Featured Great Book On King James Only by Mark Ward

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with links to the sites, like the one above. That's extremely helpful!

 

Many KJV-only advocates do not want to acknowledge the actual problems that archaic language in the KJV can cause in readers' understanding or misunderstanding of the word of God as translated into English.

 

I've read snitches of that book. However, my nearly-40 years of working against the KJVO myth has taught me a few things, & I see nothing new.

But everyone should read his "false friends" remarx about words used then & now whose meanings have drastically changed. For example, how many know "furniture" used to be a horse's saddle?

However, the one fact that makes the KJVO myth false is its TOTAL LACK OF SCRIPTURAL SUPPORT. Nothing can overcome that fact.

 

The KJV Quiz

The original thread on the quiz.

 

Why? CT promoter I presume.

 

In context of recommending the book, my point was that some of those not strongly committed to the KJV are likely to be swayed by Ward's arguments.

 

I don't know what current sales numbers are but in the past the common people bought the KJV, giving it the majority of sales. Henry Morris stood up for the KJV. He pointed out that it uses fewer different words than other translations so is easier for the common man to understand.

 

You seem to have an assault against a lot of things.

 

Yerp - when they NEED assaulted !

 

Yeah, well, Merry Christmas to you and yours, and we'll look forward to more knock down and drag out discussions, ha!ha!

 

I recall in Authorized Mark Ward wrote that 55% of Americans still use the King James Version of the Bible. This was not presented as a sales number, though, but a use number. I searched online and found one site that says the NIV was the best selling translation in 2018 (ca. 29%). The KJV and NKJV combined was at about 27%.

 

I think it really helps that the King James Version of the Bible is in the "public domain" in the United States.

It is so much easier to be able to use the KJV freely in publications than it is to adhere to all the copyright laws and licensing fees involved when quoting any of the "modern" Bible translations.

 

Maybe, but the most used versions all seem to allow enough free use that anything outside of a commentary would be allowed.

How do I license the NIV?

NIV, 500 verses for free.

The Lockman Foundation - NASB, Amplified Bible, LBLA, and NBLA Bibles

NASB, 1000 verses for free.

PraiseCharts

ESV, 500 verses for free.

FAQ - CSB

CSB, 1000 verses for free.

New King James - Copyright and Usage Information - StudyLight.org

NKJV, 1000 verses for free.

https://www.tyndale.com/permissions

NLT, 500 verses for free.

License for the Lexham English Bible

LEB, 1000 verses for free.

 

Merry Christmas!

I read that the ESV is a revision of the old Revised Standard Version of the 1950s, which I discarded long ago.

I had hoped to start a thread on the newly re-issued Henry Morris Study Bible dealing with Biblical Creation questions. I bought one a few days ago. But I don't have time to even read and summarize the points in his appendix about the KJV. Actually, I only read the appendix once so I am linking it on the internet in the form of a PDF and you can read it for yourself. My copy of this Bible shows a date of 1995 so that might be when it was first published. Morris concluded, "The King James Bible is the most beautiful, the most powerful, and (I strongly believe) the most reliable of any that we have or ever will have, until Christ returns."

Morris also wrote: "The beautifully poetic prose of the King James is a great treasure which should not be lost or forgotten. It has been acclaimed widely as the greatest example of English literature ever written. Apart from a few archaic words or words whose meaning has changed, which can easily be clarified in footnotes, it is as easy to understand today as it was four hundred years ago. That is why the common people today, especially those without higher education, still use and love it. It is usually the "intelligentsia" who tend to favor the modern versions. These modern translations commonly tend to use long words and pedantic rhetoric, but the King James uses mostly one and two-syllable words. Formal studies have always shown its readability index to be 10th grade or lower. There is nothing hard to understand about John 3:16, for example, or Genesis 1:1, or the Ten Commandments, in the King James."

Perhaps you will be interested in Morris's statement:

https://www.isanbible.org/Creationist's-Defense-of-the-KJV_Morris.pdf

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Almost all of the beautiful passages in the KJV New Testament, and many from the Old, is because of William Tyndale, who translated the first New Testament into English from the original Greek in 1526. The KJV mostly copied his work.

 

Thank you for providing me with this relevant information (along with the links pertaining to the subject matter)!

 

Henry Morris does not prove his claims to be factually true. He may have been misled and misinformed by some unreliable KJV-only sources such as Gail Riplinger. I recall that it was indicated that he may have read Gail Riplinger's book before he wrote his article that was later published as a booklet, and evidently he did not carefully check out her unproven claims.

Gail Riplinger claimed that the KJV’s average was 1.310 syllables per word and that the NKJV’s average was 1.313 syllables per word (p. 160). Would three one-thousandths [.003] be a significant difference?

There may be some sound reasons that explain why the KJV may have a lower average syllable count that would have no direct bearing on whether or not it is actually easier to read and especially on whether or not it is easier to understand.

For example, in most editions of the KJV there are several commonly used words that are divided into two or more words where the exact same word united as one word in another English translation may count as a longer, multi-syllable word. Some examples include “to day,” “to morrow,” “for ever,” “for evermore,” “son in law,” “father in law,” “mother in law,” “daughter in law,” “strong holds,“ “way side,” “high way,” “good will,” “any more,“ “any thing,“ “mean while,” “mean time,“ “some time,” “sea side,“ “sea shore,“ “mad man,” “free man,” and “cart wheel.” There may also be other such words. While later KJV editors changed or corrected a few of the uses of “lift” in the 1611 edition for the past tense “lifted,” there are other times where a present KJV has “lift” while the NKJV may have “lifted.” Sometimes the NKJV may have an adverb spelling which may add a syllable while the KJV has an adjective spelling used as an adverb [for example, “more frequently” in the NKJV for “more frequent” in the KJV]. The KJV may present numbers with more words with fewer syllables [for example “forty and three” in the KJV where the NKJV has “forty-three”]. A few words may be united in the KJV that are divided into two words in another translation. Overall, because several of those words divided in the KJV are much more commonly used words, they would contribute to giving the KJV a lower average syllable count. Those divided words do not actually make the KJV easier to read and easier to understand. By the way, some present KJV editions would unite some of those words such as “to day” to either “to-day” or “today” so that those KJV editions would have a different average syllable count. Many times the 1611 KJV edition had “shall be” united as one, longer word “shalbe,” and it would likely have a different average syllable count than a present KJV edition. The KJV could perhaps have as many as several thousand uses of the one-syllable word “and” where the NKJV does not, which would also lower the KJV’s syllable count.

More importantly, the KJV has a number of archaic words or words used with archaic meanings that may be shorter or have fewer syllables than their present English equivalents. Some examples could include the following: “turtle” for “turtledove,” “vale“ for “valley,” “dearth“ for “famine,” “trump“ for “trumpet,” “tongue“ for “language,” “coasts” for “borders,” “host” for “army,” “wood” for “woods” or “forest,” “table” for “tablet,” “even“ for “evening,” “let” for “hinder,” “anon” for “immediately,” “oft“ for “often,” “sod” for “boiled,” “awaked” for “awakened,” “jeoparded” for “jeopardized,” “mete“ for “measure,” “dure“ for “endure,” “ware” for “aware,” “quick“ for “living“ or “alive,” “mean“ for “common,” “still” for “continually,” “attent“ for “attentive,” “by and by” for “immediately,” “ere“ for “before,” “minish” for “diminish,” “fine” for “refine,” “grave” for “engrave,” “astonied” for “astonished,“ “strange” for “foreign,” and “rid” for “deliver.” While such words may help reduce the KJV’s average syllable count, they do not actually make it easier to read and understand. The KJV's archaic language may help give the KJV a lower syllable count, but it does not actually make the KJV easier to understand. The archaic language in the KJV may mislead present-day English readers and make it harder to understand.

Do KJV-only advocates clearly demonstrate and prove that average syllable counts would clearly show which English translation is actually easier for readers to understand as they try to suggest?

 

I don't think that the archaic words point of view is persuasive. As Morris suggested, those could be straightened out with footnotes. Some of the examples are absurd, such as vale, dearth, tongue, wood, even, anon, oft, awaked, mete, quick, mean, still, ere, strange. Spanish use the word tongue for language--and many English speakers have studied Spanish.

If the KJV has a tenth grade reading level, that might explain why it has been popular for 400 years. Also, it is Tyndale and his light shines through even today. I am not KJV Only and I think that very few Americans are, but I think that KJV is a higher form of English than modern translations, which have gone downhill in the level of written language. In other words, the KJV illustrates the 400 year decline in our language skills. I don't think that English has a greater writer than Shakespeare, and he certainly wrote in Elizabethan English. I don't care what translation another person uses, although I know some of them are false translations. I use KJV, NASB, NIV. I own NKJV but I never use it. I also have CSB on my phone and I think that there is a Holman around here somewhere. I have about 500 books and probably have lost more than that over the years.

 

Elizabethen English is certainly more flowery. I prefer a Shakespearean sonnet to modern gibberish like ee cummings. But beauty and a greater degree of focus on cadence doesn’t necessarily equal easily understood. Hemingway wouldn't be improved by being more prolix.