September 2007 Article - Examing the Lies of the King James Attackers

September 2007 Article - Examing the Lies of the King James AttackersIseminger Family Ministries, September 2007

Perhaps this set of articles should have started with this because this is by far the most widely used argument today. While many on my side of the fence are quick to concede this point, I will make no concession on that point and will indeed list this as a lie because the fact of the mater is; no matter how good it sounds the facts do not prove the above statement at all.

The copyright holders of the modern versions have spent untold piles of money trying to convince people that they have gone out of their way to provide us with an easier to read bible. Consider the following examples of the promotion of this “fact” from three popular versions:

While preserving the literal accuracy of the 1901 ASV, the NASB has sought to render grammar and terminology in contemporary English. Special attention has been given to the rendering of verb tenses to give the English reader a rendering as close as possible to the sense of the original Greek and Hebrew texts. In 1995, the text of the NASB was updated for greater understanding and smoother reading.

Easier to read:
Passages with Old English "thee's" and "thou's" etc. have been updated to modern English.

Words and Phrases that could be misunderstood due to changes in their meaning during the past 20 years have been updated to current English.

Verses with difficult word order or vocabulary have been retranslated into smoother English.

The Committee submitted the developing version to stylistic consultants who made invaluable suggestions. Samples of the translation were tested for clarity and ease of reading by various groups of people.

The goal of any Bible translation is to convey the meaning of the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts as accurately as possible to the modern reader. The New Living Translation is based on the most recent scholarship in the theory of translation. The challenge for the translators was to create a text that would make the same impact in the life of modern readers that the original text had for the original readers. In the New Living Translation, this is accomplished by translating entire thoughts (rather than just words) into natural, everyday English. The end result is a translation that is easy to read and understand and that accurately communicates the meaning of the original text.

These are just a few of the many existing examples of the modern bible folks promoting them as easy to read. The truth behind the modern bible push runs far deeper than being easier to read. Now that I have stated that the “easier to read” claim is a lie, I need to set about proving that point. In order to prove this point I want to examine several key areas.

This is a widely used formula that determines the grade level that a particular book reads at. It is used by the U.S. Government for text books and other material used in the public schools, to determine what books are to be read by students in what grade.

I can’t imagine how the formula was arrived at but I will assume that this was arrived at by a couple of folks named Flesch and Kincaid. Just incase you were curious the formula that is used to determine the grade level of reading material is as follows:

(.39 X average number of words per sentence) + (11.8 X average number of syllables per word) - 15.59 = Grade Level

The obvious next question would be How do the various versions measure up? What grade level to they read at. For clarity 4 modern versions (that all claim to be easier to read) have been compared to the King James. Four chapters were compared, the first chapter of the first and last books of both the Old and New Testaments and then the composite average of the four different chapters are listed as well.

So we see according to the standard used by schools the new versions do not in fact read easier than our old trusty KJV. As we continue to dig yet deeper let me remind you what the translators of the NASB stated they were doing with their bible: “the NASB has sought to render grammar and terminology in contemporary English.” And “Verses with difficult word order or vocabulary have been retranslated into smoother English.” While I will concede that there are places in every new bible that may read easier than the KJV, my point is if this is in fact the main purpose of their work they failed miserably. Lets consider several examples from the “easier to read” NASB:

I am not sure about you but in the above stated 10 examples there is not one of the renderings that the NASB translators chose that reads easier than the word it was replaced with. The NKJV didn’t fair much better either. This is the bible that claims to be a modern revision of the KJV, faithful to the right manuscripts with more up to date English. How did they do? You be the judge:

Once again if easier reading was the goal of these translations, the result is a miserable failure.

Let me drive one final nail in the coffin of this lie. Another thing that makes things read easier is word repetition. Once you learn the meaning of a word like arm, every time you read it you know what it means, therefore it is easier to read a book that refers to an arm only as an arm not as an arm, limb, appendage and what ever other word that one might come up with. Consider the following example, once again from the New King James Version of the bible:

Above are 13 Old Testament references where the KJV translators took the Hebrew word ra` (Which means evil, just in case you were wondering) and each of these 13 times they translated the word evil, just as they should have. While the NKJV translators, while attempting to give us a modern, up to date and easier to read bible decided to use 13 different words 10 of which are clearly harder to understand than the word evil, and none of which carry the same meaning as the word evil.

In summary, if the purpose of the new bibles is to give us something easer to read, they clearly have failed miserably. That’s two lies down and many more to go? Next up I will try to explain why all the above stated changes are necessary in order to get these new bibles on the shelf as we tackle Lie #3 All we have done is brought the Bible up to date and modernized the language. The reality is nothing could be further from the truth.