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
Professor Cook, of Yale, suggests that four
traits make the Bible easy to translate into any
language: universality of interest, so that there
are apt to be words in any language to express
what it means, since it expresses nothing but
what men all talk about; then, the concreteness
and picturesqueness of its language, avoiding
abstract phrases which might be difficult to
reproduce in another tongue; then, the simplicity
of its structure, so that it can be taken
in small bits, and long complicated sentences
are not needed; and, finally, its rhythm, so that
part easily follows part and the words catch a
kind of swing which is not difficult to imitate.
That is a very true analysis. The Bible is the
most easily translated book there is, and has
become the classic for more languages than any
other one book. It is brought about in part in
our English version by the faithfulness of the
translators to the original.
Passing from these general considerations,
let us look directly at the English Bible itself
and its literary qualities. The first thing that
attracts attention is its use of words, and since
words lie at the root of all literature it is worth
while to stop for them for a moment. Two
things are to be said about the words: first,
that they are few; and, secondly, that they are
short. The vocabulary of the English Bible is
not an extensive one. Shakespeare uses from
fifteen to twenty thousand words. In Milton's
verse he uses about thirteen thousand. In the
Old Testament, in the Hebrew and Chaldaic
tongue, there are fifty-six hundred and forty-
two words. In the New Testament, in the Greek,
there are forty-eight hundred. But in the whole
of the King James version there are only about
six thousand different words. The vocabulary
is plainly a narrow one for a book of its size.
While, as was said before, the translators avoided
using the same word always for translation of
the same original, they yet managed to recur
to the same words often enough so that this
comparatively small list of six thousand words,
about one-third Shakespeare's vocabulary, sufficed
for the stating of the truth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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