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The King James Version of the Bible: Difference between revisions
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There are a number of translations available today, that are not only much clearer to read, but also more faithful to the original texts than the King James Version. | There are a number of translations available today, that are not only much clearer to read, but also more faithful to the original texts than the King James Version. | ||
=What is the best Bible translation?= | |||
[[Image:Bible translations-620x250.png|thumb|right|250px]] | |||
Translations may be located anywhere between the two poles of formal equivalence (literal) and dynamic equivalence (free). A strictly literal translation would be largely unintelligible, but traditional translations, such as KJV, RSV, and NIV, have tended to translate sentence structures and figures of speech literally. These are usually perceived as intelligible and often normal, if sometimes a bit unusual for English. Dynamic equivalence (NEB, TEV) makes little if any attempt to preserve original sentence structure, but seeks to state the meaning of the text in natural contemporary idiom. Original metaphors may be retained if their meaning is clear to a contemporary readership. Today it seems clear that both types of translations have their place. Formal equivalence versions are convenient for academic study, dynamic equivalence for private reading. Both are used in public worship.<ref>Roger A. Bullard, “Bible Translations,” ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, and Astrid B. Beck, Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 183.</ref> | |||
It is interesting that the King James translators faced all the same resurrected issues that modern translations are faced with. There were those, for instance, who felt that a new translation implied that the church had been without the Word of God until then. In the preface already quoted the translators report their critics’ concerns. | |||
:''Hath the Church been deceived, say they, all this while?… We hoped that we had been in the right way, that we had had the oracles of God delivered unto us.… Hath the bread been delivered by the Fathers of the Church?… Was their translation good before? Why do they now mend it? Was it not good? (p. xvii). | |||
Their reply was that, | |||
:''We do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English set forth by men of our profession … containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God: as the King’s speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it be not interpreted by every translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.… No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it (p. xix). | |||
If, even the “meanest” (lowest in quality) of the existing translations could be rightly called the Word of God, to what purpose did the King James translators attempt yet another one? Here they actually quote Jerome (“Hierome” is their spelling), among others, as a worthy example for their own approach of returning yet again to existing Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. They respond to the question of “what they had before them” when they translated the Authorized Version. | |||
:''If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New. These are the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, wherethrough the olive branches empty themselves into the gold. Saint Augustine calleth them precedent, or original, tongues; Saint Hierome, fountains. The same Hierome affirmeth, and Gratian hath not spared to put into his decree, That as the credit of the old books (he meaneth of the Old Testament) is to be tried by the Hebrew volumes; so of the New by the Greek tongue, he meaneth by the original Greek. If truth be to be tried by these tongues, then whence should a translation be made, but out of them. These tongues therefore (the Scriptures, we say, in those tongues) we set before us to translate, being the tongues wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his Prophets and Apostles (p. xxiii). | |||
In addition, the King James translators included in their margins alternate translations for words or expressions whose precise meaning was unknown to them despite their diligent consulting of every text and translation available. They anticipated that this practice of giving multiple translations would be unsettling to some. | |||
:''Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the margin, lest the authority of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that show of uncertainty should somewhat be shaken (p. xxiii). | |||
But their own view was that the variety of translations was good, not evil. In support of their position they quoted Augustine, who had said that “variety of translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures” (p. xxiv). And they argued that it was better not to dogmatize about some of the uncertain words of the original languages. | |||
:''There be many words in the Scriptures which be never found there but once, (having neither brother nor neighbor, as the Hebrews speak) so that we cannot be holpen by conferences of places. Again, there be many rare names of certain birds, beasts, and precious stones, &c. concerning which the Hebrews themselves are so divided among themselves for judgment, that they may seem to have defined this or that, rather because they would say something, than because they were sure of that which they said, as S. Hierome somewhere saith of the Septuagint. Now in such a case doth not a margin do well to admonish the Reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily? (p. xxiv).<ref>James B. Williams and Randolph Shaylor, eds., From the Mind of God to the Mind of Man: A Layman’s Guide to How We Got Our Bible (Greenville, SC; Belfast, Northern Ireland: Ambassador-Emerald International, 1999), 77–79.</ref> | |||
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