# What's so great about the KJV? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 11, 2006, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963 "2006-11-11T01:34:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2006, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/21 "2006-11-13T20:07:11Z")
[QUOTE=jebert] It seems to me that if the practice of a religion is dependent on the precise parsing or translation of text, then the message might not be all that clear in the first place. Can someone provide a few examples where a person using KJV, NRSV and NIV would get significantly different meanings from various passages. I can see where different people using the same text can get different meanings because of individual interpretations. I’m looking for cases where a person would get a significantly different message depending on which translation he is using. [/QUOTE] Well, I did find something placed by a bible-thumper on my door once. It was, if I remember correctly, all about how sinful it is to be gay (why it was on my door I have no idea.) Anyway, their argument, if I remember correctly, was heavily based on Matthew 7:14, which in the KJV is translated as “Because strait the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” while in the NRSV is “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” or you could even write it in a more modern style while maintaining most of the KJV structure as “Because narrow is the gate and narrow is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” So these idiots were creating an entire argument based on their not understanding the meaning of a word and that “strait” has practically nothing to do with “straight” even without getting into the slang sense. And that by itself was amazing; the idea that a 20th century English slang term would somehow be present in a 1st century Greek writing. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/22 "2006-11-13T20:41:17Z")
I’m one of those that was raised on the KJV of the Bible and other translations just don’t feel right. I can’t really comment on the accuracy of the other versions, since I never really studied them, but the parts I did read just didn’t evoke that same beauty that the style the KJV is written in does. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/23 "2006-11-13T23:00:21Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] If you wish to exchange that information via e-mail, you may. Please do not make a point of calling out other message boards as deficient in some way, announce the desire to “visit” them, then call for a link to be posted from the SDMB. [/Moderating] [/QUOTE] Okay, I can see how it could lead to problems. [Humor on] [Don Adams voice on] Errr, Sorry about that chief! [/Don Adams voice off] [/Humor off] ---
**Author:** ![miss\_elizabeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/838e76/32.png) [@miss\_elizabeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/miss_elizabeth)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2006, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/24 "2006-11-13T23:06:39Z")
I’m not really asking about having a literary preference for the KJV; that makes sense to me. I’m asking about people who consider the KJV to be the actual Word of God. I guess I’m talking about people who consider it to be doubly inspired. Thinking it’s a very good translation, or finding the language beautiful is perfectly understandable to me. I’m trying to better understand the reasoning and motivation behind the type of mindset that considers the NIV and others to be heretical. It just seems very odd to me. I guess it just seems (to me) like these people must have a very poor understanding of history. Or, is this a fairly old movement? See that’s what I don’t understand. How can they justify this mindset? Do they even try? (By the way, I read about the Ruckmanites, but I still don’t really understand the movement) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/25 "2006-11-14T01:16:54Z")
[QUOTE=miss elizabeth] **What’s so great about the KJV?** [/QUOTE] Where else can you read cool words like “emerods”\*? 🙂 - 1 Samuel 5:6. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/26 "2006-11-14T02:21:36Z")
[QUOTE=miss elizabeth] I guess it just seems (to me) like these people must have a very poor understanding of history. Or, is this a fairly old movement? See that’s what I don’t understand. How can they justify this mindset? Do they even try? [/QUOTE] Did posts 2, 3, and 5 answer none of your questions? Answer some but raise others? Were they not clear or do they not make sense? Can you rephrase your questions in the context of those posts? (Short answer on the timeframe is that there were rumblings in the middle to late 19th century that blossomed fully at the beginning of the 20th. Short answer on their understanding: the large numbers of adherents do not have a good grasp of history. I am not sure what prompts some of the leaders of the movement beyond a need to maintain their faith in a way that simply denies historical evidence.) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/27 "2006-11-14T03:11:02Z")
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee] Well that’s a bit short-sighted, isn’t it? What if God intended it to be beautiful? Large sections of it are written as poetry, after all. It’s clearly a work of literature, not a VCR instruction manual for life. [/QUOTE] And yet people are supposed to live their lives by it, which leads rather more easily to the latter interpretation than to the former. I’m not saying it isn’t supposed to sound good, but when you’re talking about perhaps the most influential book in history, you want to make sure that it’s absolutely accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/28 "2006-11-14T03:19:14Z")
One other fact that should be tossed into the discussion: there is no single, authoritative text for the KJV, just like there is no single authoritative text for the First Folio. Jacobean printing practices included proofreading of sheets after they came off the press, and then making corrections to the type for the next sheet, but the first sheets would nonetheless be used: there was continuous revision and variation in the same sheets. That was one of the reasons that Folger started the Shakespeare Folger library - to try to gather as many copies of the First Folio as possible to get the most accurate readings by comparing the different copies. _God’s Secretaries_, an excellent book on the translation of the KJV, mentions this issue, when describing the printing process for the KJV after the translators produced their draft: > [@God's Secretaries](#): > > Barker’s printshop began to apply its own level of chaos to the production process. It seems to have been some sort of anarchy. Either two editions were produced one after another, or both at the same time and sheets from each edition were bound together in single volumes. As a result no copy of the 1611 Bible is like any other. And they were riddled with mistakes. The Translators had intended that any word inserted to improve the sense should be printed in a different face. In fact, that principle became confused early on and if a word is in italics in the printed Bible, there is often no telling if it is in the original Greek or Hebrew or not. > > … > > And it was littered with misprints, ‘hoopes’ for ‘hookes’, ‘she’ for ‘he’, three whole lines simply repeated in Exodus, and alarmingly ‘Judas’ for ‘Jesus’ in one of the Gospels. None of these was quite so catastrophic as a misprint that would appear in a 1631 edition, the so-called Wicked Bible, which failed to put the word ‘not’ in Exodus 20:14, giving the reading ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’, but the degree of muddle is scarcely what a modern scholarly text would tolerate. When, finally, in the nineteenth century, Dr F. Scrivener, a scholar working to modern standards, attempted to collate all the editions of the King James Bible then in circulation, he found more than \*\*24,000 variations \*\* between them. The curious fact is that no one such thing as ‘The King James Bible’ – agreed, consistent and whole – has ever existed. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/29 "2006-11-14T03:30:46Z")
[QUOTE=Northern Piper] _God’s Secretaries_, an excellent book on the translation of the KJV, mentions this issue, when describing the printing process for the KJV after the translators produced their draft: [/QUOTE] Reminds me of angel/bookseller Aziraphale’s collection of “Infernal Bibles” (distinguished by misprints) in [Good Omens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens) – especially the “Bugger all thys for a larke!” edition! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/30 "2006-11-14T03:45:20Z")
Precisely what Pratchett was referring to, as it happens. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/31 "2006-11-14T03:50:20Z")
[QUOTE=E-Sabbath] Precisely what Pratchett was referring to, as it happens. [/QUOTE] :mad: Don’t slight Gaiman! Although, how can readers know which author contributed what to a joint work, really? Which is a very relevant question WRT Biblical scholarship . . . ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/32 "2006-11-14T04:08:45Z")
Well, I believe Gaiman added the strawberry ice cream joke, but the list of various bibles struck me as a Pratchett note. Not horribly esoteric, and just the sort of thing that would creep up again in Small Gods. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/33 "2006-11-14T05:08:11Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Carrot] And yet people are supposed to live their lives by it, which leads rather more easily to the latter interpretation than to the former. I’m not saying it isn’t supposed to sound good, but when you’re talking about perhaps the most influential book in history, you want to make sure that it’s absolutely accurate. [/QUOTE] Well, possibly. I don’t happen to believe that I should live my life by it, being as I am a non-believer. But even among my many friends now in ordained ministry, I think nearly all would agree that Scripture is intended to inspire and guide us much more often than to give us rules or instructions. I mean, even the original text, such as we have it, isn’t exactly unambiguous and consistent. Plus, of course, no translation can ever be _absolutely_ accurate. Now, having (hopefully) lain to bed one hijack, allow me to initiate another, slightly more relevant, one: How widely used was the American Standard Version? Granted, it’s been mostly out of print for about 50 years now, but it seems to have left almost no mark. The RSV seems to have been a source of major controversy, and to have been a major stimulus for the (already-existing) KJV-only movement. Were most mainline Protestants using and hearing the ASV during the first half of the century, or was the KJV still predominant? ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/34 "2006-11-14T14:06:52Z")
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee] How widely used was the American Standard Version? Granted, it’s been mostly out of print for about 50 years now, but it seems to have left almost no mark. The RSV seems to have been a source of major controversy, and to have been a major stimulus for the (already-existing) KJV-only movement. Were most mainline Protestants using and hearing the ASV during the first half of the century, or was the KJV still predominant? [/QUOTE] I’m fortunate enough to have a big cross-ref’ed study ASV, pretty close to its 1901 release. I don’t think it became widely used in mainstream Protty circles- thus leaving the market open for the RSV. When in the Air Force in the 1950s, my Dad was given an RSV New Testament early edition which omitted the Mark 16 version of Christ’s Great Commission and John 8’s Jesus rescuing the Adulteress. Later editions put those back in with notes about the manuscript difficulties, but I can definitely see how those omissions would outrage people. The most controversial RSV translation was it’s correct rendering in Isaiah 7:14, where they have “young woman” where the KJV has “virgin”. The Hebrew can mean both but mainly means “young woman”, while the Greek Septuagint does use the word for “virgin”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/35 "2006-11-14T14:23:18Z")
While not directly related to the OP’s question… I’m from Spain, English as third language. Since I’ve lived in the US several times and hang out with many people in the 'net, speaking in English, and I’m not shy about religious talks, I figured I should get an English Bible. After three years of looking for one which wasn’t the KJV (which I simply do not understand without using the dictionary for every other word), I finally found a New Jerusalem Bible. In Barcelona. I’ve continued looking, just for fun, and have never seen another “modern English Bible”. They have to exist, but I seem to have an anti-magnet for them. All of this makes me go 😕 every time y’all talk about Bible Versions. Between Mom, the Bros and myself we must have 20 slightly-different Spanish Bibles and New Testaments! And so long as they say “nihil obstat” and a Catholic Bishop’s name at the beginning, we’d never think of arguing about which one is best… ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/36 "2006-11-14T17:51:22Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] And so long as they say “nihil obstat” and a Catholic Bishop’s name at the beginning, we’d never think of arguing about which one is best… [/QUOTE] Among those who believe that the KJV was directly dictated by God in God’s own language (Elizabethan English), a _nihil obstat_ would be the equivalent of the actual Mark of the Beast and an _imprimatur_ would be identical to the cloven hoof of the devil. (I wonder how easy it would be to find six hundred sixty-six in “nihil obstat”?) ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/37 "2006-11-14T17:57:38Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Among those who believe that the KJV was directly dictated by God in God’s own language (Elizabethan English) … [/QUOTE] They might believe it, but that just proves their human fallibility. As the name (“King **James** Version”) suggests, it was written in Jacobean English. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/38 "2006-11-14T18:04:21Z")
[QUOTE=FriarTed] The most controversial RSV translation was it’s correct rendering in Isaiah 7:14, where they have “young woman” where the KJV has “virgin”. The Hebrew can mean both but mainly means “young woman”, while the Greek Septuagint does use the word for “virgin”. [/QUOTE] Technically, no, I don’t think the Hebrew can mean both. It just means “young woman”. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/39 "2006-11-14T18:05:48Z")
[QUOTE=Giles] They might believe it, but that just proves their human fallibility. As the name (“King **James** Version”) suggests, it was written in Jacobean English. [/QUOTE] I thought about that before posting, but I am pretty sure that Elizabeth held on long enough that sufficient wordsmiths had put their stamp on the language under her reign that eight years after her death, it would still have been Elizabethan. Aside from the KJV, what sort of “Jacobite” linguistic turns can one find that early in his reign? (Besides, he spoke with that funny Northern burr.) ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2006, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963/40 "2006-11-14T19:19:27Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Aside from the KJV, what sort of “Jacobite” linguistic turns can one find that early in his reign? (Besides, he spoke with that funny Northern burr.) [/QUOTE] Personally, I don’t draw a whole lot of distinction among the writers of 1570-1620 or so as to whether they wrote before 1603, in the reign of Elizabeth I Tudor, or after, in the reign of James I and VI Stuart. Hence my usage of Elizabethan/Jacobean. However, there’s an odd bit of linguistic usage associated with the Latinate adjectives for “James” associated with this stuff: Matters related to the reign of James I and VI, including the literature of the period, are termed “Jacobean”; “Jacobite” refers almost exclusively to the royal claims and supporters of his grandson, James II and VII, and _his_ son James, the Old Pretender (and, oddly, by extension to Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, and his brother and heir Henry, Cardinal York), as against James II and VII’s daughers and nephew/son-in-law and their distant cousins from Braunschweig who succeeded them. Hence “Jacobite” is anachronistic when applied to James I and VI. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-great-about-the-kjv/379963.md?page=3)