Review: Authorized: the Use and Abuse of the King James Bible

Authorized: The Use and Abuse of the King James Bible [Amazon] [Logos]
Paroikos Bible Blog March 24, 2018 by Mark A, Hines [link to blog]

The strength of Mark Ward's book is that it focuses precisely on that area where even the most ardent traditionalists should be cautious, that of readability and archaism. Here Mark's book is golden: it examines, openly and honestly, the need to understand how language has changed in 400 years (or even 250 years, if we consider that the edition of the KJV we use is from 1769).

To be clear, this is not a minor matter. If, by misunderstanding what a word in the KJV means (or, rather, meant 250-400 years ago), I teach one thing when the apostle meant another, I am thereby guilty of saying "Thus saith the Lord" when, in fact, "the Lord hath not spoken" (Ezekiel 22:28), even if my intentions are pure. Ignorance can only go so far as an excuse. At the very least there should be an assumption that all preachers and Bible study leaders have made an attempt to figure out the meanings of words before teaching theology on the basis of what one thinks a word means. I am not talking about necessarily knowing Greek and Hebrew (though that helps). There are plenty of tools for the layperson to use that will help them understand a word in the KJV w/o knowing Greek and Hebrew (a topic for another time). ...

Now, what is the solution? For some churches (such as my own), the solution is not that we stop using the King James. However, even in our case, even as we preach and teach from the King James, we must be aware of, and explain, archaic language. Our final authority lies with the original intention of the Apostolic and Prophetic authors, not the language of the King James. Once again, even though we respect the King James as the "Aaron Rodgers" of Bible translations, our final authority lies with the original Greek words of the Apostles, not the English words of Anglicans (be they ever so intelligent or articulate!)

Practically speaking, what this means is that every preacher of the Word, and every Bible study leader must be aware of anachronisms and properly interpret the words according to the original intent of the inspired author. Failure to do so is to abuse God's word

 

How KJV-Only Christians Responded to Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible
Lexham press blog, August 14, 2018

...the five most common responses

1. What about textual criticism?

… the most common response to my book among the KJV-Only has been, “Let’s go back to talking about textual criticism.” Two men in particular, teachers at KJV-Only Bible colleges, both did exactly the same thing: they read my book; they said nothing about its contents; they immediately started talking about textual criticism. … And both independently said the same thing to me: “We have such different views of Scripture that we can’t even begin to talk.​

2. You’re taking 1 Corinthians 14 out of context: it’s talking only about speaking in tongues.

There Paul argues repeatedly that the Corinthians should not speak in tongues without a translator. Why? Because edification requires intelligibility. Paul goes so far as to say that unintelligible words should not be used in church (14:9). But quite a number of my KJV-Only interlocutors have questioned my use of 1 Corinthians 14. It’s clearly about tongues, not about Bible translation,…​

3. We can just explain the false friends.

… I argue that there are also plenty of “false friends,” words we don’t know we don’t know—not because the KJV translators were obscure or because modern readers are intellectually deficient, but simply because language changes over time and we shouldn’t be expected to keep up with all those changes in order to read our Bibles.

But my KJV-Only readers insist that this problem is surmountable.

… sadly, I don’t think he can succeed in teaching children or new believers to read the KJV with the level of understanding its original readers would have had. Too many specialized linguistic skills are required.​

4. The KJV translators didn’t produce a translation readable by the plough boy.

Several KJV-Only respondents have suggested that the KJV translators themselves didn’t produce a translation that the “plough boy”—the man on the street—could understand. In other words, the translators asked readers to rise to the level of the KJV rather than lowering the Bible to meet readers. My calls for readability, they say, are really calls for dumbing down the Bible.

I think this objection confuses the inherent difficulty of many portions of the Bible with the difficulties that are posed by archaic language. Peter acknowledges that Paul wrote things that are “hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). I don’t think the hard parts should be forced down to lowest common denominator level in every translation…​

5. Accuracy trumps readability.

I’ve always felt that the concept of accuracy in translation rather requires readability: if people can’t read besom (Isa 14:23 KJV) but they can read broom, then besom is actually “inaccurate” in a definite sense. As one scholar I quoted in my book asked, “If a translation is published but fails to communicate, is it really a translation?”​