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Old 07-11-2008, 07:11 AM
Connie
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As I've been reading along in this site for the past few months and thinking through all this I have gradually changed my position from thinking a new translation would be needed (I was influenced in that direction at the time by a discussion I think I posted a link to some time ago, between Douglas Wilson and James White), to just thinking that the only change that would be useful would be updating certain words that no longer mean what they meant in 1611. Since I can't make a comprehensive list of such words all I can do is guess that it wouldn't be many -- a dozen, two dozen? (Perhaps there being so few means marginal notes would be a better solution than a revision but most Bibles have way too many such definitional notes as it is.) I understand the argument about the thees and thous and verb endings and accept it.

So I am very far from wanting a "modern speech version" at this point. I just can't go with what still seems like a superstitious clinging to the letter of the text, or what Steven Avery called English-KJB triumphalism. But since I've been gradually moving toward less and less change, who knows, I may still end up agreeing with those who argue for absolutely no change. I just haven't been convinced yet.

I haven't followed the discussions about the underlying texts but I don't see any need for a change there until someone convinces me there is one, which I doubt is going to happen. I trust the KJB translators to have had the knowledge and especially the spiritual judgment to choose the right texts and I know the texts that were found later and underlie the new versions are corrupt, so that ends the subject for me. But changes in the English language are a different kind of problem. The translators had no way of anticipating such changes or doing anything about them. And again I don't mean the thees and thous, I mean particular words. I'll try to remember to start a list of such words.

And yes, one thing that bothers me a lot about the new versions is how they discourage memorization and make congregational unison reading impossible and in general create a chaos in the churches. But that's because they made those thousands of absolutely unnecessary nuisance changes.