Loading...On my podcast (“Misquoting Jesus Podcast,” with Bart Ehrman) I recently interviewed my friend and colleague Jennifer Knust about the problems involved with producing a modern translation of the Bible. It made me recall some lectures I gave in 2012 about the King James Bible, in celebration of it’s 400th year anniversary. I made some posts about the great strengths and interesting problems posed (now) by the KJV. I looked, and lo and behold I posted about it too. Here’s what I said (this will take several posts):
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In a couple of weeks I’m going off to Los Angeles to give a lecture at Loyola Marymount University as a keynote address for their putting on of the (traveling) exhibition on the King James Bible, started in commemoration of its 400th year (in 2011). The exhibition is called Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible, and my lecture is entitled: “What Kind of a Text Is the King James Bible? Manuscripts, Translation, and the Legacy of the KJV.” In addition to celebrating the greatness of the translation – it’s obviously one of the greatest classics of the English language – I will be talking about various aspects of the KJV that make it less usable as a study or research Bible.
In will begin my talk by talking about the incalculable impact the KJV made on the English language, and its brilliance as an English classic. I will then be discussing three main difficulties it poses for readers who actually want to know what the Bible’s authors said.
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- The fact that in the New Testament the KJV was based on Greek manuscripts (the only ones available at the time, of course – so it was no one’s fault) that are now recognized as being inferior in nature, leading the translators to include verses and even passages that we now believe were not originally in the New Testament;
- The problem of theological bias that occasionally crept into the translation;
- And the problem of the change of language over the past 400 years, so that English today simply isn’t the same as English then.
Here I’ll start with the last point. I remember when I became a born again Christian in high school – I guess I was 15 at the time – I thought that I really should read the Bible, which I had never done much before (even though I was a church kid; but, well, we were Episcopalian). The Bible in our home was a KJV. And I couldn’t make heads or tails of it! I ended up getting what I thought was a modern translation, which really was probably worse – The Living Bible (it is not even a translation, but a paraphrase made by a person who didn’t actually know Greek and Hebrew…).
Anyway, I knew for sure that the KJV was not written in a language I could understand. But what is worse is that over the years people have *thought* that they understood what the KJV said, but completely misunderstood it. This is because when English changed over the four centuries since the translation was done between 1604 and 1611, it not only made some words used then out of use now (so that sometimes readers may not know the meaning of a word) but even more problematic, it changed the meaning of words in such a way that it is possible to make sense of what the KJV says, but in a way that is not at all what it means.
A couple of my favorite examples. I remember hearing a sermon once based on Philippians 3:20, “For our conversation is in heaven.” The sermon was all about how we should watch carefully what we say – we should not curse, tell dirty jokes, or in any way compromise our Christian commitment by our speech because the way we talk is supposed to be rooted in the heavenly places. Not a bad sermon, but it actually had very little to do with the passage it was based on. The word “conversation” in the KJV was not meant to mean “what you say,” but “your citizenship.” Your citizenship – where you belong politically – is in heaven; that’s where you belong and where you’re going. Maybe you shouldn’t tell dirty jokes for *that* reason, but, well, it’s not what the text is talking about.
And then there is Revelation 17, where the author has a horrific vision of the great “Whore of Babylon” who is seated on a terrifying beast with seven heads and is called the mother of whores and is said to be drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And the prophet who sees the vision then says, in the KJV, that he looked upon this whore “with great admiration.” Ha! That’s a good one. In 17th century parlance, “admiration” meant “astonishment.” But I love the translation.
Here are a few more examples, in rapid succession.
- In 2 Kings 11:1, in the KJV, we are told that Solomon loved many strange women (2 Kings 11:1) (!) They may indeed have been strange, but what it means is that they were “foreign,” that is, non-Israelites
- In Lev. 14:10, in a discussion of the sacrifices to be made to God, there is a reference to the “meat offering.” Here is where things can get really turned around. What it actually means is a “grain offering”
- In the story of David and Goliath, we are told in 1 Sam 17:6 that the giant Goliath carried a “target” on his shoulder. It doesn’t mean a bull’s eye. The word meant “javelin.”
- Psalm 88:13 in the KJV says, “In the morning shall my prayer prevent thee.” Prevent? Prevent from what? Actually, it doesn’t mean what we mean by prevent. Here it means “…shall come before you.”
- When Psalm. 124:3 says this about “our enemies”: “Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us” it does not mean that they devoured us quickly. Quick means “alive” (you may be familiar with “The quick and the dead.”). So it means they devoured us while we were still living. Or at least they would have if God had not stopped them (according to the Psalm).
- Paul gives an astonishing admonition in the King James of 1 Cor. 10;24, “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth.” What? We’re supposed to try to get the riches of someone else? How? By stealing it? No, actually “wealth” in this 17th century context meant “welfare.” So it’s just the opposite of what one might think: one is supposed to seek what is good for another.
- So too in Philippians 4:6, Paul in the KJV exhorts his readers to “Be careful for nothing.” We’re not to be careful? No, what it means is “Don’t worry about anything.”
And so, a great translation. But, well, problematic for today.
My earliest issue with KJV came at about age five or six, in the Methodist Sunday school during repetition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father who ART in heaven”. Well, the modern ear of my child-mind heard AREN’T, and internal logic told me it was ridiculous to discuss where someone “aren’t”.
~eric. MeridaGOround dot com
Very interesting!. I never knew this. The reason I stayed away from the KJB is because of the ” thou”, “thee”, etc. The sound of them turned me off. It felt so distant and artificial compared to the Hebrew text I knew, even as this original text was even more archaic!
I thought they were unnecessarily archaic, until I saw a sign outside one church a couple of years ago:
“Thou Shalt Get Thee Vaccinated”. 😊
I conclude that, culturally, one cannot NOT know the KJV. Some of it, at least.
Are the mistranslations you cite in this post included in a book, or you have assembled this list – probably including many more words- after studying the translations, including the Gargantuan HB, word by word?
In short, how did you obtain these great examples?
Ah, I picked them up from various books on Biblical translation, e.g., Jack P. Lewis and Bruce Metzger.
Given that the NKJV incorporates new manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the NKJV more faithful to the “scholarly understanding” of manuscripts to date? Or is it more or less true to the previous KJV? Also, short of learning Greek and reading in the original language, what translation is the most faithful to the scriptures? Or to ask the question differently, if you were to use an English translation, which would you use that is most faithful to being word-for-word (i.e., not meaning-for-meaning, thought-for-thought, or paraphrasing)?
I don’t know about the Hebrew Bible so much; of course they would not be using the Scrolls for the NT since the Scrolls don’t have any NT texts among them. My preferred translation is the NRSV, but there are other good ones out there. Any modern one will be better than the KJV or the NKJV, if it’s a major one done by a committee of scholars.
Bart, I don’t want to “reprove” you, but is someone hiding your December Gold Q & A light under a “bushel”? I am assuming you did recor it when you said you would.
Thanks for doing these, and I confess I’m impatient to see this one,
Yikes. Is it not out? Good grief. OK, I’ll look into it. Yup, recorded it early last week.
I would suggest an additional reason for an historian to be interested in the KJV, which is that, for several centuries, it would have been the reference for ethics and morality for the English speaking world. As you say, an historian wanting to study what Christians actually wrote and believed in the second or third century would want a better translation. However, did Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, or Franklin have access to a better translation? If not, the KJV must have been what they read and what informed their thought.
Nope, that’s what htey would have used.
Thank you Dr Ehrman (I hope you are not suffering from terrible weather conditions. We are getting apocalyptic reports here in the UK about the situation in the US). I’m a big fan of the KJV. As an Anglican, who attends a Catholic church, I have encountered occasional prejudice against it. Some (not all) Catholics dismiss it or even dislike it for being a ‘Protestant’ Bible. Having said that, I have heard at least two leading Catholic academics (one of whom is a priest) talk of their great admiration for the KJV.
Actually, I’ve been in the UK the whole time. “Terrible,” of course, is relative. 🙂 Yes, the KJV was in part ordered by James I to replace the “Bishops Bible.” A very interesting book on the political dynamics of the translation is Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries.
I have an Orthodox Study Bible at home. It uses the NKJV translation.
I know individuals and churches that swear by the KJV as the only acceptable translation; anything else is virtually heresy. To show how silly this concept is, consider that only about 6% of the world’s population has English as their native tongue. That means 94% of people in the world cannot rely on the KJV. Are they all lost to heresy, apostasy? Of course not. And if you think God helped the KJV team get it exactly right, please tell us which translations in other languages received that same help from God. 94% of the world would like to know.
My favorite is Matt 6:22, “if thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” For many decades this has been the favorite line of Eastern religion apologists. They cite it to prove that Jesus was actually a yogi and taught some form of gnostic meditation on the 3rd eye, perhaps picked up while he visited India.
That title was on of the funniest of the year. Your journey was similar to mine, KJV, LB, the on to Readers Digest Bible, Jefferson Bible and RSV Revised. I have read the Koran, the various Eddas, the Tao Te Ching, Zen writings. the Bhagavadgita, the Upanishad, and a host of others. Of course it all comes down to my conclusion that Religion is a fundamental basis for Cultures (Degree in Anthropology).
All religions answer three basic questions:
!. How/Why did I get here? (Creation Myths)
2. What is my/our purpose in existing. (Myths and legends/stories of behavior)
3. What is going to happen when I die, or when it all ends, Death and Apocalyptic Myths)
These are the big three and every religion/mythic structure seem to deal with them.
I would love to see you do a posting on this idea as it helped me realize there waws no singular answer. No one religion, myth that seemed universal.
For me this led to my feeling that none answered all the questions.
Yes, many of them try to answer these questions. And there are millions of books written on all of them.
I take it that, for the historical Jesus, salvation consisted of entry into God’s coming Kingdom.
I take it that idea continued, among his first followers, after his death and their experience of his resurrection: in their understanding that Jesus kicked off the resurrection of the dead that was expected at the end of time; and also in in their expectation of Jesus’s imminent second coming.
So, is there evidence of a period of time, perhaps a short period, after the resurrection, when there was an idea of salvation that did not include a doctrine of atonement, ie, before that idea had time to develop?
If, for the first Christians, their experience of the resurrection confirmed that Jesus was the Messiah, wouldn’t that have confirmed what the historical Jesus had taught about salvation coming through the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God?
Wouldn’t that understanding of salvation have preceded their development of the doctrine of atonement? Wouldn’t, originally, repentance and love of God and neighbor have been enough without Jesus’s atoning sacrifice for sin?
I fully accept how and why the doctrine of atonement developed—and that it might well have developed quite quickly after the experience of the resurrection. But to me it seems likely that there was a period, however brief, after the resurrection, when salvation was understood without reference to atonement.
In relation to this, I’m thinking of some of the very ancient hymns and creeds embedded in Paul and Acts and maybe the gospels, eg, Peter’s address to the crowds on Pentecost, where atonement is not even mentioned.
Yes, they would have thought that salvation was all about entering the kingdom. But they appear very quickly to think that this entailed believing in the death of Jesus rather than repentance from sin, evidently on the logic that if repentance were sufficient, there would be no reason for Christ to have died. And you’re right, atonement language is entirely missing from Luke and Acts. Luke has turned to a doctrine of forgiveness.
If you’re suggesting that atonement took the place of repentance I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Interesting.
So, if the first Christians experienced salvation, at least for a brief period, only because of the resurrection before the atonement doctrine was developed, would it be reasonable to argue that the resurrection was the primary saving event or experience and that the role of atonement therefore has to be understood within the framework of the resurrection experience?
I just think that the main currents of Christianity have overemphasized crucifixion and atonement and under-emphasized resurrection as the primary saving event.
It’s say rather that the resurrection is what made the followers of Jesus think that the death was an atoning event.
I don’t know. We simply don’t have any followers of Jesus from the time telling us what htey thought. I’ll be dealing with this issue a bit in my next book though.
I’ve long had a personal hypothesis that the reason Shakespeare has remained popular for so many centuries is that the English speaking world continued to feel that his Elizabethan parlance sounded familiar – because of our familiarity with the KJV.
I’d say — as one married to a Shakespeare scholar — that a good deal of it has to do with his brilliance.
Hi, Dr. Ehrman. So, I’ve read your book on hell. I don’t know why, but I’m really nervous about Dr. Mark Goodacre’s view on ECT. I know he’s Christian, but I can’t find anything online about his view on hell. Goodacre just concerns me sign his scholarship and if Christianity is true or not.
Dr. Jason Staples also believes Paul wasn’t preaching an imminent return. That’s nerve wrecking too.
I may be wrong but surely target always meant shield, never javelin. The kjv seems to be translating the “aspis” of the lxx and not the “kidon” of the Hebrew.
I once found a glossary of obsolete and archaic words and phrases in the back of a KJV bible, which seemed helpful, and the phrase I found most interesting was “by and by.” In the early 17th century, it didn’t mean “some day, in the distant future perhaps” the way it does today. Back then, it meant just the opposite: immediately!
For what it’s worth, today people often (usually) misuse the word “presently” in the reverse way. It doesn’t mean “currently” (as often used) but “in the near future”
A good discussion on that one by my favorite grammar and etymology blogger:
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/09/does-presently-mean-now-or-soon.html