Though some believers are adamantly “KJV-only,” many more have an enduring attachment to the “Authorized” version for reasons of nostalgia and sentiment. They don’t mind that the pastor uses another version, but they instinctively pray in Elizabethan English.
This is what they know. And besides, they say, it’s not that hard to understand the English of the King James Version if you’re used to it — some elements of the language haven’t changed at all!
But what seems familiar might be more foreign than you think. For instance, the KJV uses the word “unicorn” six times. Before you get sucked too far down the rabbit-hole of the deep web searching “unicorns in the Bible,” you might want to find out what a “false friend” is.
The word 'unicorn' is used 6 times in the KJV. It's the kind of word Mark Ward calls a 'false friend.' Share on XThis is an important category of words explained by author Mark L. Ward, Jr. in his new book, Authorized: The Use & Misuse of the King James Bible. Ward defines “false friends” as “words that are still in common use but have changed meaning in ways that modern readers are highly unlikely to recognize,” and writes that this is “the biggest problem in understanding the KJV” (p. 31).
The word “unicorn” might bring to mind an imaginary horse-creature with a single horn on its head, but in the days of the King James Version, it was simply a technical term for a wild ox. This is just one example of a “false friend” that Ward points out.
Raised in the “King James Only” movement, Ward is a lover of language with great respect for the translators of the KJV. He writes:
The reason I can write an entire book evaluating the English readability of the KJV and yet not say one negative word about the choices of the KJV translators is that I don’t blame them for failing to be prophets. Language changes in far more interesting and complicated ways than I understood as an eighteen-year-old KJV reader. No one can fully predict the future of the English language, even those who—like the KJV translators—help shape that future (p. 30).
One may often think of “dead words” that present the modern reader of the KJV with difficulties, words that are completely out of use, like “trow,” “bruit,” “collop,” and “emerod.” But these are easy to spot. No, the greatest difficulty in reading and understanding the King James Bible comes from words that we assume we know, and therefore, don’t need to look up.
The translators of the King James Version may have done a swell job at finding suitable English words and phrases to convey the meaning of the Greek manuscripts available to them, but their skill is of no value to readers who think they know what the words “halt,” “commendeth,” and “convenient” meant to the English-speakers of 1611.
Beware false friends. The Bible is meant to be understood.
Beware false friends. The Bible is meant to be understood. Share on XFor some time, biblical scholars thought the New Testament was written in some kind of special, heavenly language. Mark Ward recounts the discovery of Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, who in 1896 found lost Greek papyri contemporary to the New Testament, shedding light on the Scriptures. Their shocking discovery? God’s Holy Word was written in the common tongue!
Ward continues:
The character of Koine Greek is massively significant for translation. It means that, in nations where high literary and non-literary forms of a language coexist (such as in modern Greece, as it happens), the New Testament ought to be translated into the ‘lower,’ not the elevated, form of the language. God intended to bless ‘all the families of the earth’ through Abraham, not just those wealthy enough to learn the socially prominent form of a given tongue. Modern Christians would think it strange to hear a missionary Bible translator say, ‘We decided to translate the Bible using an elevated, archaic form of Indonesian [or Urdu or Khoisa] that only the clerics and poets use, and that the people in the churches don’t understand very well.’ No, when we translate the Bible we translate it into the language as people actually use it (p. 67).
Beware false friends, and beware Bible translations that require not just the learning of new words, but of a completely different cultural dialect.
There is an important place for transcendent, lofty language in translating and explaining the unfailing Word of the Almighty God. Yet, the thrust of the Bible’s message, and the nature of the biblical languages themselves, urge us to “give the sense” (Neh 8:8) of the Scriptures in such a way that all listening might be pierced to the heart.
Want to hear more about “false friends”? Think you know the original reading level of the KJV? Curious which translation Ward recommends?
Check out Authorized on Amazon, and listen to Mark talk about this problem on Tool Talk:
