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Is the KJV too Archaic
for Use?
Prof. Herman Hanko
(Retired Professor of New Testament and
Church History in the Protestant Reformed Seminary, USA)
One of the chief objections to
our continued use of the KJV is its archaic language. It is filled with
words, so it is said, that could be understood when it was prepared, but are
no longer used in contemporary English. This is a barrier to its use among
us, especially in teaching children and doing the important work of
evangelism. The result of so many archaisms is that the Bible has largely
become a mysterious book, the contents of which are hidden from today’s
readers by outdated and obscure language.
All the arguments for new
translations finally come down to that one argument. Is that objection
valid?
If the objection is valid, this
would indeed be serious, for if the Bible can no longer be understood, its
purpose has come to an end. The result of such a development would be that
the Word of God, which the saints need for their spiritual life, would be
beyond their reach, placed on an inaccessible shelf too high to be reached.
We must take this objection
seriously, for the Bible is necessary for the life of the people of God, the
work of the church, and the instruction of future generations. God
accomplishes His work of salvation sovereignly by the Spirit of Christ in
the hearts of the elect. But the Spirit never works apart from the Word of
the Scriptures. If those Scriptures are inaccessible to God’s people,
because of archaisms which make the Word difficult, if not impossible, to
understand, that would be a barrier to the salvation of the saints.
The argument has a certain force
and carries a measure of validity. Everyone with any knowledge of the KJV
knows that there are indeed words that are no longer used in contemporary
English, and that some words have taken a meaning quite different from what
they had in the days when the KJV was prepared. We may not ignore the
argument.
Nevertheless, two questions must
be asked and answered. Are the archaisms in the KJV a serious barrier to the
understandability of the KJV? And do these archaisms warrant a new
translation? These two questions are related to each other.
Before one gives a yes or no
answer to those questions, one must consider some crucial characteristics of
Scripture.
Scripture itself testifies of the
fact that there are passages in God’s Word that are difficult to understand.
Peter tells those to whom he writes that in Paul’s writings there “are some
things hard to be understood” (II Peter 3:16). Everyone knows that the
prophets contain many difficult passages, which require much study if one is
to penetrate into their meaning. Frequently passages of Scripture are
distorted by the efforts of misguided translators to make these passages
“understandable” to the modern 21st century man; but in doing so
their meaning is distorted beyond recognition.
Furthermore, in an important
sense, the meaning of the Scriptures is not accessible to everyone. The
Scriptures are God’s Word, written to the church, and intended to be God’s
revelation to His covenant people of the mysteries of God’s eternal purpose
in Christ. Although from a certain formal point of view everyone who reads
the Scriptures can understand what he reads, Luther was right when he said
that the Scriptures are a closed book to anyone who comes to them without
the Spirit who works faith in God’s people. Luther understood what many
today seem not to understand. Only one who comes to Scripture in a
Spirit-worked humility, saying in his heart: “Speak, Lord, for thy servant
heareth,” is capable of understanding what the Scriptures say.
The point is important. When one
possesses the Spirit of Christ and comes to learn the will of God, the
Scriptures are open to him. When one lacks faith, the Scriptures are closed
to him. To attempt to “open” the Scriptures to the unbeliever by a different
translation is an exercise in futility.
The church has confessed, since
the time of the Reformation, that one attribute of Scripture is its
perspicuity. By this the church has meant that anyone who comes in faith to
God’s Word can understand what the Scriptures mean. Neither age nor
education makes a difference; the Scriptures are open to the little child on
his mother’s knee as well as to the Ph.D in theology.
But the perspicuity of Scripture
has never been understood to imply that Scripture is shallow. Scripture is
not like a shallow pool on a concrete parking lot after a brief shower, in
which one can see the pavement beneath the pool. Scripture is like a deep
pool, utterly clear, into which one looks, but can never see the bottom.
The point is worth emphasizing.
The Scriptures do not cater to
modern man with his ten-second attention span, his inability to think
clearly about almost everything, his need to have any knowledge given in
TV-size bits, and his easy slide into boredom and ennui if any prolonged
concentration is required.
In his book, What is Faith?
J. Gresham Machen makes the following point: “Many persons…seem to have a
notion that modern Christians must be addressed always in words of one
syllable, and that in religion we must abandon the scientific precision of
language. …In pursuance of this tendency we have had presented to us
recently various translations of the Bible which reduce the Word of God more
or less thoroughly to the language of the modern street, or which, as the
matter was put recently in my hearing by an intelligent layman, ‘take all
the religion out of the New Testament.’ But the whole tendency, we for our
part think, ought to be resisted. Back of it all seems to lie the strange
assumption that modern men, particularly modern university men, can never by
any chance learn anything; they do not understand the theological
terminology which appears in such richness in the Bible, and that is
regarded as the end of the matter; apparently it does not occur to anyone
that possibly they might with profit acquire the knowledge of Biblical
terminology which now they lack. But I for my part am by no means ready to
acquiesce. I am perfectly ready, indeed, to agree that the Bible and the
modern man ought to be brought together. But what is not always observed is
that there are two ways of attaining that end. One way is to bring the
Bible down to the level of the modern man; but the other way is to bring the
modern man up to the level of the Bible (emphasis mine). I am inclined
to advocate the latter way.”
Scripture is meant to be studied.
One comes to its meaning through pondering its truths, meditating on its
words and sentences, and concentrating on the wealth of its thought.
It is not true that little
children, still unable to read, are incapable of understanding Scripture in
the measure of their own intellectual development. What child who
understands the basics of the English language cannot understand Genesis 1 –
and usually better than those who try to twist it to include heretical
evolutionary teachings? And what child cannot understand the sober and
simple, yet totally profound story of the birth of God in Christ in a manger
in Bethlehem?
But the more one studies and
meditates upon Scripture, the more one understands its riches and truths.
The more accustomed one’s eyes become in peering into Scripture’s depths,
the more deeply one can see into it. And yet, after a lifetime of study,
even learning all that the church in earlier millennia have said about God’s
Word, one only penetrates about two inches into the great depths of God’s
revelation of Himself in all His wonderful works and ways.
If these things are not
remembered and we come to Scripture as we do to a first grade reading book,
we have no right to blame our inability to understand it on the use of some
archaisms. The fault lies with us.
The archaisms of Scripture are
relatively few in number. They are easily explainable or understandable to
one who is willing to take the time to look them up in a good dictionary.
And parents can easily teach the meaning of them to their children when the
family is together for family devotions, or when the children are memorizing
parts of Scripture.
When a small child lisps the
words of Psalm 23, usually one of the first chapters parents teach their
children, is it so difficult to tell these children the meaning of verse 1?
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” “The Lord cares for me as a
shepherd cares for his sheep. I will never lack anything in all my life,
cared for by Jehovah God.”
While Scripture does have in it
archaisms, the real question is not: How difficult is the KJV to understand?
The real question is: Why is the KJV so easy to understand seeing it was
prepared almost four hundred years ago? If one would compare the plays of
Shakespeare, written only a few decades earlier, with the KJV, one will be
astounded at the difference in the English. It is extremely difficult to
read Macbeth without the help of some translation aids.
God, in His providence, brought
into being the KJV at a propitious time in England’s history. Up to this
time England had no real English language. Anglo-Saxon invaders from Germany
and the Lowlands had affected the early language of the Celts. Scandinavian
Norsemen had invaded England, settled in it, and brought their own peculiar
language to the country. William the Conqueror had imported French and all
but made French the language of diplomacy and commerce. The English spoken
in the fields and cottages was different in different parts of the country,
and was not that of the nobility. It was hard for one Englishman to
understand another from a different part of the country.
But at the time of King James,
England was emerging as a world power in its own right. It was coming to a
national consciousness, which tended to unify the country. It was becoming a
force to be reckoned with in commerce. Its navy ruled the seas. The sun
never set on its many colonies. A language spoken nationwide was needed. A
uniform English language, which was slowly developing, became, because of
the unique development of the English language, the most expressive and
influential language in all Europe. It had a depth and range that no other
language possessed.
The KJV played a major role in
attaining a countrywide and standard English. The translators not only
prepared a translation that helped standardize the language, but the
translators molded and shaped a standard language, and thus became, in part,
the creators of modern English. Luther did much the same with his German
translation of the Bible, and the Statenvertaling of the Synod of Dordt had
the same effect on Dutch.
In addition to the shaping of
modern English by the new translation, the translators made the Bible
understandable by all in England because they used English words instead of
Latin words about 92% of the time. Latin words are still and cold, rigid and
feelingless. English words, of Anglo-Saxon origin, are homey and earthy,
expressive and forceful, the language of the people rather than the
university.
It is because of these
providential workings of God that a version was prepared that can rightly be
said to be in “timeless English.” Undoubtedly this is the reason why so many
words and expressions of the KJV have entered our everyday language. One
need only think of such expressions as “to lick the dust” (Psalm 72:9),
“sour grapes” (Ezekiel 18:2), “the skin of my teeth” (Job 19:20), “from time
to time” (Ezekiel 4:10).
One scholar wrote about the
Hebrew: “The [KJV] is an almost literal translation of the Masoretic text,
and is thus on every page replete with Hebrew idioms. The fact that Bible
English has to a marvelous extent shaped our speech, giving peculiar
connotations to many words and sanctioning strange constructions, is not any
less patent. The [KJV] has been – it can be said without any fear of being
charged with exaggeration – the most powerful factor in the history of
English literature. Though the constructions encountered in the [KJV] are
oftentimes so harsh that they seem almost barbarous, we should certainly
have been the poorer without it.”
It is but a short time before the
Lord returns. For four centuries the KJV has served the church well. Would
it not be to the church’s advantage to retain such a precious tradition in
the little time that remains? One thing we know. When persecution comes, our
Bibles will be taken from us and the only Word of God we shall retain is
that which we have memorized and hid in our hearts. What easier translation
is there to memorize than the rolling cadences of our KJV? It is the Bible
for us and our children.
[The above is printed by kind
permission of the author, and is taken from his paper, “Our Venerable King
James Bible,” published by Peace Protestant Reformed Church,
http://www.peaceprc.Org/ourvenerablekjv. pdf.]
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