The modern perversionist's silly complaint
The modern perversionist's silly complaint
Doctors and Pharmacists study and train for years to learn the language of their trade. People just pick up a KJV and start reading and assume that in the last 300 years or so the meanings of words have not changed. They have. That is just a simple fact of language.
Hi CM. The simple fact of the matter is, you and most Christians like you do NOT believe that any Bible in any language is now or ever was the complete and inerrant words of God.
You "use" the every changing NIV. Yet nobody (including you) seriously believes it is the inerrant and 100% true words of God. Your NIV is the Comic Book of the Vatican Versions. It rejects and then adds to scores of Hebrew readings in the O.T.
The NIVs continue to change both their underlying Hebrew and Greek textual basis, while it omits some 3000 words from just the N.T. Reformation text of the KJB and it contains numerous theological errors.
All this seems to be of little concern to people like you. You just want something that is "easy to read". That seems to be the mindset of so many today.
There is a lot more to my article called The "Old fashioned language" of the King James Bible - "Archaic and Inerrant" beats "Modernized and Wrong" Any Day of the Week"
http://www.brandplucked.webs.com/archaickjbship.htm
I hope you and others will read the whole article. I think you will learn some things you didn't know before or even consider.
I give some examples of these changes and I also deal with the handful of truly "archaic" words found in the KJB. But here is the part I want you to see for now.
I have made up a Vocabulary Test taken from your "easy to understand" NIV. Try giving this to most 21st century public school educated young people, and see how many of them would get a passing grade.
The NIV Vocabulary Test
abashed, abominable, abutted, acclaim, adder, adhere, admonishing, advocate, alcove, algum, allocate, allots, ally, aloes, appease, ardent, armlets, arrayed, astir, atonement, awl, banishment, battlements, behemoth, belial, bereaves, betrothed, bier, blighted, booty, brayed, breaching, breakers, buffeted, burnished, calamus, capital (not a city), carnelian, carrion, centurions, chasm, chronic, chrysolite, cistern, citadel, citron, clefts, cohorts, colonnades, complacency, coney, concession, congealed, conjure, contrite, convocations, crest, cors, curds, dandled, dappled, debauchery, decimated, deluged, denarii, depose, derides, despoil, dire, dispossess, disrepute, dissipation, distill, dissuade, divination, dragnet, dropsy, duplicity, earthenware, ebbed, ebony, emasculate, emission, encroach, enmity, enthralled, entreaty, ephod, epicurean, ewe, excrement, exodus, factions, felled, festal, fettered, figurehead, filigree, flagstaff, fomenting, forded, fowler, gadfly, galled, gird, gauntness, gecko, gloating, goiim, harrowing, haunt, hearld, henna, homers, hoopoe, ignoble, impaled, implore, incur, indignant, insatiable, insolence, intact, invoked, jambs, joists, jowls, lairs, lamentation, leviathan, libations, loins, magi, manifold, maritime, mattocks, maxims, mina, misdemeanor, mother-of-pearl, mustering, myrtles, naive, naught, Negev, Nephilim, nettles, nocturnal, nomad, notorious, Nubians, oblivion, obsolete, odious, offal, omer, oracles, overweening, parapet, parchments, pavilion, peals (noun, not the verb), perjurers, perpetuate, pestilence, pinions, phylacteries, plumage, pomp, porphyry, portent, potsherd, proconsul, propriety, poultice, Praetorium, pretext, profligate, promiscuity, provincial, providence, qualm, quarries, quivers (noun, not verb), ramparts, ransacked, ratified, ravish, rabble, rawboned, relish (not for hot dogs), recoils, recount, refrain, relent, rend, reposes, reprimanded, reputed, retinue, retorted, retribution, rifts, roebucks, rue, sachet, satraps, sated, shipwrights, siegeworks, sinews, sistrums, sledges, smelted, somber, soothsayer, sovereignty, spelt, stadia, stench, stipulation, sullen, tamarisk, tanner, temperate, tether, tetrarch, terebinth, thresher, throes, thronged, tiaras, tinder, tracts, transcends, tresses, turbulent, tyrannical, unscathed, unrelenting, usury, vassal, vaunts, vehemently, verdant, vexed, wadi, wanton, warranted, wield, winnowing and wrenched.
There are many cases where the NIV uses a harder word than the KJB. Compare the following: The NIV has “abasement” in Ezra 9:5 whereas the KJB has “heaviness.” Isaiah 24:23: “abashed” (NIV) = “confounded” (KJB). Ezekiel 40:18: “abutted” (NIV) = “over against” (KJB). 2 Chronicles 15:14: “acclamation” (NIV) = “voice” (KJB). Isaiah 13:8: “aghast” (NIV) = “amazed” (KJB) Psalm 107:5 "ebbed away" (NIV) = "fainted" (KJB). A personal favorite is “squall” (NIV) instead of “storm” (KJB) in Mark 4:37.
It is funny that I can put together the phrase from the KJB which says; "The very sad green giant was hungry” and in the NIV it would be: “The overweening dejected verdant Nephilim was famished."
