Because they end up looking like this:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, 4 who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.”
It’s magnificent. So much so that I had to reread it 4 times. If it’s ok with our admin, let’s have a little fun and see who can find the best Paulisms.
gmatthews said
You have to take into consideration the process of translating Greek into English: the word count isn’t one to one!
I suppose we can move from light hearted fun to more serious discussion. Unfortunately, I cannot read Greek. Those of you who can: is the passage I quote in my original post more elegant in Greek? Paul seems to be using the word “console” and its various derivations and inflections for rhetorical effect. This might have been effective in Greek for all I know, but the NRSV reading is downright labyrinthine.
I just now pulled up the KJV and, as far as literary style is concerned, it wins hands down:
3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
I don’t think the appeal of archaic language is the only thing the KJV’s reading has over NRSV’s: the meter and flow of the passage are substantially improved. What’s more is the passage’s meaning seems intact. So why is the NRSV’s prose that much more tangled? Did the scholarly committee prioritize accuracy of translation to such a degree that style became nearly irrelevant? And if the NRSV is one of the most accurate translations, as I understand it to be, did its Greek sources read better, or did the authors of the KJV do Paul a serious service?
For me the KJV is archaic and the flow of its language is distracting. There are only so many sheweths that I can take. 
The NRSV, among other things, is meant to reflect how we talk today. In the intro it says that its primary objective is to provide a literal translation of the source material. It’s well known, and Prof Ehrman has mentioned it a few times on the blog, that the KJV is not always a literal, or even accurate, translation in a number of instances. There are so many instances where the KJV chooses an inferior English word for a translation. The Junia vs. Junias “coverup” is one of the most egregious that I can think of.
I don’t read Greek either so I can’t speak to the accuracy of the translation that gave us “console”, but the footnotes in my HarperCollins Study Bible lists many cross references for Paul’s opening benediction to 2 Cor so for the translation team there are plenty of comparable versus not just in Paul’s writings, but also in the OT.
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