Searching for the Truth in the King James Bible;
Finding it, and passing it on to you.
EDITOR:
Steve
Van Nattan
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THROUGHOUT HISTORY GOD HAS PRESERVED HIS WORD IN ONE PRIMARY LANGUAGE IN EACH AGEJust as God preserved the Old Testament primarily in Hebrew and later the New Testament in Greek, God has preserved His FINAL preserved pure words in the world's dominate language today ... English. Consider the fact that all military personnel worldwide speak English. The United Nations does business in English. A classic example of English domination is seen in international air port terminals. The signs will be in the local language, like Chinese or French, but they will also give the English version virtually everywhere on earth. It is a marvel beyond words that the French condescended to participate in the European Union using English as the official language. France is the only nation I know of which still annually budgets for the promotion of the French language. |
And prophetically, the Antichrist will rule in Jerusalem, but it is very clear that the new Babel of the coming Satanic era will be English.
You may disagree, but God has to inspire Israel to return to a pure language, Hebrew, in the Messianic Kingdom. Even Israel has adapted to speak English at many levels of life today, while they also speak mongrelized versions of Hebrew in many Jewish communities, so they will have to relearn pure Hebrew.
Zephaniah
3:8 Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to
the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the
kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all
the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.
9
For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon
the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.
English
has become a universal language. There are many reasons for its dominance, but
the largest in recent years was the heritage of the British Empire which conquered
nations and cultures by all things British, including the King James Bible.
Then again, there was the post-world-war economic hegemony and cultural influence of the United States, ranging from Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe to Elvis Presley and John Wayne. While this fact may give Anglo Saxons the warm fuzzies, as if the White Race pulled off a linguistic coup of some sort, the fact is, the world has this perverse need to have a universal language. This is because conquering the world, and creating the "Global Village" is greatly facilitated by forcing the world to use one language.
But the main reason is the elasticity of the English language and the broad-mindedness it communicates. If English grammar is rudimentary, the linguistic equivalent of rock’ n’ roll, the English vocabulary is huge. There are very few things that can’t be expressed in English, and if it cannot be said in English then a word is lifted from another language – like "kindergarten" and "safari" for example. If a word or concept does not exist in English, and a word is not lifted from another language, it is because what it represents does not make sense to thinking shaped by the English language: a case in point, "Schicksalsgemeinschaft" (companions in fate).
English has the academic advantage of being very simple mechanically. Nouns are almost never male or female, depending on context for that. Verbs also are not gender based. Other languages, like Spanish, French, and Amheric from Ethiopia, are extremely mechanical with very few exceptions to the rules. The problem for the English learner is to master the mechanics in a study situation without being able to muddle about in the market place and experiment. One suffix or prefix error of gender or tense formation in France or Ethiopia will leave the listener totally confused. With English the learner can study the basic grammar and then head for the mall or market place. He will then ask "what is this" and "what is that," and most English speakers will catch on, and over a short time the learner has enough of a vocabulary to get along. Americans wander the world, and in Nairobi or Bangladesh the village goon from Omaha becomes a linguistic expert as the school kids gather around and try out their English on the tourist. Inglish awlso has the advantaje ov being undurstud evin when horubly bootchured. This is not the case with most world languages. English is probably the most abundant in one syllable words, as is the King James Bible.
The only real monsters in English are irregular verbs and prepositional usage. If you teach English to students in the Developing World, you must make a list of irregular verbs and show the students how to use them. There are no rules. The same with prepositions. You will find lists of irregular verbs and other irregular words usages, but attempts to list prepositions and all the variations of usage are poor at best (at best- what does that mean? "I will arrive at 5PM at best." UGH). Example: One will get on a horse, and one will get on a train. The learner has the mental picture of someone climbing up on top of a train car. One says, "I must go to bed," and the learner will then ask, "And what will you do when you get there?"
HERE IS A SITE THAT HAS DONE A PRETTY GOOD JOB AT CATALOGING PREPOSITIONS
COMIC RELIEF: HOW TO SPEAK INDIAN ENGLISH
Understand this-- There are more English speakers in India than in the rest of the world. China is catching up fast though.ALL THE ENGLISH ACCENTS OF INDIA
This is fascinating, easy to understand, but can you detect the accent differences?
The predominance of English in sciences, economics, culture and politics is overwhelming. In Palestine, in the days of Jesus of Nazareth, Latin was the language of the military and government. But to be considered educated you had to speak Greek; if you were Jewish you also had to speak Hebrew; and the language of the masses was Aramaic. In the Europe of the late Middle Ages, Latin was the language of the erudite, Italian the language of trade, and blossoming cultures used their own respective languages.
From its inception English showed the multicultural flexibility and openness that are the secret to success. It was the dialect of the British Empire and the USA. Wherever England ruled, English was taught in schools. So, the dialect of Anglia became the trade language of the masses. And later, English became the language of high office and international politics as British educated Africans and Asians chose to speak English to show they were erudite and sophisticated.
Finally, England and the USA lead the world to their cinema and modern music. The sophists of Europe long ago, while learning English, retained all sorts of German, Italian, and French terms in the arts and literature, and in witty conversation. This was meant to give distinction to the user and reduce the masses to the simpleton level. That has long since gone away. Though some of these non-English words still linger, Hollywood and main street in London have forced the world to grab the English trendy terms and toss out the class oriented non-English words.
| Winston
Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician, best known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States. The following shows the very high regard he had for the Scriptures: "We reject with scorn all those learned and laboured myths that Moses was but a legendary figure upon whom the priesthood and the people hung their essential social, moral, and religious ordinances. We believe that the most scientific view, the most up-to-date and rationalistic conception, will find its fullest satisfaction in taking the Bible story literally, and in identifying one of the greatest human beings with the most decisive leap forward ever discernible in the human story. We may be sure that all these things happened just as they are set out according to Holy Writ. We may believe that they happened to people not so very different from ourselves, and that the impressions those people received were faithfully recorded and have been transmitted across the centuries with far more accuracy than many of the telegraphed accounts we read of goings on of today. In the words of a forgotten work of Mr. Gladstone, we rest with assurance upon ‘The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.’ Let the men of science and learning expand their knowledge and probe with their researches every detail of the records which have been preserved to us from these dim ages. All they will do is to fortify the grand simplicity and essential accuracy of the recorded truths which have lighted so far the pilgrimage of man" Winston
Churchill, cited in Our Hope, |
The Book gave English-speaking Christians a common standard through which they could express their faith. Soon, the spread of printing technology meant that this translation above all became the definitive Bible that believers kept in their houses, and before very long, they carried in their pockets.
Although originally intended for Anglicans, the new translation soon spread its influence across the spectrum of emerging denominations and sects, as it gave voice to Presbyterians and Congregationalists, Quakers and Baptists. After all, King James's reign coincided with an astonishingly spiritual ferment, as Protestants debated furiously their relationship with the state and whether it was even possible for faithful Christians to accept the decisions of secular power. The year 1609, for instance, marked the beginning of the Baptist churches in the English-speaking world.
And of course, there was a vast global dimension. When we recall how English colonies were beginning to spread around the world in 1611 -- how a settlement was already developing tentatively in Virginia (from 1607), with Massachusetts only a few years away -- we realize how wonderfully the translators timed their work, indeed, how God moved men to the task at exactly the right time.
Over the coming centuries, the Christianity of the British Isles would become a driving force in Christian expansion worldwide -- in North America, in Africa, in the Caribbean, in South Asia -- and wherever those believers went, they brought with them the structures and cadences of the King James Bible. Whenever and wherever English-speaking Christians debated their faith, when they debated the nuances of words and phrases, the words over which they battled were those of a common Bible translation, the one that appeared in 1611.
The King James Bible formed the emerging Protestant Christianity of the Anglo-American world, and that claim is stunning in its own right. But the text had an impact even beyond that, shaping the whole culture of the English-speaking world. It was the King James Bible which set the standard in the British Parliament for the abolition of slavery in Africa. It was that Bible which forced Parliament to quash the anti-Christian policies of the British East India Company in India as they tried to forbid missionaries to enter India. The godless leaders of the BEIC knew that if the Gospel were preached, Indians would be converted, and the opium trade would soon be abandoned, which the BEIC found very profitable. They also knew that their policies in their employment policies would come to light. Parliament simply put the BEIC our of business and took over the rule of India in the Colonial Office. All of this struggle was because of the fear of the power of the King James Bible to change cultures.
As even its bitterest detractors concede, the 1611 Bible is a literary masterpiece of the first order, a triumph of both prose and verse. If the year 1611 coincided with the beginnings of the British Empire, it also marked the high point of the English Renaissance. The new Bible translation appeared within a couple of years of the first performance of some of the greatest plays in English -- William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale," John Webster's "The White Devil" and "The Duchess of Malfi," Ben Jonson's "The Alchemist" -- and at the time of John Donne's poetry, and the philosophy and science of Sir Francis Bacon. (Even this list does not begin to mention the contemporary achievements in music, architecture and the visual arts.)
The Bible translators were working in an era of staggering literary accomplishment, but moreover, at a time when writers felt no inhibitions about restructuring the language and its literary forms, or of coining hundreds of new words as it fitted their moods and met their purposes. Nor did they have the slightest hesitation about borrowing freely from foreign cultures, or about drawing from the humble plebeian forms they saw all around them; all was grist. In the hands of these linguistic entrepreneurs, the English language was passing through an intoxicating period of transformation and re-creation.
What a moment in history! Rudyard Kipling celebrated the making of England in a once-famous poem, which appeared in the tercentennial year of the King James Version, in 1911:
"England's on the anvil! Heavy are the blows! (But the work will be a marvel when it's done.) ...
England's being hammered, hammered, hammered into shape!"
| Over
170 Words and Phrases A
cross you have to bear |
To adapt his words slightly, around 1611 the English language likewise was being hammered into shape, and the Bible translators were both the beneficiaries of this process and its craftsmen. The King James Bible survives as a definitive monument of the process of invention -- and the work was, indeed, a marvel when it was done. This was the work that would soon find itself on the shelves of millions of ordinary, faithful believers, and even for those who could not read, these were the words they would hear in the church and marketplace. French writer Victor Hugo thought that "England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare, but the Bible made England."
The new Bible indeed shaped the emerging English language, and spread those patterns of speech, thought and meter throughout the world. And the fact that this Bible, of course, proclaimed the core Judeo-Christian message worldview. This meant that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the irreducible, foundational idea of the English-speaking world. Noting the power that speech and language possess in shaping thought and behavior, linguistic scholars declare not that we speak language, but rather that "language speaks us." After the King James Bible, English speakers had no option but to declare that Scripture speaks us. The choices, in God's sovereign will, of the King James translators, became a basic part of our everyday speech and thought.
No serious study of literature in English can neglect the impact of the 1611 Bible, and that is equally true for any century from the 17th through the 20th. All the great canonical authors are immersed in that Bible, even (or especially) those who reject its fundamental religious message. To put it ironically, the Bible they reject is the 1611 version, which created the literary air we breathe.
Scientists too, as well as literary giants, found their awestruck vision of the universe in this Bible. When Samuel Morse sent his first revolutionary telegraph message in 1844, it quoted the Book of Numbers in -- what else? -- King James English: "What hath God wrought!"
Politically, too, the language of the 1611 Bible is inextricably bound up with the evolving discourse in freedom, in Britain and its Commonwealth, but above all in the American colonies and the later United States. John Winthrop famously envisaged a "city upon a hill." As the Liberty Bell proclaims -- quoting the King James translation of Leviticus -- "Proclaim freedom throughout the land!" And the prophetic visions of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and other radical reformers were, almost infallibly, framed in the language of King James. The dreams they had owed their shape to the visionary translators of 1611. If, generally, Scripture speaks us, then specifically, the King James Bible spoke America.
President Harry Truman was once confronted by a political adversary who was picking apart a program Truman wanted to promote. The attack was very irrational and cheap, and Truman is quoted as saying, "It is all about the mote and the beam."
No other book, or indeed any piece of culture, seems to have influenced the English language as much as the King James Bible. Its turns of phrase have permeated the everyday language of English speakers, whether or not they've ever opened a copy.
The US statesman Daniel Webster said: "If there is anything in my thoughts or style to commend, the credit is due to my parents for instilling in me an early love of the Scriptures."
Equally celebrated as a British orator, TB Macaulay said that the translation demonstrated "the whole extent of [the] beauty and power" of the English language. He points to several reasons. The Bible was "a very public text", he says. "It would have been read aloud in churches very, very extensively, which would have imprinted it on people's minds."
Then, going back to the likes of Dickens and Webster, there's the way influential people mediated and amplified the effect.
"The King James Bible" says McGrath, "had a very significant influence on the movers and shakers, particularly in London, who had a huge influence on what ordinary people took to be good English."
Another reason was that the time was ripe. "English was in a particularly fluid state. Both the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible appeared around this formative time and stamped their imprint on the newer forms of the language."
The King James Bible was often read aloud. Perhaps the most intriguing reason for the impact of the King James Bible is that it ignored what today would be considered essentials for good translation.
"The translators seem to have taken the view that the best translation was a literal one, so instead of adapting Hebrew and Greek to English forms of speaking they simply translated it literally. The result wouldn't have made all that much sense to readers, but they got used to it, and so these fundamentally foreign ways of expressing yourself became accepted as normal English through the influence of this major public text."
The modern trend, since 1900, of reducing the King James Bible to simple English, has succeeded in doing just that-- making simpletons of its victims. Simplicity is not noble. We are horrified when a grown man still talks in childish ways. We use words and phrases that stretch our children's minds and tell them to, "go look it up in the dictionary" when they stumble over a hard word. But, the marketing publishing Mafia have convinced thousands of pastors that their people will live in abject imbecility if they do not have a Dick and Jane Bible.
Witness the FACT that the New International Version and the NASB are NOT quoted in every day life, nor in the media when a Bible quote is wanted. What editor wants to appeal to a 5th grade reader to impress his audience?
As well as selling an estimated 1 billion copies since 1611, the King James Bible went straight into our literary bloodstream like a lifesaving drug. More than this enthralling matrix of linguistic influence, there is the miracle of the translation itself, a triumph of creative collaboration (54 scholars in six committees). In its own time, a further aim was not only to help unite the crowns of England and Scotland but to heal religious division and give the word of God to the common people once and for all in the vernacular, without bloodshed or uproar.
King James I was very determined to include Puritan scholars on the committees in order to prevent the Anglican scholars from coloring the text with human theology, and this succeeded very well. The long term result was that, when scholars of various disciplines were in debate, they had to all come to a Bible text devoid of help to any spurious man made doctrine.
In fact, the KJB became, in Adam Nicolson's resonant phrase, "a kind of national shrine, built only of words". Internationally, the expanding English-speaking world became inspired by the majesty of its most sonorous passages, the austere beauty of its prose and the endlessly quoted phrases and periods that have become braided into the texture of contemporary reference. The writers who have paid explicit tribute to the influence of the KJB include TS Eliot, Seamus Heaney, VS Naipaul, Raymond Chandler and PD James. Chandler actually said of the Bible that it was "a lesson in how not to write for the movies".
When presented with a copy of a new Bible revision, Prince Charles said, "You have improved it worse." It is very interesting that when royals and perverse parliamentarians from any English speaking nation are confronted by the King James Bible, they will step back and pause in respect. They may have no regard for the Christ of the Bible, but they have a peculiar respect for the King James Bible as a sort of final authority.
The afterlife of this landmark publication is nowhere stranger than in the "new-found land" of America. The first New England settlers used the Geneva Bible as a text that appealed to non-conformist Reformed congregations. By the end of the 17th century, through a remarkable paradox, the King James Bible had come to be loved as much by the Americans as the British. Its cadences would seep into the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
A century ago Theodore Roosevelt expressed another important quality of this translation when he declared:
"The King James Bible is a Magna Carta for the poor and oppressed: the most democratic book in the world."
In modern terms, this tradition is upheld by the worldwide web. Some 450,000 people each month do Google searches for King + James + Bible, of which fewer than 10% originate in the UK.
SOURCES
God's Secretaries -- Adam Nicolson -- Pub. Harper Collins
How the King James Bible Changed the World
http://www.baylor.edu/alumni/magazine/0904/news.phpWhy The English Language Dominates The World
http://carloz.newsvine.com/…/16755280-why-the-english-languHow the King James Bible shaped the English language
http://www.theguardian.com/…/king-james-bible-english-languKing James Bible: How it changed the way we speak
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-12205084
LINKS:
AS PROFANE AND VILE AS HOLLYWOOD IS,
THEY CANNOT STAY AWAY FROM THE BIBLEBIBLICAL TRUTH MAKES BIG MONEY IN
HOLLYWOODWHY THE RECENT SURGE IN BIBLE THEMES
IN HOLLYWOOD?IMPACT OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE ON
AMERICAN CULTURETHE BOOK THAT CHANGED THE WORLD
PETER S RUCKMAN EXALTS THE KING JAMES
BIBLE- A CHALK ART MESSAGE
BACK TO DEFENSE OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE TABLE OF CONTENTS
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