I miss the King James Version of the Bible terribly.
I’m not a KJV-only type of Baptist, and I preach from several different translations (including my three contemporary favorites: the ESV, the HCSB, and the NKJV). And, yes, I know it is odd for a Baptist to have such affection for a translation rendered by a committee of Anglicans at the bequest of a state church.
But I grew up in a church that didn’t know there was another translation, so the whole congregation could pick up on phrases immediately, knowing what they meant and from where they had come. This has been lost in an American Protestant world of a Bible translation for every man (sorry, I mean “person”).
Mark Noll has a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the loss of the KJV as a formative influence on American language and culture. Noll writes:
“Because the KJV was so widely read for religious purposes, it had also become a source of public ideals. Because it was so central in the churches, and because the churches were so central to the culture, the KJV functioned also as a common reservoir for the language. Hundreds of phrases (clear as crystal, powers that be, root of the matter, a perfect Babel, two-edged sword) and thousands of words (arguments, city, conflict, humanity, legacy, network, voiceless, zeal) were in the common speech because they had first been in this translation. Or to be more precise, because they had been in the KJV or in the earlier translations, like those of John Wycliffe’s followers (1390s) and William Tyndale (1520s), that King James’ translators mined for their own version.
“But during the past half-century, we have come into a new situation. For believers who read the Bible because they think it is true, a welter of modern translations compete for the space once dominated by the KJV. For the public at large, the linguistic and narrative place that for more than two centuries had been occupied by the KJV is now substantially filled by the omnipresent electronic media. The domains that have been most successfully popularized by television, the movies and the Internet are sport, crime, pornography, politics, warfare, medicine and the media itself. Within these domains there is minimal place for biblical themes of any sort, much less the ancient language of the KJV.”
Noll goes on to note that the passing of the KJV’s dominance in American culture is, in some ways, good. He thinks, for instance, of Roman Catholics who were expected to quote from this Protestant translation in public schools. I’m not so much saddened by the loss of this common translation in the culture as in the churches, and the ways in which Bible translations now often exist to serve an ideological niche within the church (i.e., the disastrous TNIV).
It’s not just the beauty and majesty of the KJV that I miss. Nor is it, I think, just nostalgia. It is the continuity between generations. There’s something about the beauty, the majesty, and the continuity between generations about the KJV that is sorely missed when it is gone. I suppose that’s why I preach and teach from any number of translations, but when I am sorrowful or grieving or comforting a hopeless friend I turn to the same King James Version I memorized verses from in childhood Sword Drills at Woolmarket Baptist Church. I know that I’m reading the same words my grandfather preached from fifty years ago, the same words my great-grandparents would have read through the Depression, and my great-great-great grandparents would have read in the aftermath of Reconstruction.
As we move toward the 400th anniversary of the King James Version in 2011, I realize that my children and grandchildren will probably memorize Scripture in something other than the KJV. They’ll understand the Bible in a language they can grasp, and that’s an important aspect of why I’m a Protestant. So I’m happy about that. But will they know what it is to hear the words, “Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24)?
I suppose what matters is that they know the words of Jesus, rightly translated, and follow Him. Still, with Professor Noll, I know something has been lost, along with what has been gained. I guess one could say it’s a two-edged sword.
