Opus 2025-338: I Can’t Avoid It

It seems like everywhere I turn I run into people who think that the KJV is the cats meow.  I have a friend who is a KJV only man.  He spends most of his time trying to convince me how it is the most accurate and influential Bible in history.  When he’s not doing that, he’s attacking the historical figures who translated other versions and trying to put them in the camp of Satan.

My pastor is not that rabid, but he loves the King James Version.  I have no problem with that.  He was raised on it.  He was converted under it.  He consumes it on a regular basis. I am sure he memorizes verses out of it.  It is part of his blood.  He is joined by millions of people around the world.  Glorious.  I think that’s wonderful.  I also know that in the days of my life when I was expected to read the King James, I didn’t.  The language was so archaic that the effort to understand it just wasn’t worth it.

That is still my problem with this translation.  I have never said it was a bad translation.  I’ve never said it is corrupt.  I’ve never made a big deal about the fact that it used inferior Greek and Hebrew manuscripts...unless you asked me.  It’s not worth dividing the kingdom over such things.  And 1611 this was an awesome project that was completed by some great scholars.  The problem is it was 1611.  Just as many people have a mental block against reading Shakespeare, the KJV is beyond their comprehension.

Now I get on my soapbox.  I’m thinking that perhaps the King James Version is now becoming the Latin Vulgate of a certain branch of Christianity.  The Latin Vulgate had become a barrier to everyone from understanding the Bible.  They were forced to depend upon the priest to tell them what it meant.  I don’t know Latin.  I can still take parts of the Latin mass and figure out what it’s talking about simply because of the roots but I can’t sit down and read it and understand it.  It would require a Latin scholar to tell me what it means.  That was the role of the priest.

Fast forward to our modern age.  One of the books I’ve been reading, given to me by my King James Only friend, when asked about the issue of archaic language was perfectly fine with it.  In some twisted way the author felt like it wasn’t important to actually understand the words.  Our pastor doesn’t go that far, but I noticed something.  Because I wanted to be supportive of his love of this translation I bought one that was a parallel publication to my New American Standard.  It had the same Greek and Hebrew helps and tools like that, so I was familiar with its format.  That in itself is not important.  What was interesting to me when I started following along as the pastor read was that the pastor would paraphrase, interpret, explain what the KJV was saying.  He would do it almost automatically without thinking.  At times he would tell you he was doing it but most of the time it was just happened.  He had become the priest who was telling the persons in the pew what the Bible said because they could not understand it.

I have no problem with the King James on the whole.  I use it in my blogs regularly.  When I have the opportunity to preach or teach at church I use it out of respect for the pastor.  I have no problem with this.  It is still not my preferred translation because I get tired of spending time looking up words to trying and figure out what they mean.  And I always wonder how many words that I think I know what they mean in reality have changed their meaning since 1611 and I just don’t notice it.

If you’d love it, use it.  Bless you.  Just don’t curse me because I am going down a different road in my Bible translations.

homo unius libri