Apparently obfuscation is God’s will. In this tract, Chick says that the KJV is the only version that hasn’t been corrupted by Satan.
I guess Chick never heard of Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic. Well, if Jesus spoke English I guess that’s good enough for Jack Chick.
The KJV is really a beautiful translation, despite a number of creeps using it.
In the book Final Authority a Chick-ite reveals the true reason KJV is the best, it’s because the translators of those “new age” versions are a bunch of evolutionsocialglobaldisarmamentist communal livers who *deprecate *salvation, Heaven, Hell and the United States of America! How they achieve this deprecation or even these translators’ full names is not revealed. I guess you’ve got to buy the book.
I fully agree that the KJV is a beautiful translation. Quite poetic. IIRC, it was Daniel Boorstin who wrote in The Discoverers that the KJV is probably the only literary masterpiece written by a committee.
What I’ve always found baffling is the near-worship of this particular translation. They seem to forget that a translation is only as good as the quality of sources available to the translators, and the skill of the translators themselves.
Personally, I’d rather refer to the Oxford Annoted Bible, which is an NRSV translation.
I ran into a preacher some years ago who led an independent church who claimed that there was no other bible worth reading except for the KJV… my bullshit meter went right off the scale when I listened to this guy. Some of his other great thoughts were that women were never to wear pants, television was evil, and that people should turn away from those who were not Christians and have nothing to do with them.
He and old Jack would get along just marvelously well.
He did inspire me to do a great deal of research on the origins and history of the KJV and other modern day translations.
Heh!
The last actual church I attended to any degree of regularity swore on the NIV as the best version (I happen to have a personal preferance for the KJV). Of course, worship songs were backed by a rock-n-roll combo (Making a joyous noise unto the Lord!), so I’m sure Chick would have sent the whole lot of us born-again types straight to the fiery pit.
Mind you, one way or another, I’m sure Chick has it in for me: Now I worship at home, and don’t bother with a building. I’m sure he’s got a problem with that, too.
Besides, I wonder if they realize King James was gasp bisexual?
I would really be going to Hell according to Jack-we go by the New American Bible!
They deny that he was.
Actually, Guin, somewhere I read a great piece by Jack Chick explaining at great lengh how James was not at all, not even a little bit, attracted to men. Near as I can remember, his proof was that such a thing would simply be impossible: God woudn’t have allowed it.
I have to say though, that accuracy considerations aside, the KJV is a beatiful, beautiful thing, I keep a copy so that if I have to make biblical references in a paper I can use it: they always sound better.
For my money, though, the best translation of the bible has to be Paradise Lost. Sure, it plays a bit fast and loose with things, and is ever so slightly tilted towards the first few pages of genesis, but oh, god, it makes me hot to hear it. I call it the Miltonic Proof for the existance of God, and it’s the only proof I find the least bit convincing: surely mortal man couldn’t have written this?
The mental picture I’m having is probably not what the Reverend intended.
Sounds like the Pentacostals.
Women can’t wear pants nor cut their hair. Men can only wear long sleeves.
I have no idea why.
Jack Chick and the King James Bible deserve each other.
Well, that’s ONE version of Pentacostals. Kind of ironically, there is a very conservative breed of Pentacostal, who would be considered a whacko liberal by many Protestants on a theological level.
It’s all a big circle, man.
Sign me up!! 
Well, a 17th century translation is appropriate for 17th century minds. What gets me is not only does Chick place more faith in a translation than the original text, he also misses the fact that English has changed so much in the past 3 centuries that the meaning of the KJV has been changed. For example, in I Thessalonians 4:15, the KJV says, “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.” The word “prevent” comes from the Latin verb praevenire, “to go before.” So Paul is saying that on Judgement Day the living won’t see God before the dead do. But to our 20th century ears, the meaning is entirely different. That’s just one of the many problems of meaning in the KJV. It’s lovely Jacobean English, but not a very good translation.
What a freak…
Always good for a laugh, I suppose…
:rolleyes:
Elly, who uses these tracts to show her students examples of what happens when you encounter the “freaky christian right.”
Around where I live, most of the people who say that the King James Version of the bible is the only true version are the same people in high school who couldn’t understand Shakespeare because of the language. I think that many people like the KJV because it sounds pretty, but is hard to understand, so they can read whatever meaning they want from it.
Besides, as I heard the preacher say once “If its good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me” :rolleyes: