There
are times when we look back to our childhood or read about bygone
eras and we see things that people used to do differently. The
difference was more than a lack of technology. It was often the
hands-on power of craftsmanship.
I was recently reading
something about cheese. The author was reflecting on the situation
in England before one of the wars. He said that every neighborhood
and sometimes every farm had a unique cheese that they made. The
variety depended on many factors and may have even varied in
different seasons. The point was that there was a lot more flavor
and enjoyment when you compared it to our one-taste-fits-all cheeses
of today.
Sometimes the old ways had the better way. I
don’t want to go back to hauling water from the well in a bucket or
heating the house with the fireplace but I know that pork chops don’t
taste as good as they did before they became the “other white
meat.”
This came to mind because my son and I were
discussing the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. It is amazing the
study tools you can bring to a restaurant if you have a hot spot on
your phone. We were focusing on the Hebrew words. They seemed to be
translated the same, were pronounced the same but looked different in
the Hebrew script. We didn’t have enough knowledge to make a
judgment.
Today as I was looking over it again I noticed
what we call “King James English.” There were a lot of yee’s
and “eth” endings. I remember looking into this once and
whatever source I was reading said that this was already archaic in
the time of King James. The translators did it to get across the
nuances of the Greek and Hebrew. In modern English we have the
pronoun “you” and we can’t know if it is singular or plural.
Not so in the KJV. Thee is singular and Ye is plural. That
knowledge adds to our understanding of the Bible. It would be good
if we brought it back because it would make things more clear. The
same applies to the “eth” endings. I already wrote about the LSB
using the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh. This would be like that.
So
don’t throw away your KJV. I f you are serious about Bible study it
can help you get to the bottom of some questions. I don’t care
what the package says, “New and improved” often isn’t.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.