More than half of younger people have never heard of the King James Bible, a survey shows.
Fifty-one per cent of under-35s did not know what the Authorised Version was, compared with 28 per cent of over-55s.
The Authorised King James Version, which will be 400 years old next year, took the English language around the world and is thought to be the biggest-selling book ever.
I wonder what percentage have heard of the “St. James” bible?
More than half have never heard of a book.
It’s sad, but frankly I can’t read it. For an appreciation see Lewis’ “Literary Impact of the Authorized Version”. I’m unlettered so I depend on things like that. The KJV is the Anglican Church Slavonic. Plenty of people to decry its loss, but very few who crack it open.
Elizabethan language in the ordinary of the liturgy is one thing, since comprehension comes with regular repetition and the essence of what is prayed is etched on the memory after a while, but the Scriptures which aren’t read in church week in, week out, year in, year out, really should be from the RSV or ESV or some such reliable contemporary idiom.
Great comments in #s 3 & 4. The KJV is almost impenetrable for most people today. Insistence on it is to set up a system like Islam, in which authoritative scripture must be in Arabic and people who don’t know the language simply accept whatever the Mullah yells at them. To insist on the KJV as normative is in this sense to go against the aims of the Reformers!
I don’t discount the KJV but we have come to a time to consult for sermon and lesson preparation rather than preach/teach it. It is normal human change – big in some ways and of course painful but I don’t think it should be taken as some fatal blow to Christian faith.
I think it’s sad that the language of the KJV is now “almost impenetrable” to so many people today. It’s really very similar to modern English — you just have to master a handful of now-archaic syntactical constructions and some unfamiliar vocabulary.
Aside from the KJV, what does this mean for Shakespeare? Is the Bard finally going to pass into obscurity, as one speaking an incomprehensible foreign language? Please, let it not be so.
In the case of the Bible, of course we’re in no danger of losing the text — there are any number of modern English translations available. But, to my mind, none of them have ever approached the poetry, the richness, of the KJV translation.
Psalm 42:1-4 (KJV)
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
Psalm 42:1-4 (NIV)
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?â€
These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.
It’s just not the same.
I heartily agree, Ross. In school I was given enough Shakespeare that KJV is only slightly more difficult to read than a newspaper. I own four or five different translations, but it’s my KJV that I carry to church or bible study. It inspires me in a way the more modern translations don’t. This strikes me much the same way as when I see “translations” of Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet in the bookstore.
Pretty #6, but without comprehension isn’t it just the ‘holiness of beauty’? I don’t think some people can even understand the NIV, where ‘pants’ = ‘yearns’ and ‘food’ more like ‘diet’, ‘query’ for ‘say to’. That is the reality. It can be lovelier and understood, but has to be dynamic. Oops, but then it won’t be exact. And we may then loose our way. A hard decision.
The NIV has its problems and sounds rough when read in public assembly. It will come off badly by any comparison. What’s not to like about the ESV?
I think it is beautiful, too. And certainly some of the most memorable expressions of important passages remain in the KJV (hard to improve on John’s Prologue, for instance.) And if an actual congregation, prayer group or even a couple of Christian friends are able to read KJV and be edified in Christ, by all means that should be their translation of choice.
My only objection would be to a position which says, “If we don’t use this version, we compromise the faith.” KJV is part of our treasured heritage, but the reality is that fruitful preaching and teaching in the vast majority of our churches today will not come direct from that version of the Bible.
The KJV is beautiful and poetic, but there have also been plenty of better manuscripts discovered since 1611. The modern transitions, while not as poetic, are often closer to the original sources. And that’s leaving the comprehensibility aside.
I probably enjoy the language and flow of the King James the most of any of the Bible translations I own, but admit I rarely read it any more because I know there are inaccuracies in it. So I stick to the dry-as-dust but supposedly accurate ESV for most of my Bible study.
But then again, I still like the ’28 BCP, and have a hard time with anything more recent than that.
In a sense one of the real losses with the development of multiple translations is the loss of a common understanding of what the Scriptures actually say. I notice this a lot because in our church we are encouraging attenders to memorize passages of scripture which are the subject of the sermon. We say it together before the sermon, and I notice that even our senior pastor slips up on the verse quite a bit, not because he doesn’t know it, but because he had grown up memorizing a different translation.
There was a time not so long ago, say our grandparents’ generation, when virtually everyone who would refer to Scripture would be thinking of the KJV version of it and would be familiar with large portions of scripture, even if they were not necessarily believers. Allusions to scripture appea
#10 Timothy Fountain says:
Oh, certainly, I agree with that. At the end of the day what’s most important is that Scripture be read “in a tongue understanded of the people.”
I’m just saddened that a thing of beauty seems to be passing out of the reach of so many people.
I haven’t heard this from any commenter on this post, but often when I have listen to or read things from the dogmatically KJV only crowd, I have had a curious felling of [i]déjà vu[/i]. These folks, and there are more than I thought, are insistent on the preservation of the Word of God, as they have received it. They fear that in a multitude of translations, a multitude of interpretations will fight for ascendency, and as footnotes and study guides proliferate among every conceivable translation for every conceivable market group, the precious word will become just another item to hawk in the marketplace. The Word of God between the boards will be lost, as each commentator rises to the status of holy writ by virtue of being bound together with something called the Bible.
The history of the last several decades makes their concerns understandable.
Interestingly enough (and you reformation historians can well correct me), it seems much the same sort of worry, and the same answers those had who fought translation of the scriptures into the vernacular. Latin was stable, The Latin text was what it was, there was no room for discussion, and it had served Christendom for many hundreds of years. With practice, any intelligent man can learn enough Latin to understand; and for what he does not understand, let him look to mother Church. Very similar!
Of course, when translated out of Greek, Latin [b][i]was[/i][/b] the vernacular. When the OT was translated out of Hebrew, Greek [i] was[/i] the vernacular.
BTW, I too love much from the Authorized Version, and I like the awkward (to my ears) phrasing, and “wordiness†of the old BsCP. It forces me to really think about the text, and try to understand in a way newer versions de not. But that is only partially the text. it is also the writer, or the translator.
Well, I have an interesting relationship with the King Jimmy Version. That’s largely the book from which I learned to read. That was the only book we had in the house when I was little that had both pictures and print large enough for a beginning reader to be able to sound out words. So, when I am writing a sermon and quote scripture, its usually from the KJV. I usually have to “translate it” in my head into a modern vernacular English version.
What is ironic about my preceding paragraph is that my parents were not particularly religious when I was growing up. We attended church very sporadically, and rarely did we attend the same church twice in a row. Likewise, I’m at the very tail end of Generation X or the very beginning of Generation Y depending on how you calculate such things. I am probably a freakish anomaly in terms of my age group.
#10 (hard to improve on John’s Prologue, for instance – this is true, I just looked it up, the words we comitted to memory from Vacation Bible School many years ago, didn’t know it came from KJV. I have a mongrel Bible translation from Chicago 1939 with a foreward by Edgar Goodspeed. Huh? It reads well though.
For service I prefer the 1928 BCP. Reads beautifully and offers the most heartfelt language:
“…the memory of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable…”
These are words I remember. Rite I, no longer spoken in the all inclusive, open minded, here-for-everyone TEC.
One READS the NIV or the like because it conveys information. One MEMORIZES the King James for the same reason one memorizes Robert Frost or Hardy or T S Eliot – that this language says things ordinary language is incapable of saying. Such is the nature of poetry. King James has this remarkable distinction, that its poetry extends over long passages, its intensity is maintained far beyond a few stanzas, that its poetry opens avenues of insight, knowledge and awareness that cannot be found in correctness of text and accuracy of information. Is all truth beauty and all beauty truth? No, but some is, far beyond the grasp of reason and knowledge; it doesn’t change what you know, it changes who you are.
Consider how Euclid’s proof that there is no final prime takes one’s breath away; is it the knowledge that there is no final prime that does it? Or does the universe suddenly gain a translucence, a lambency that conveys a certainty beyond mathematics?
Larry
Larry, #18, has hit the nail square on: one reads the NIV for information, but one memorizes the KJV. I remember passages of Scripture in the language of the KJV. In my parish we use the “old” Prayer Book (Canada 1962, much like US 1928), incl. the collects, epistles and gospels, which are KJV, but when I repeat bits of them in sermons, it’s most often RSV, which I believe helps to inform listeners as to what they heard in the proclamation of the Word. And yes, there’s nothing like John 1.1-14 in the KJV: reading it on Christmas morning is one of the highlights of the liturgical year for me!
Everyone knows that the Geneva Bible is the true word of God. That modern King James thing is just a passing fancy. As all fads fade, so too the KJV.
The King James Version of the Bible gave us the words we use today when we pray the Lord’s Prayer and when we listen to the 23’rd Psalm, the King James Version is still more understandable and fulfilling than some of the later translations.
It would be very sad if we deprived those who wish to study the Bible of the poetic and intellectual truths expressed in the King James version of the Bible simply because we have been told that this generation does not have the intellectual capacity to understand that which has sustained many generations of Christian children and adults in the past.
Correct inaccuracies, if our pitiful language will allow, but for the most part the King James Version is accurate so please don’t deprive this generation of that which speaks to so many Christians with such poetic clarity.
I don’t think that anyone is depriving anyone of the KJV. I think that this generation is rejecting it because of its Elizabethan English. No one speaks that way anymore, so for most of the people of today, it is a cypher. Not many read Beowolf the way it was meant to be read, either.
HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!
I sure am glad someone translated it for me to read and enjoy.
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
No one speaks that way anymore, so for most of the people of today, it is a cypher. Not many read Beowolf the way it was meant to be read, either.”
Both true and false. Shall we no longer bother with Homer, or, for that matter, Melville and the language of Moby Dick?They cannot understand? Then let their ignorance stand them in better stead. There are many who cannot and will not read the translation of Beowulf either. Well what then? Do you wish to hear the alliterative music of Beowulf? Learn old English. Then you will bear into the future what might otherwise be lost. Continuity with the past lays hard demands on those who will bear it forward. Shall we drop this burden because we must learn what others will not? Larry
on us again and again.
By all means let us keep Homer and Melville, but language is living and needs to be refreshed now and again or it will stagnate and die. I still remember most of the verses I have committed to memory in KJV language. I love contemporary renditions of Shakespeare. I love and use the 1928 BCP and I am not even Anglican. But I also know that the vast majority of people will not read the KJV. The first version (and only version) of the Bible that I have read cover to cover was the NIV. The first NT I ever read cover to cover was the Good News for Modern Man edition. I had read the NT KJV and quite a bit of the OT in KJV, but by far and away the NIV (as flawed as it is) has been the Bible that I could read and comprehend in context…because I wasn’t lost in all the poetic beauty and archaic expression. I admire the KJV. The wording is lyrical and it lends itself to memorization of passages…but it was/is a difficult read if one wants to grasp larger concepts in the context of the historic reality that the story unfolds in. When I read Homer, I am not reading it to understand the meaning of life and my relationship to my God…so a lot of poetry is fine. It is welcome. The same of the Bard. But when I want to understand what God is saying to me through His word, and not just be wowed by the beauty of language, I sure do not turn to the KJV.
[blockquote]More than half of younger people have never heard of the King James Bible, a survey shows.
Fifty-one per cent of under-35s did not know what the Authorised Version was, compared with 28 per cent of over-55s.[/blockquote]
We may discuss the value of different translations of the Bible but no matter which translation you favor it seems to me that this survey shows that young people simply are not receiving the kind of religious and historical education they should be given. This survey was specific to the King James Bible and we do not know if these young people are more aware of later translations which do not have as much historical significance but regardless of this, it is sad to see that they are so unaware.