble Buddhist path to enlightenment, they wouldn't have written this bible, the way they did, to begin with.
The bible is about making absurd claims about things they had NO authority to make. And in the process of telling the story, people took them seriously and assumed they knew.
Mine is a response to this absurdity and I do it from a position of knowledge about the world and I don't think that's "missing" anything.
What both the religious and the materialist miss is the origin, meaning, and purpose of suffering.
The religious see suffering as some kind of punishment for their sins and/or they have fallen from grace of their human God of unconditional love. The materialists see suffering as just an aspect of a universe from nothingness. I.e. a universe with no meaning or purpose; therefore suffering is just an aspect of this pointless and meaningless universe.
One must come to stand between both the religious and the materialists’ cherished beliefs that have become their paradigms; to see that these cherished beliefs are based in unawareness. Both of these cherished beliefs of unawareness are based in innocence. Innocence is not a reality they will even consider, because the human ego sees innocence as weak and pathetic.
What they both have in common is that they judge by appearances, but that unawareness is always a prerequisite to spiritual wisdom. The atheist asks in their ignorance “who created God” but only in their unawareness of Infinite, which has no origin. The religious make a similar mistake as they believe and teach that they exist outside this Infinite most call God.
Neither the materialist nor the religious understand the perfection of Infinite.
What both the religious and the materialisÂt miss is the origin, meaning, and purpose of suffering."
Of course you have proof of this? You sound pretty certain.
The human concept of God has been given human traits and qualities and attributes, etc.
The Infinite cannot be defined for to define Infinite is to limit it and to put boundaries on Infinite. The very definition of Infinite means it has no boundaries. Aspects of the Infinite can be realized on a temporal and transient basis.
Even this explanation is feeble. The more we try to define Infinite the more unawareness we reveal in our explanation. Better to just smile at it, for you are its divine and innocent expression. I.e. there are two things the human ego hates: to view another as innocent or to be viewed as being ignorant.
The human ego loves two ideas: sin and guilt. I.e. self-confirmatory ideation. Religion makes a ton of money from both sin and guilt. Usually with the best of intentions. Usually means not always of course.
Above all else seek awareness, but even if we don’t seek; life will bring to us and offer us opportunities for greater awareness. Always. No exceptions.
Yet another example of how the politics of Kings and Empires determine the beliefs of people.
Are you saying the KJV is just like ALL previous versions? If so, why would it be called anything else?