The Kinda Juvenile Version
This year, my wife and I are doing a “Bible Through the Two Years” program (the wimpy version of the "Bible Through the Year" program). We've been reading the Bible aloud, and so far, we've actually kept up.
Although neither one of us is really familiar with the King James Version (I grew up on the NIV myself), we decided we’d give it a try this time—after all, it’s the Bible they were using in the time periods that we study. Maybe we would now be able to pick up literary allusions we wouldn’t have recognized because of translation differences. We could be devotional and study for our time period at the same time! What could be finer?
The difficulty that I had never really apprehended before is that the King James Version is … well … weird. The language often seems cumbersome and disorienting. And let me tell you, once you’ve read the Book of Romans in the KJV translation, Peter's remark that Paul writes things that are "difficult to understand" suggests Peter must have been reading the KJV!
The difficulty with the KJV is not simply that we might be baffled by an odd translation. The problem is that the translation's language might sound so foreign or carry different connotations that we end up erupting in laughter. Take this KJV selection from Gen. 44:34. "And he [Joseph] took and sent messes unto them from before him: but Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any of theirs." I'm sorry, but the only context in which I hear "messes" in the plural is in scatological contexts. I couldn't prevent a rather disturbing image of paired messes coming to mind, and, like Abraham's wife Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I felt dirty afterwards, but that's what happens when a newcomer reads the KJV.
Apparently, however, we were not the only ones who misunderstood Genesis 44. While we were reading the Bible aloud, our cat Pippin was listening. When we heard the sounds of a cat barfing behind us, we briefly noted that it was a highly inappropriate way of responding to God's Word; however, we were comforted with the knowledge that Pippin couldn't have been demon-possessed, as we learned from my Kitty Angels post.
I'm only mentioning Pippin's rather gross actions to bring up (no pun intended) something rather odd we noticed after our Bible reading. Pippin vomited in two different places. Here, however, is the creepy part: the one pile was about five times the size of the other! Or possibly seven times (we didn't have reliable instruments of measurement ... of course, neither did Pippin). It's as if the Bible passage and Pippin's actions were somehow coordinated. I won't go so far as to say the symmetry was "beautiful," but it did seem kind of cool. A little like "found art." Except, you know, only if the art were a fossilized turd. (The 18th century writer Christopher Smart actually describes a fossilized turd in his newspaper The Midwife. But I digress.)
Anyway, I promise that my next blog entry will not be about cat dandruff or cat vomit. Unless y'all want me to. Got to keep my peeps happy!
posted by Leopoldtulip @ 8:14 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I totally don't remember the word messes in those verses, and I was tortured for 9 long years having to listen and memorize large passages of the Bible in the King James version. I really don't understand why some people think that KJV is the only acceptable version of the Bible, because it is so hard to understand unless you live in an area where the King's English is the only language spoken--which is nowhere. Why is a translation paid for/demanded by a highly immoral, rather evil king superior to a translation paid for and accomplished by people who speak modern English and believe the Bible and their actions back up their words? Perhaps it is because the people most loudly advocating KJV only are not doing what the Bible commands, but they don't want people to be able to read the Bible and find out their errors? Actually, I think their error is that they believe that all previous generations are far more holy and righteous than people today and all they can see around them is doom and gloom. And yet, I send my daughter to a school that is KJV only...because I don't have any better options now.
I hope that in the future, people will realize that no translation is perfect, including the KJV. It seems that a lot of people honestly believe that Jesus spoke in King's English, not Aramaic and/or Hebrew and/or Greek. They don't want a translation that corrects scribal error that we have learned of because of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other recent finds...which reminds me that I really want to go see a part of them here in Kansas City--a major exhibit is open for the next month or two, allowing the public to see 3 pieces of the scrolls, woot! (It is a little bit disappointing that they are allowing so few pieces to leave Isreal for a tour of the US, but this is more exciting than seeing a real page of the Declaration of Independence! The US is but a young whippersnapper, and this is an ancient copy of the Bible, probably the oldest paper/non-stone documents in the world.)
The one good thing about being immersed in KJV for so many years, is that I can correct people's King's English grammar...they throw in thees and thous and thines and wert and art and hast in places they really don't belong. Punk kids will try to be anachronistic and they just butcher the language!
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