The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
Religion
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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