The Majesty Argument for the King James Version

Dr. Donald L. Brake, Sr. wrote "A Monarch's Majestic Translation: The Kings James Bible: The Remarkable Relevance of a Seventeenth-Century Book to the Twenty-First Century."  Dr. Brake may not consider himself a King James advocate (see from 44:45 for a few minutes in this interview), but -- in various forms -- the idea that the King James Version is particularly majestic shows up in a variety of pro-KJV arguments.

Some examples:

"In 1906, Ira Maurice Price, writing in The Ancestry of Our English Bible wrote: 'For almost three centuries the Authorized, or King James, Version has been the Bible of the English-speaking world. Its simple, majestic Anglo-Saxon tongue, its clear, sparkling style, its directness and force of utterance have made it the model in language, style, and dignity of some of the choicest writers of the last two centuries.'" - Phil Stringer, "Majestic Legacy" (archived version)

"While the AV retains some of the prose of Elizabethan English which gives it the majestic feel that Ward claims to enjoy, it is not purely Elizabethan if Shakespeare is our guide – it’s closer to modern English actually." - Young, Textless, and Reformed (source)

It's hard to disagree with the idea that the King James has a majestic or even poetic in its sound.  The question that is rarely asked, however, is why the text of the King James version has that sound to it.

The primary reasons are linguistic. 

The King James has a vocabulary that has a different word usage frequency from our standard vocabulary today.   This should be obvious to anyone who has read the King James.  According to one King James focused website, "There are 788,258 words in the King James Bible." (source). The same source provides a ranked list of high-frequency words, in descending order of frequency.  The top eight words ("and", "the", "of", "that", "to", "in", "he", and "for") are also similarly high frequency words in English today (based on this source, which cites the Google Web Trillion Word Corpus).  Nevertheless, even within the top 50 most commonly used words in the KJV, we see some less familiar words:

unto (9th in the KJV, 6392nd in the list based on Google)

Lord (11th in the KJV, 1732nd in the list)

shall (13th in the KJV, 387th in the list)

thou (24th in the KJV, 5515th in the list)

God (28th in the KJV, 691st in the list)

thy (33rd in the KJV, 6168th in the list)

thee (39th in the KJV, 6945th in the list)

ye (40th in the KJV, 6195th in the list)

It's not surprising that words like "God" and "Lord" are much more frequent than usual, because of the subject matter of the book.  However, the lower rank of "shall" and the much lower ranks of "unto", "thou", "thy", and "ye" most likely reflect the fact that the English language (in use) has changed.  

And, of course, these are just the most frequently used.

This and one or two other difference are illustrated by the following verse:

Joshua 2:4 And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they [were]:

The much lower frequency words here are "wist" (which is low enough frequency to trip a spell check) and "unto" (as noted above) but the words "whence" and "thus" are also less frequently used in contemporary English (particularly, "whence").

In addition, the phrase "said thus" is not a standard way of writing (or speaking) in English today.  We would simply say, "the woman hid them and said "[whatever it is she said]." The "thus" is unnecessary for us, and sounds extraneous.  Some people may see this extraneous word as providing a flourish of color or accent, but that's in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

Likewise, saying "whence they were," is an unusual way of expressing the statement today.  We more often use, "from where" instead of "whence".  A more contemporary rendering might be "where they were from" (although ending in a preposition is somewhat informal).

Another violation of the way we write (and speak) English today is putting the "not" after "wist" rather than before it and after a helping verb.  Today, we would not say "I knew not where they were from," we would say, "I did not know where they were from." 

These violations of our expectations are (collectively) one of the things that make reading the King James a quasi-poetic experience.  All the -eths and -ests and so on have a old-timey ring to them.  The vocabulary often includes words we don't read or hear as much in everyday conversation.  These make the King James interesting from a linguistic standpoint.  They give it some of its poetic character.

Obviously, some poetry is identifiable by its rhyme and meter, but poetry is also associated (at least in the mind of many English speakers) with creative syntax and a varied vocabulary.  Partly this is the result of attempting to meet rhyming and metrical constraints in traditional English poetry, but also partly because violations of expectations are interesting to the mind: that's one of the reason that the punchline is so enjoyable in a joke.

In the interview mentioned above, Dr. Brake argues that there is a "dignity and a majestic part" of the KJV that "motivates worship".  My concerns about this are at least two-fold:

First, the King James Version was an update for fidelity to the originals of the Bishops' Bible, which was a revision ultimately of the Tyndale/Matthew Bible.  When Tyndale translated, we have no good reason to suppose that the goal of the translation was to make the Bible sound "worship-y" or "high church" or the like.  Similarly, the King James translators seemed to place an emphasis on avoiding fancy words in favor of use plain words.  Moreover, the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, while sometimes containing subjects that are hard subjects to understand (or words that are hard to understand now), seem to have been written in the common languages of the times.

Second, using language that sounds more like Shakespeare and less like the newspaper may give the Bible the audio equivalent of the smell of incense and the sound of church bells, but it is an easily imitated experience.  Moreover, false religions take advantage of this to promote falsehood.  For example, Marmaduke Pickthall's translation of the Koran (The Meaning of the Glorious Koran) and Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon both employ similar English.  If people associate the King James sound with their Bibles, when they start reading Pickthall's or Smith's works, they may think it has the ring of truth, rather than just the ring of old syntax and vocabulary.

None of this is to suggest that the Bible ought to be translated into the least formal possible English or that it ought to be translated into the latest slang terms to grace the digital tongues of today's youth.  Instead, the point is that the majesty argument is misleading (if people are confusing what is merely Anglic for what is Angelic) and has two edges.

Finally, some of the "majesty" has a trade-off against intelligibility.  It's harder to understand something that's written in an unfamiliar way, and there is more potential for confusion when words are used differently in the Bible than in ordinary speech.  Could someone jazz up a contemporary translation to make it sound more grandiose?  Of course!  Would that be a wise idea? That should, at least, be a question before prioritizing the perceived grandeur of old fashioned syntactical forms and yesteryear's vocabulary.

The Plow Boy (or Ploughboy) and Translation

 Dr. Dan Haifly, in his recent debate with Dr. Mark Ward, made the following comment (see here):

Mark and and several of his friends and fellow fellow students have said -- I say students of the Bible -- they talk about the plow boy. The guy that edited the ESV he said, "I think there's a misunderstanding when we talk about the plow boy." He said, "I don't think the King James translators were trying to get it understandable to the plowboy." He said, "I think they were talking about trying to disseminate it so it got to every plow boy." Can I say this real quickly, do you know why they weren't trying to make it understandable to the plow boy in 1611? Because the plow boy couldn't read. They had to teach them how to read first."

A few responses:

1) In a word, "No." You don't have to teach someone how to read before they can begin learning the Scriptures. Didymus the Blind comes to mind as an obvious counter-example. Our children are another: start teaching them the Scriptures before they learn to read.

2) It is not the King James translators who came up with the ploughboy idea. My friend, Mark, during the debate emphasized the use attributed to Tyndale in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, but the idea goes even beyond Tyndale to Erasmus himself. Erasmus in his "Paraclesis to the Pious Reader" serving as an introduction to his 1516 New Testament stated (Ann Dalzell's translation from ERASMUS. The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus: An Introduction with Erasmus’ Preface and Ancillary Writings. Edited by Robert D. Sider, vol. 41, University of Toronto Press, 2019, pp. 411-12):

I would like every woman to read the Gospel, to read the Epistles of Paul. And oh, that these books were translated into every tongue of every land so that not only the Scots and the Irish but Turks and Saracens too could read and get to know them. The first stage, unquestionably, is to get to know them – somehow or other. Granted that many people would laugh; yet some would be won over. How I wish that the farmer at his plough would chant some passage from these books, that the weaver at his shuttles would sing something from them; that the traveller would relieve the tedium of his journey with stories of this kind; that all the discussions of all Christians would start from these books, for our daily conversation reflects in large measure what we are.

Notice that Erasmus recognizes the value of memorization and oral transmission for those not in a position to read (yet or at that moment). Given Tyndale's reliance on Erasmus for the text of the New Testament, it would be shocking if he did not get this idea either from Erasmus himself or at least from a common source.

3) The King James translators did indeed aim to put the words of Scripture into ordinary and understandable words, to the extent possible. They prefaced their translation with a Letter to the Reader, which establishes this very point:

But how shall men meditate in that, which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? as it is written, Except I know the power of the voice, I shall be to him that speaketh, a Barbarian, and he that speaketh, shall be a Barbarian to me. [1 Cor 14] The Apostle excepteth no tongue; not Hebrew the ancientest, not Greek the most copious, not Latin the finest. Nature taught a natural man to confess, that all of us in those tongues which we do not understand, are plainly deaf; we may turn the deaf ear unto them. The Scythian counted the Athenian, whom he did not understand, barbarous; so the Roman did the Syrian, and the Jew (even S. Jerome himself calleth the Hebrew tongue barbarous, belike because it was strange to so many) so the Emperor of Constantinople calleth the Latin tongue, barbarous, though Pope Nicolas do storm at it: so the Jews long before Christ called all other nations, Lognazim, which is little better than barbarous. Therefore as one complaineth, that always in the Senate of Rome, there was one or other that called for an interpreter: so lest the Church be driven to the like exigent, it is necessary to have translations in a readiness. Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered [Gen 29:10]. Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob's well (which was deep) [John 4:11] without a bucket or something to draw with; or as that person mentioned by Isaiah, to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, Read this, I pray thee, he was fain to make this answer, I cannot, for it is sealed. [Isa 29:11]

...

Now though the Church were thus furnished with Greek and Latin Translations, even before the faith of Christ was generally embraced in the Empire; (for the learned know that even in S. Jerome's time, the Consul of Rome and his wife were both Ethnics, and about the same time the greatest part of the Senate also) yet for all that the godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the Language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin, (as the good Lepers were not content to fare well themselves, but acquainted their neighbors with the store that God had sent, that they also might provide for themselves) [2 Kings 7:9] but also for the behoof and edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided Translations into the vulgar for their Countrymen, insomuch that most nations under heaven did shortly after their conversion, hear Christ speaking unto them in their mother tongue, not by the voice of their Minister only, but also by the written word translated.

...

Now the Church of Rome would seem at the length to bear a motherly affection towards her children, and to allow them the Scriptures in their mother tongue: but indeed it is a gift, not deserving to be called a gift, an unprofitable gift: they must first get a licence in writing before they may use them, and to get that, they must approve themselves to their Confessor, that is, to be such as are, if not frozen in the dregs, yet soured with the leaven of their superstition. Howbeit, it seemed too much to Clement the Eighth that there should be any Licence granted to have them in the vulgar tongue, and therefore he overruleth and frustrateth the grant of Pius the Fourth. So much are they afraid of the light of the Scripture, (Lucifugae Scripturarum, as Tertulian speaketh) that they will not trust the people with it, no not as it is set forth by their own sworn men, no not with the Licence of their own Bishops and Inquisitors. Yea, so unwilling they are to communicate the Scriptures to the people's understanding in any sort, that they are not ashamed to confess, that we forced them to translate it into English against their wills. This seemeth to argue a bad cause, or a bad conscience, or both. Sure we are, that it is not he that hath good gold, that is afraid to bring it to the touchstone, but he that hath the counterfeit; neither is it the true man that shunneth the light, but the malefactor, lest his deeds should be reproved [John 3:20]: neither is it the plain-dealing Merchant that is unwilling to have the weights, or the meteyard brought in place, but he that useth deceit. But we will let them alone for this fault, and return to translation.

...

Therefore let no man's eye be evil, because his Majesty's is good; neither let any be grieved, that we have a Prince that seeketh the increase of the spiritual wealth of Israel (let Sanballats and Tobiahs do so, which therefore do bear their just reproof) but let us rather bless God from the ground of our heart, for working this religious care in him, to have the translations of the Bible maturely considered of and examined. For by this means it cometh to pass, that whatsoever is sound already (and all is sound for substance, in one or other of our editions, and the worst of ours far better than their authentic vulgar) the same will shine as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished; also, if anything be halting, or superfluous, or not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the truth set in place.

...

Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put Washing for Baptism, and Congregation instead of Church: as also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tunike, Rational, Holocausts, Praepuce, Pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late Translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof, it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.

In short, while I commend Dr. Haifly's tone, I think he is way off on the substance.