Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/64

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Against The Use of The King James Version of The Bible in 1964 (Especially by Immigrants) Part 1

Topic - Bible

INTRODUCTION

By means of the Reformation it pleased God to put His Word back on the pulpit where it serves as the one and only source and norm of preaching and into the hands of the believers.

Translating the Bible from the original languages was and is especially the task of Biblical scholars; preaching and teaching its contents was and is the task of the ministers, who are therefore rightly called in our Reformed tradition, V.D.M., ministers (servants) of the Divine Word. The task of the members of the congregations was and is: reading the Bible to understand the preaching and listening attentively to the preaching in order to understand in an ever increasing degree "what the Spirit gays to the Churches".

Original text and translations

The New Testament was written in the comparatively simple Greek language which was generally understood in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea at the time of the apostle Paul. Most of the Jews living outside of Palestine (a few millions) at that time read their Old Testament in that language too. The original text of the Old Testament is of course in the Hebrew language. On behalf of the Jews living in Egypt some centuries before Christ was born the king of that country ordered a translation of the O.T. made into the Greek language. That translation is called the Septuagint, meaning the seventy. It is remarkable that when the O.T. is quoted in the New Testament more often than not it is the Greek translation that is quoted and not the original Hebrew text.

Now the Mohammedans assert most forcefully that only the Arab text of their holy book, the Q'uran, is to be considered the Q'uran itself: translations they see as commentaries only. There is of course a good deal of truth in that opinion. Even the best translation in any language can never take the place of the original. That is obvious from the following fact. A certain word has to be translated, a very important word, but an equivalent in the strictest sense simply does not exist in the language in which the Word of God has to be translated. What are the translators to do then? They take the nearest word they can find, a word that more or less conveys the meaning of the original word.

Or the word to be translated has several shades of meaning; the translators have to make a choice which shade of meaning they will express; the rich meaning of the original word is limited in the translation. Moreover, when a person has to make a choice, his choice may be good or not so good.

From practically every mission field horrible examples can be given how serious mistakes were made in translating the Bible, because a word chosen to represent a Word from Scripture actually meant something very different than the translators thought it meant.

But how risky and how imperfect even the best translation may be, the work has to be done just the same. Every Christian has a right to hear and read the Word of God in his own tongue. It is specifically the minister's task in preaching and in teaching to let the congregation understand what is meant and what is not. How important this is one can discover when speaking with a highly educated non-Christian. When he starts reading the Bible he misunderstands it again and again; he interprets the Bible from his own un-Christian world of ideas and convictions, because he lacks the background of many years of instruction and listening to preaching which even the most uneducated Christian has, provided that he attended catechism classes in his youth and faithfully attends the worship services.

In the final analysis it is only the Spirit of God Who enables us to understand the Word of God; we never should forget that. When our years advance and we simultaneously grow in grace our enriched experience helps us to understand in our later years which was not clear to us when we were young.

Study of the works of Christians who lived before us is important as well; we are not the first generation of Christians, many have gone before us. They wrestled to understand the Word of God in their days and we have to listen carefully when they tell us how they have understood the Word of God. That's where the study of theology comes in.

God wants to address us in the language we understand

The phophet Elijah addressed king Achab with the Word of God in the language that was used by the people in their daily life in those days; when the Jews had lost the knowledge of Hebrew in the country of Egypt a translation of the O.T. was prepared for them in the same language which they daily used. The apostle Paul too used, when preaching, the same language that people spoke and heard everyday. We also remember that when the Spirit enabled the apostles on the day of Pentecost to address people whose language they had never learned, we read: "And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own language".

Obviously the Spirit of God spoke the language of that day and place and He had no preference, not even use for an archaic form of the language which was in use a few centuries before that time!

Every generation has to hear the Word of God in his own language

The Word of God must be available in the very language which people daily use. The King James translation of the Bible served that purpose beautifully in the days that it came from the press: the people then could read the Bible in the very language of their daily life and conversation.

That was in the 17th century.

But language is a living thing. When we were released after a three and a half years' stay in the concentration camp in the meanwhile several words in the Dutch language had come into existence which we did not know: we had to learn them. On the other hand my father used several words and expressions which the present generation of Dutch youngsters would not know what they meant if they heard them.

If that happens already in a comparatively short span of time how much the more have we to reckon with that if the period that separates us from the first edition of the King James Version is a few centuries (1611-1964).

Then we can expect that a good many words are discarded (no longer used); that many new words have come into existence but most serious of all: Words which had a certain meaning in 17th century English are still in use today, but now with a totally different meaning. When you read such a word in the King James Version (K.J.V. from now on) You (mistakenly) think that you understand its meaning, but actually you do not and the worst part of it is: you are not even aware that you misunderstood the text.

Then there is something else. We do not possess the original manuscripts of the Bible; we have to do with copies. Now the copies of the original New Testament manuscripts which the translators of the K.J.V. had at their disposal were in many respects less accurate than those which have been discovered since then. Several places in the K.J.V. which were obscure are clear and understandable in newer translations because the original text was not yet known in the 17th century.

What is "better" is the enemy of what is only "good"

Considering these facts it is utterly ununderstandable that while excellent new translations of the Bible exist in the English language today that still the obsolete K.J.V. is spread and read and even recommended.

The K.J.V. renders it difficult to understand what is meant even for those whose mother tongue is English, let alone for immigrants who in many cases have a hard time already trying to master the simple vocabulary of the Bible in basic English.

For a good many conservative people the K.J.V. is the original text of the Bible; matter of fact it is only a translation with all the disadvantages and limitations that any and every translation has (and a few extra unnecessary difficulties added).

Professor Dr. E. M. Macdonald tells*) us that in a meeting where he had urged people to buy and use the New English Bible (that was in Scotland) a man stood up saying that he was against new translations of the Bible. His argument? "The King James Version was good enough for the apostle Paul; it is good enough for me".

And the apostle Paul who preached to the gentiles in the Greek language of his days was dead 1500 years already when the K.J.V. came from the press!

Another widely used argument in favour of retaining the K.J.V. is its (archaic) beauty. Well, if we are primarily interested in opening people's eyes to the beauty of the English language by all means let us give them a copy of Shakespeare's works to read and to study, but when we read the Bible we do so in order to understand the mind of God, not to satisfy a craving for beauty! Any translation of the Word of God has to be judged on two counts and on two counts only:

a. It is as true to the original text translation can be?

b. Is the translation rendered in the clearest language which people speak and understand now?

If, while meeting these two demands, the translators succeed in expressing themselves beautifully then we have an additional advantage. But beautiful expressions should never be used:

a. at the expense of being faithful to the original text;

b. at the expense of being as clear as can be.

The K.J.V. is expressed in 17th century English, perfectly suitable for people living in England at that time, but not for those living in the world of 1964.

When during the Vatican Council the question was discussed whether R.C. priests would be permitted to say mass in the language of the people instead of in the sacrosanct Latin, a priest remarked dryly: "After all I have no 4th century Romans in my parish" (in the fourth century the Latin which is used in saying mass was daily used by the people in Italy).

So the devastating argument against the use of the K.J.V. in 1964 is that any and every minister in the entire English speaking world can say: "After all, I have no 17th century Englishmen in my congregation".

I have read many arguments in favour of retaining the K.J.V.; practically all of them stressing the archaic beauty point of view. But every time again the answer which the now retired Lord Chief Justice in Britain once gave to an advocate who had been pleading before him, came to mind e.g. "The more one listens to those arguments of yours the more one is convinced that there is nothing in them".

Next month I hope to give some clear examples how the K.J.V. in a good many cases hinders and prevents the understanding of the Word of God instead of promoting it..That is the most serious accusation that can be hurled against any translation, but the K.J.V. has to plead "guilty".

(To be continued)

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