The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
History
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
The third thing which shows their effort at
accuracy is their explicit avoidance of
uniformity in translating the same word. They
tried to put the meaning into English terms.
So, as they say, the one word might become
either "journeying" or "traveling"; one word
might be "thinking" or "supposing," "joy" or
"gladness," "eternal" or "everlasting." One
of the reasons they give for this is quaint enough
to quote. They said they did not think it right
to honor some words by giving them a place
forever in the Bible, while they virtually said
to other equally good words: Get ye hence and
be banished forever. They quote a "certaine
great philosopher" who said that those logs
were happy which became images and were worshiped,
while, other logs as good as they were
laid behind the fire to be burned. So they
sought to use as many English words, familiar
in speech and commonly understood, as they
might, lest they should impoverish the language,
and so lose out of use good words. There is no
doubt that in this effort both to save the language,
and to represent accurately the meaning
of the original, they sometimes overdid that
avoidance of uniformity. There were times
when it would have been well if the words had
been more consistently translated. For example,
in the epistle of James ii: 2, 3, you have goodly
"apparel," vile "raiment," and gay "clothing,"
all translating one Greek word. Our revised
versions have sought to correct such inconsistencies.
But it was all done in the interest
of an accuracy that should yet not be a slavish
uniformity.
This will be enough to illustrate what was
meant in speaking of the effort of the translators
to achieve accuracy in their version.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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