WILL THE REAL KING JAMES VERSION PLEASE STAND UP?
ROBERT MEYERS

An extraordinary attack has been launched upon modern versions of the Bible by that doughty old Church of Christ warrior, Foy E. Wallace, Jr. His latest shelling appears in a new publication called First Century Christian. In it, Mr. Wallace says some incredible things which, nevertheless, may be believed because of the luster of his name in many parts of the Southwest.

In his eulogy of the King James version as, apparently, the only trustworthy translation, Mr. Wallace actually equates it in his final paragraph with the Bible itself. This will be particularly disturbing to Church of Christ Bible teachers who have been trying patiently for years to distinguish between the Bible, as originally composed, and all subsequent and varying versions of it.

It may be that this strange regression to a 1611 version is part of a fear reaction to the new attitudes now spreading among Churches of Christ. It is usual in such cases not only to hang on to the present but to hark back nostalgically to childhood. Mr. Wallace speaks fondly of the beautiful rhythms of the King James version and of his having memorized long ago the “precious passages.” I feel sympathy for him, for I did my memorizing from that version, too, and its rhythms still seem magnificent to me. I also understand his remembering those happy days when he had no peer as an expounder of the interpretations of the Church of Christ. It must seem to him that the particular religious group he defended so ardently for years has vanished in dense fog and has to be groped for as in dreams.

But my sympathy cannot lessen my dismay at his charge that the new versions are really only perversions. That they are imperfect all of us would readily admit, but for the modern student they are superior to the King James version in a multitude of ways. I should hope that Mr. Wallace will nor obscure that fact for too many young men and women growing up in Church of Christ homes where his name is honored.

Mr. Wallace’s chastisement of modern versions reminds me of another rebuke made once by a famed Hebrew scholar against the new version of his day. He said that he “would rather be torn asunder by wild horses than allow such a version to be imposed on the Church.” He argued that in fifteen verses of Luke 3, the translators had fifteen score of idle words to account for in the day of judgment. He thought that the sponsor of the version would one day see the man who oversaw it in hell, suffering for his leadership. He felt that the older version he already knew and used was better and that only evil could come from a new translation.

The man I have just quoted was Hugh Broughton. His comments were written to King James. The version he was excoriating was the King James. Only the dates and the names are different, you see; men have always been reluctant to let go of the old. Broughton would surely have been surprised could he have known that in 1967 some men would be holding up the King James version as the only one that preserves the purity of the church.

Perhaps the most ironic error in Mr. Wallace’s reasoning is suggested by my title. When a man exalts the King James version he should be asked, Which King James version do you have in mind? For there have been several revisions of the translation made in 1611. One was made quickly in 1613, but shows more than 400 variations from the first edition. Broughton himself helped spark a major revision in 1629. There was a minor one in 1638. The major changes came in the eighteenth century. Dr. Thomas Paris did an extensive revision at Cambridge in 1762 and Dr. Benjamin Blayney did another at Oxford in 1759, spending four years in modernizing punctuation, spelling, and misleading expressions. Edgar J. Goodspeed, whose scholarship Mr. Wallace would not likely question, states flatly that there are 75,000 differences between our present King James versions and the original of 1611. It would be interesting to know which version Mr. Wallace considers the real one, for if he allows constant modernizing of the King James he can hardly disallow other efforts to make the Bible relevant to new generations.

It has seemed to me for years that it would be helpful if Bible teachers held short courses in the art of translation. They would not need to be Greek scholars. Any foreign language would do for illustrative purposes. If they did not themselves know any language besides English, they could almost always find persons in their classes who did and who could assist them. A few weeks of instruction in the art of translating would guarantee that exposed students would not be in danger of taking such essays as Mr. Wallace’s seriously.

One of the most perceptive comments I have seen about translation problems is made by John Ciardi, American poet, literary critic, and translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It should be remembered, in reading his comments, that an enormous part of the Bible is poetry, which is especially difficult to translate into another language. Here are his words:

“When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords. It can, however, make recognizably the same ‘music’, the same air. But it can do so only when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano.

“Language too is an instrument, and each language has its own logic. I believe that the process of rendering from language to language is better conceived as a ‘transposition’ than as a ‘translation’, for ‘translation’ implies a series of word-for-word equivalents that do not exist across language boundaries any more than piano sounds exist in the violin.

“The motion of word-for-word equivalents also strikes me as false to the nature of poetry. Poetry is not made of words but of word-complexes, elaborate structures involving, among other things, denotations, connotations, rhythms, puns, juxtapositions, and echoes of the tradition in which the poet is writing.”

One of the principal faults of the King James is that its translators believed too strongly in trying for word-for-word equivalents. Their distorted literalism got them into awkward situations repeatedly and they produced a version which, particularly in the New Testament, bore little resemblance in tone and style to the original. It is now known that the word-for-word method cannot provide the best translations. If Mr. Ciardi does not make this clear, the reader has only to consider the difficulty of translating the English idiom “flat busted” (meaning financially insolvent) into French prose. No American has any trouble with this common idiom, but it is impossible to carry all its nuances across into a foreign tongue. Koine Greek had its own idioms, like any other language, and only an idiomatic translation can come close to doing it justice. Anyone who wants dramatic proof of this may read Luke 18:5 in the King James and then study the racily colloquial expression which is actually used in the original Greek.

The King James, despite its matchless rhythms, has far too many flaws for the modern, serious Bible student. Its over-literalism is the major one, but the minor ones include its lack of a systematic approach to measurements (coinage is translated into British equivalents but is often left vague; cf. “pieces of silver” in Luke 15:8 or “piece of money” in Matt. 17:27, although the original is quite definite in these places); its failure to bring the Old and New Testaments into harmony on such details as spelling proper names (Noah-Noe, Elijah-Elias, Isaiah-Esaias, Hosea-Osee) , which creates needless difficulties for beginners; and its many archaisms and textural blunders, including such famed misprints as “strain at a gnat” in Matt. 23:23, intended by the translators to read “strain out a gnat,”

Too-ardent defenders of the King James should also remember that it printed the Apocrypha without qualification of its value as Scripture. If the real King James version is the one printed in 1611, Mr. Wallace should insist that the Apocrypha be included in it on the same terms as were expressed in that edition. A bible without the Apocrypha is not a true King James version. It not only included those books without scruple and took them seriously, but in 1615 one of the committee members, Archbishop Abbot, forbade the sale of Bibles not including the Apocrypha on pain of a year’s imprisonment.

The truth is that the King James committee was not eager to translate a radically different version. One of their fifteen specific guidance rules stated that they were to follow the Bishops Bible, altering it as little “as the truth of the original will permit.” Since the Bishops was based on the Great Bible, and the Great goes back heavily to Tyndale, it is estimated that about ninety per cent of the King James is Tyndalian. It might make more sense for Mr. Wallace to urge us back to Tyndale and Wycliffe, or better yet to the earliest Anglo-Saxon Gospels of about 1000 A.D. If it is ancient English we want, we cannot be better served than by returning all the way to the very wellsprings of translations in that tongue. It may be that thousands cannot read Old or Middle English, of course, but I can find thousands today who cannot read King James English either. If Mr. Wallace or others feel I am overstating, I should be happy to furnish results of college tests given to secular and Christian college students to determine how perceptively they could read King James’ sixteenth century English Bible.

It is too bad that the original Preface is not printed with the King James. In it, one of the translators, Miles Smith, tried to conciliate those lovers of earlier English versions who might be offended by the new one. “Truly (good Christian reader) we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one. . .” The Committee was obviously under no illusion that it was producing the definitive version for all time, but only that it was doing for its own age a competent job of compilation and correction.

Some of the motives for the King James were probably not so noble as that. There was terrific rivalry between the Bishops Bible and the Geneva Bible. Since it was occasioning turbulence in the realm, James thought a new translation might help. It is believed that he may have been personally vexed by some marginal notes in the popular Geneva version. (An example is in 2 Chron. 15:16, which says that Asa “removed his mother from being queen because she had made an idol in a grove.” The marginal comments says: “Herein he showed that he lacked zeal, for she ought to have died.” James would remember his mother, the Queen of Scots. And a note on Exodus 1, in the margin, suggests that disobedience to the king of Egypt was “lawful” James had strong notions about the divine rights of kings; this note would have irked him).

The King James version grew out of specific needs for that day. It was a magnificent achievement and has been polished repeatedly since, so that generations of English-speaking peoples have drunk its words and rhythms in with their mothers’ milk. But for the man in the street who needs the clearest prose he can find, it is not the best version, and for the serious student who needs the clearest prose he can find, it is not the best version, and for the serious student who seeks the results of three hundred and fifty years of Biblical scholarship, it is obviously a venerable and curious relic.

Mr. Wallace makes one astounding remark about the new versions. He says that the claim that they simplify the language of the Bible is sheer propaganda and is not true. “The reputed new versions are based on the Latin vocabulary which consists of long words. But the words of the old version, especially the King James Version, are the short words based on the Greek vernacular; and the Latin does not translate as simply as the King James English.” It is not easy to grapple with these comments, for they are as astonishingly erroneous as a man would be today who stood in a public place and affirmed that no man had ever rocketed into space.

The new versions are certainly not based on the Latin vocabulary. As a matter of fact, it is this Latin base which they seek to get away from. The King James was heavily dependent on a Latinate vocabulary; this is one of its faults. Here is an illustration: “For the administration of this service not only supplieth the wants of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; while by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men.” (2 Cor. 9:12-13)

This passage fairly sags with the heaviness of its Latinic words. Try reading it aloud to hear its sonorous rhythms. When you do, observe how difficult it is for either you or your auditors to follow the thought. The Phillips version, on the other hand, simplifies this difficult passage: “For your giving does not end in meeting the wants of your fellow Christians. It also results in an overflowing tide of thanksgiving to God. Moreover, your very giving proves the reality of your faith and that means that men thank God that you practice the Gospel that you profess to believe in, as well as for the actual gifts you make to them and to others.”

Which do you find easier to follow? Mr. Wallace says that “the comment that has been put into circulation that it is hard to understand [the King James version], is ludicrous—the Ph.D.’s want it simplified so they can understand it! But the new versions do not simplify anything—they rather confuse everything.” This is so painfully inept that I must charge the editor of First Century Christian with not being fair to Mr. Wallace. He should have urged submission of another article on some subject about which Mr. Wallace could speak with authority.

I do not know why the Ph.D.’s seem so menacing to many now writing, unless it is the result of an overpowering fear that they may lead the Churches of Christ into the twentieth century, but it is especially ironic that Mr. Wallace should scoff at them. The very version he professes to admire above all others has been most extensively revised by Dr. Paris and Dr. Blayney. The original committee members were men with precisely the kind of formal training which confers the doctorate today. He is indebted to Ph.D.’s for the very translation he loves, yet he maligns them as stupid and arrogant men today. His inconsistency is even more apparent when he gladly quotes “Doctor Scott of the Northwestern University Seminary” when he finds that gentleman charging the translators of one modern version with dishonesty. This is a pattern of Church of Christism which has long been familiar to me. We use scholarship and authority when it supports us; we vilify and degrade it when it opposes us. How dare we speak of the arrogance of others?

If Mr. Wallace’s article should seriously upset anyone, let him buy the little list of words edited by Luther Weigle, Dean Emeritus of Yale University Divinity School and chairman of the Standard Bible Committee. Entitled Bible Words That Have Changed in Meaning, it lists 857 terms in a graphic demonstration of how important it is to continue to translate the Bible into understandable modern English. Among words and phrases which have changed their meanings are these: by and by (in 1611 it meant immediately); conversation (in 1611 it meant behavior); prevent (in 1611 it meant precede) ; outlandish (in 1611 it meant foreign).

Some of the old King James spellings include moneth, fernace, charet, middes, thorow, souldiers, ancres, figge tree, oyle, ayre, creeple, Hierusalem, and Moyses. Fortunately, we have modernized these or Mr. Wallace would have even more difficulty getting twentieth century Americans to study from the King James.

If there is yet any doubt about whether modern versions really simplify, try 2 Cor. 6:12 out on the next passer-by in your block. “Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.” I could make a fortune wagering that nine out of ten average Americans would fumble the words “straitened” and “bowels” in this passage, without professional help. Of course, the King James version can be seen in one light as the Preacher’s Best Friend anyway; he can spend about forty per cent of his time explaining to his class what words and sentences mean which, if read in a modern speech version, would be instantly clear to them. To argue that the King James is simple and clear as compared with the modern versions seems so willfully wrongheaded that I would not take time to respond to it except for my fear that some may give too credulous a hearing to men whose names have long been synonymous with “soundness.”

We have had attacks on Church of Christ college teachers for some time now. They have been mounting in intensity, with suggestions that faculties should be purged of all but “sound” men. This bodes ill for those who seek to make the Church of Christ brotherhood significant in this century. No one is likely to pay serious attention to a group of people who purge their universities to be sure that no alien views corrupt the True Believers. But to argue seriously that the purity of the church is dependent on use of the King James version is even more ridiculous and can only do harm to those who labor to make the Church of Christ a contributing religious group in our time.—Wichita State University, Wichita, Kan.