View Single Post
  #5  
Old 07-01-2008, 06:12 AM
bibleprotector's Avatar
bibleprotector bibleprotector is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Australia
Posts: 587
Default

Quote:
But since the English language has changed and does trip up some very sincere readers, I see the need for updating ... I'm aware of a few words being a problem for people, words like "prevent" and "dumb" which simply don't mean now what they meant in 1611 and those do need to be defined.
This is not the case. The Bible words have not changed their meaning, nor has the meaning of the Bible words been lost, nor have they been erased from public consciousness. While many people may be ignorant of the meaning of a few words, this does not mean that we should change the Bible to suit modern tastes or modern usage.

It is a very slippery slope to even change one word. As soon as you allow this, you allow the idea that modern people can impose their present ideas onto God's Word. You see, if you changed a small thing like "marishes" to "marshes", you allow for any change. You would have just said that the Word of God is not fixed, but open to continual adjustment. That is exactly how the modern version thing came about. In the 1800s people talked about updating a few minor things, what they got was Westcott and Hort's work. Every now and again one or other publisher might bring out a slightly modernised King James Version, such as the KJ21 or the MKJV, but these kinds of things are often sinister in that they contain much more... they invariably contain meaning changes.

This is because people do not yet understand that a word like "glistering" does not mean "glistening". The Oxford English Dictionary shows that they are two different words from two different etymologies. "Glistering" is brilliant sparkling light, whereas "glistening" is twinkling sparkling light. The difference is in the intensity. Now, the well meaning reviser will come along and change something like "glistering" because he thinks it to be some archaic spelling, not realising that he has just altered the inerrant Word of God.

I do not agree with what Edward Hills said here concerning the "changing English", but he did show how his own position would fail if any ever tried to revise just the English of the King James Bible:

"It is possible, if the Lord tarry that in the future the English language will change so much that a new English translation of the Bible will become absolutely necessary. But in that case any version which we prepare today would be equally antiquated. Hence this is a matter which we must leave to God, who alone knows what is in store for us. For the present, however, and the foreseeable future no new translation is needed to take the place of the King James Version."