The Bible is unreadable

Because I'd had no success reading the full Bible I thought I'd try an abridged version ("Testament" abridged by Philip Law). But I couldn't even get through that! It still had too many old prophets charging round the desert doing despicable, meaningless and unmotivated things.

I was reading the Iliad at the same time, and turning to it for light relief! I finished that and started reading Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so there was then no hope of continuing the Bible! I ground to a halt somewhere in "David" and just couldn't go on...

The "100 minute Bible" has just been delivered, maybe I can finish that!

Are there any out-takes forn the Bible that are actually readable for someone who expects a reasonable aesthetic experience from their reading? People like Stephen Mitchell have translated parts of the Bible (Job, Gospels...) I've a feeling that might be the way to go, i.e., read the parts that good writers and poets have felt worth translating.... Any recommendations along this line?

Have you read the new renditions of the Bible? The new ones use modern day English and make the book far more accessible.

If you have questions re any specific verses or concepts, try:

www.blueletterbible.org

I try to read at least one scripture a day and precede my reading with a prayer of understanding and retention.

There's a joke in my faith with regard to a soldier who has a field version of The Book of Mormon in his breast pocket. Being knocked on his butt after a bullet gets stopped in his book in battle, he gets up, shakes the dust from his fatigues, and takes it out his scriptures in amazement and utters "I knew it!, nothing gets through 2nd Nephi !!". Perhaps the same could be said about Exodus (which is where I'm currently slogging through again [albeit reverently] in the O.T.).

My introduction to Exodus was (perhaps for many) the movie "The Ten Commandments" where Charleton Heston is cast as Moses. Movies, religious documentaries, Sunday School discussions, and BYU discussions I watch on the tube (especially "Insights to Isaiah" for me) help me to get the 'meat' of each scriptural story; and even seem to help me get more motivated to read once I understand where and what the stumbling blocks of the more esoteric parts of the scriptures are.

While Stephen Mitchell's works do offer an interesting diversion, I recommend sticking to the major works with a Bible dictionary near at hand.

I tried reading a Bible a little while ago, I thought it would make me more enlightened and better versed in the religion of Christianity. You know, hold my own in debates.

Unfortunantely I couldn't get past a couple pages. It was so dry and repetitive and boring and... you get my point.

If only Milton rewrote the whole entire Bible instead of just the fall, I might be a converted Christian. At least he holds my attention.

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Originally Posted by Homers_child

I tried reading a Bible a little while ago, I thought it would make me more enlightened and better versed in the religion of Christianity. You know, hold my own in debates.

Unfortunantely I couldn't get past a couple pages. It was so dry and repetitive and boring and... you get my point.

If only Milton rewrote the whole entire Bible instead of just the fall, I might be a converted Christian. At least he holds my attention.

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Wow! Milton translating the Bible. If only. . . . .

Yeah many parts of the Bible are dry repeditive and boring, and as a whole doesn't seem to hold up in comparison to Homer, Dante or Shakespeare.

Though, you must admit, there is some pretty beautiful stuff in there, hidden away between the thickness of two-thousand pages. Just read Ecclesiastes, it seems to go head on against what the gospels were preaching. I remember when I was a Christian, how much comfort I found in reading Pslams.

I got stuck in Genesis, but I found Jacob's deception to be hilarious. I contribute that to having viewed Woody Allen's "Love and Death" before I began reading the story and picturing Allen as Jacob with sheep's wool poorly glued to his face encouraging his father Isaac to touch it to prove that he was his masculine brother.

Genesis becomes far more interesting when it's read in the light of Kabbalah's Tree of Life.

Rabbinic significance
As to the actual significance of the numbers 10 and 22 in context of Judaism goes into Kabbalistic interpretation of Genesis. God is said to have created the world through Ten Utterances, marked by the number of times Genesis states, “And God said.”
Gen 1:3 - "And Elohim said, 'Let there be Light.' and there was Light." (Kether)
Gen 1:6 - "And Elohim said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the Waters, and let it divide the Waters from the Waters." (Chockmah)
Gen 1:9 - "And Elohim said, 'Let the Waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so." (Binah)
Gen 1:11 - "And Elohim said, 'Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.' And it was so." (Chesed)
Gen 1:14-15 - "And Elohim said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.' And it was so." (Gevurah)
Gen 1:20 - "And Elohim said, 'Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.'" (Tiphareth)
Gen 1:22 - "And Elohim Blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.'" (Netzach)
Gen 1:26 - "And Elohim said, 'Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'" (Hod)
Gen 1:28 - "And Elohim blessed them and Elohim said to them, 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over thefish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'" (Yesod)
Gen 1:29-30 - "And Elohim said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.' And it was so." (Malkuth)

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Originally Posted by DanielBenoit

Wow! Milton translating the Bible. If only. . . . .

Yeah many parts of the Bible are dry repeditive and boring, and as a whole doesn't seem to hold up in comparison to Homer, Dante or Shakespeare.

Though, you must admit, there is some pretty beautiful stuff in there, hidden away between the thickness of two-thousand pages. Just read Ecclesiastes, it seems to go head on against what the gospels were preaching. I remember when I was a Christian, how much comfort I found in reading Pslams.

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I agree, there are parts of the bible that are very slow but when we read it we have to remember that it wasn't written for entertainment purposes, it wasn't written as if it was some novel that we read for an hour every night like any other book. God doesn't expect you to do that, in fact, no one expects you to do that.

If you really want to read it, read it very slowly, at most 3 chapters a day, and read study guides to help you understand what it means. Also, one very simple version to read is the NIRV, New International Readers Version (it's written at a grade 3 level).

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Originally Posted by Chilly

Also, one very simple version to read is the NIRV, New International Readers Version (it's written at a grade 3 level).

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Wow, lol!

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Originally Posted by NickAdams

Genesis becomes far more interesting when it's read in the light of Kabbalah's Tree of Life.

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Interesting. Harold Bloom in "Genius" used this tenfold division to divide his "writers of genius", though he doesn't make this connection to "Genesis". In the first half the of the Keter (Crown) division you get Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Milton, Tolstoy, and ... well you can look up the other 95 writers to see who they are and where they fit! Another Bloom list :-)

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Originally Posted by Chilly

I agree, there are parts of the bible that are very slow but when we read it we have to remember that it wasn't written for entertainment purposes, it wasn't written as if it was some novel that we read for an hour every night like any other book. God doesn't expect you to do that, in fact, no one expects you to do that.

If you really want to read it, read it very slowly, at most 3 chapters a day, and read study guides to help you understand what it means. Also, one very simple version to read is the NIRV, New International Readers Version (it's written at a grade 3 level).

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I don't care what God expects. I am asking my gods, the literary critics, to point out which parts of the Bible have aesthetic merit. And when I can't see why a part has such merit, I want to know why they think it has. So far, a few bits (Job, Ecclesiastes) I can see have the greatest aesthetic merit. Given that, I'm curious to find all the pieces with aesthetic merit without having to plough through the unploughable slow bits.

I've read Shakespeare and Homer, so I'm happy with complicated language and a certain amount of "slow". But I wouldn't read an unabridged Homer again. The Iliad has more than 1000 names of people & places, mostly appearing once (in the form "Achilles killed X", or similar.) I can see how this happened -- every important Greek had to get into this oral history! -- but it destroys the pleasure of the reading experience. Now the Bible seems to be similar in this respect, except is even "slower" than the Iliad, to the extent of being unreadable to all but (I guess) the seriously faithful or bible scholars.

So the serious common reader of literature has a predicament. Much serious literature refers to the Bible, major critics like Harold Bloom say it is canonical, so if you are serious about literature then the Bible has to be tackled somehow.

The first thing to do, for those who are Bloomites rather than Christians, is (surely) to get an abridged version approved by the master. Bloom actually said, "everything of aesthetic merit" in the Bible remains in "Testament". But he didn't say that much that isn't of aesthetic merit still remains!

For now, I'll read through the 100 Minute Bible, to get a bird's eye view, and then, maybe, try "Testament" again from the beginning -- editing out the "slow" bits to avoid on a re-read!

I guess it would be easy if Christianity was my religion, then I would just read the Bible. No excuses. But literature is my religion, so why should I go through the pain of reading the Bible, when I could re-read Hamlet, unabridged (!), and experience my religion in action, at its best...

I'm assuming you already know the basic? That the Bible is not a novel, nor written like a novel, nor even a Homeric epic. It is a collection of individual books written at different times by different authors about different aspects of the history and beliefs of the people of the Bible, all assembled between two covers as one "book". So, if anything, it is more like a collection of short stories by different authors with different perspectives around a common theme. Does Tanakh ring a bell? If not, google will tell you better than I can what the major divisions and perspectives are.

I would recommend that anyone read essays about biblical teaching rather than plunge into the book itself. An essay on, say, Mosaic law. Then another on Messianic law and how it overrules or enforces the old law. But if you must plunge into the book itself take the easy route.

For example, when reading the Old Testament, why not start with Amos? It is brief and deals with one topic: the punishment dealt to Israel because of its injustices and abuse of poor people. Then, try Proverbs which is a collection about wisdom and good conduct. Then go to the New Testament and begin with an easy book like James which deals with love and charity.

If you go from page one to the end, you may find that it is too boring or that it is inaccessible. Best to just read about the Bible before actually reading it.

If you want readable it's mostly in the New Testament. Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon are good too. IMHO

Definitely skip at least the first 5 books, and pretty much anything before the prophets. Isaiah has some pretty sweet stuff in it, I know, but the rest of the prophets I'm not as familiar with, so I couldn't say.

What translation are you reading?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I am asking my gods, the literary critics, to point out which parts of the Bible have aesthetic merit.

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But literature is my religion,

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Then, why not let Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Milton be your gods instead of having a bunch of literary critics think for you.

Sometimes in literature you need to bite the bullet and read works unabridged.


By the way, concerning translation: I always stick to the King James Version, certainly the most poetic.

Personally I would beg to differ with the assertions as the the "unreadability" of the Bible. I would personally place it along side of Shakespeare, Dante, and a few other absolute essential texts... speaking purely in aesthetic terms. If you are reading the Bible in English I would insist that there is only one translation of the entire text worthy of consideration and that is the King James Version.

I'm not certain where your difficulties with the text lie. I would suggest that it is probably of great help to begin with a critical exploration of how the work is laid out because you must be aware that the text as it exists is the product of numerous authors and later editors (some better than others). This is true even within individual "books" in which we often find more than a single version of same story interpolated. One might do well to familiarize yourself with the so-called "Documentary Hypothesis" which proposes a number of distinct writers within the Pentateuch. The theory essentially suggests that a number of different narratives by different writers were edited at a later time into the text that we now have. You can see an intro to the theory here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Or one may also look into Richard Elliott Friedmann's The Hidden Book in the Bible and Harold Bloom's (Oh no! Not him again!) The Book of J for further exploration.

The Bible is essentially a collection of loosely related and unrelated texts that represent the collective "history" of the Hebrew people. One might imagine what a post-Apocalyptic Bible of our culture might be like if it were to constructed of fragments of various lengths of Shakespeare (narrative), Blake and Baudelaire as well as lyrics of a few popular songs (poetry), bits of the Bill or Rights and the legal code of New York State (law), brief comments by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Goethe (proverbs), etc...

The best approach to the Bible is to read one section or book at a time. Personally I find the work to contain some of the most magnificent writing ever. Like many of the truly "canonical" (Ack! Ack! That word again!!!) writers, the Bible can be shockingly strange because it is not what one expects at all. Of course Dante was not what I expected... neither was Kafka. But this strangeness is a strength. It shocks you out of your preconceived notions. The God of Abraham and Moses is a jealous, petty... at times despicable God ("Abe... kill me a son. You'd do it if you loved me." Moses... chop off the end of your penis. You'd do it if you loved me. It'll be a sign of a covenant... just between me and you.") In many ways this is a God not unfamiliar to Kafka.

As I already stated, I find the KJV to be by far the best English translation of the entire Bible... and certainly it has the advantage of a magnificent almost Shakespearean language. There are translations of the individual texts, however, that I would recommend. Certainly read Stephen Mitchell's Job which marvelously captures the poetry of the text. Mitchell also offers some intriguing interpretations in his commentary. Robert Alter offers some marvelous translations (The Five Books of Moses, The David Story, and The Book of Psalms) which offer up translations that are closer to capturing the original Hebrew rhythms, repetitions, and poetry. Ariel and Chana Bloch's translation of The Song of Songs is quite beautiful. I would also recommend A Poet's Book of Psalms edited by Lawrence Wieder in which the author selects what he considers to be the finest English translation of each of the Psalms (as poetry). Translators include Robert Burns, John Milton, Phillip Sidney, John Davies, Thomas Wyatt, Christopher Smart, Thomas Campion, Mary Sidney Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc...

Beyond these... I would (and do) still return to the KJV of the various books of the Bible. Genesis offers a fabulous fable-like explanation of the creation. Something only echoed in works like the Persian Shanameh. It is at once simple... and profound. The psychological insights and personal tragedies of figures such as Abraham, Moses, Jacob, David, Saul, etc... rivals the strongest narratives of literature.

Job is an almost shocking work... beginning in the manner of something like a puppet theater as an unknown God whose decisions cannot be questioned allows the "tempter" to play with the lives of his servant Job and family. I cannot help but think of Kafka's unseen tormentors: "One day J awoke to found that all he loved had been taken from him without reason..." Confronting this greatest challenge of faith... how can a just God allow bad things to happen to good people?... the book then erupts into a magnificent torrent of visionary poetry before returning once again to the puppet theater.

The Bible contains some of the most sensuous erotic poetry: "I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning." "Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb. Honey and milk are under thy tongue, and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon." Such poetry of love can be found in The Song of Songs... as well as certain Psalms.

Beyond this one may uncover magnificent poetry of praise, tormented lamentations and dire prophesy... some of which is horrific to read after knowledge of the Holocaust. There are also the magical narratives of the life of Jesus and the horrors of the Passion... the brilliance of the Sermon on the Mount which must stand along the Tao Te Ching at the summit of "wisdom literature" and again... the prophesies of Revelations... worthy of the most visionary bits of Blake, the Qur'an, Moby Dick, etc...

Like many of the towering works of literature, the Bible is unquestionably deeply flawed. It lacks the smooth narrative flow and perfection of a book such as Lolita, The Great Gatsby, or Madame Bovary. Of course one might point out just how Don Quixote, War and Peace, Moby Dick, Ulysses, and other such texts also become lost in diversions... sink into passages that are not merely less-than-marvelous... or even mediocre... but are actually bad... even horrible. And yet the wealth and splendor that is there to be found is also beyond compare. In a like manner I think of the oeuvre of Pablo Picasso who may just have produced the most crap of any great artist... some of it so bad that one cannot even fathom how even a mediocre artist would have allowed just trash to see the light of day... but then he also produces more art that attains the highest levels imaginable than almost anyone I can think of... and the heights he attains are virtually as unimaginable... and unexpected as those of the Bible.

If you want readable it's mostly in the New Testament. Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon are good too. IMHO

Definitely skip at least the first 5 books, and pretty much anything before the prophets. Isaiah has some pretty sweet stuff in it, I know, but the rest of the prophets I'm not as familiar with, so I couldn't say

Skip the first five books??!! That would be the Pentateuch... the Torah... pretty much the core narratives of the Hebrew Bible.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Because I'd had no success reading the full Bible I thought I'd try an abridged version ("Testament" abridged by Philip Law). But I couldn't even get through that! It still had too many old prophets charging round the desert doing despicable, meaningless and unmotivated things.

I was reading the Iliad at the same time, and turning to it for light relief! I finished that and started reading Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, so there was then no hope of continuing the Bible! I ground to a halt somewhere in "David" and just couldn't go on...

The "100 minute Bible" has just been delivered, maybe I can finish that!

Are there any out-takes forn the Bible that are actually readable for someone who expects a reasonable aesthetic experience from their reading? People like Stephen Mitchell have translated parts of the Bible (Job, Gospels...) I've a feeling that might be the way to go, i.e., read the parts that good writers and poets have felt worth translating.... Any recommendations along this line?

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Of course I too feel like that.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

If you want readable it's mostly in the New Testament. Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon are good too. IMHO

Definitely skip at least the first 5 books, and pretty much anything before the prophets. Isaiah has some pretty sweet stuff in it, I know, but the rest of the prophets I'm not as familiar with, so I couldn't say

Skip the first five books??!! That would be the Pentateuch... the Torah... pretty much the core narratives of the Hebrew Bible.

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Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

The Bible is essentially a collection of loosely related and unrelated texts that represent the collective "history" of the Hebrew people. One might imagine what a post-Apocalyptic Bible of our culture might be like if it were to constructed of fragments of various lengths of Shakespeare (narrative), Blake and Baudelaire as well as lyrics of a few popular songs (poetry), bits of the Bill or Rights and the legal code of New York State (law), brief comments by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Goethe (proverbs), etc...

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The Bible is only a fraction - the Hebrew Canon is much larger in places, and smaller in others (the Apocrypha is a Christian decision). The so called Collective History reading works only when you approach it from that angle - the King James though, if read as a single book, is not taking that angle - one would need to be versed in exterior Jewish scripture, and Rabbinic interpretation to understand a Jewish perspective - something which is very hard to do, given the intense amount of Hebrew and Aramaic scholarship written for thousands of years. The tradition itself isn't very static - the book is constantly changing, and being built upon. Commentary, and the understanding of the text functions more like an oral form of communication than a written one, and so, the interpretation is subject to additional argument centuries in the future - sort of like its own literary tradition.

Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

Obviously it depends upon the reader. "Boring" would seem to be a rather subjective criticism. We've had endless posters declare that everything from Mozart to Shakespeare to Moby Dick is "boring". I personally find the narratives of the creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt etc... to be among the most memorable of narratives. Considering their impact upon Western civilization and Western culture (literature, art, music, philosophy) it would seem that I am not alone. I would agree that Exodus in places... and more so Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are perplexing... even frustrating in the interpolation of repetitive historical minutiae, ritual, and Hebrew law and legislative records. There are passages of profundity, but especially in the last 3 books one must dig through a great deal that is unquestionably "mundane" to find it. Genesis especially, and Exodus, however, offer a nearly unrivaled wealth of narratives that combine into a single tale that traverses from the very creation of the universe to the the enslavement of the Hebrew peoples to their eventual triumphal exodus from out of Egypt. This narrative mirrors, in many ways, the later narratives/histories of the later rise of Israel followed by its eventual fall and "Babylonian" captivity. Part of the notion of the Documentary Hypothesis and the effort to discern the various authors of voices within the Pentateuch and the later "historical narratives" (The Saul, David, Solomon tales) is geared toward developing the ability to recognize or even read the great narratives as separate from later interpolations of Hebrew strictures.

The Bible is unreadable

I've decided to wait for the movie...

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Originally Posted by ntropyincarnate

Yes, but they are also as boring as all hell. And so repetitive. I'm just saying, for readability...if you're just reading it for pleasure, the Pentateuch is a killer.

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Any why four gospels telling pretty much the same story? I wouldn't even read four versions of Hamlet back to back. "Testament" condenses the four gospels into one, which was a major selling point for me!

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

I personally find the narratives of the creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt etc... to be among the most memorable of narratives.

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I agree. It's after that point that it became unreadable for me. I managed to slog through Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Ruth... but in Samuel the wheel's came off! I hit David and Goliath with some relief, but was then hugely disappointed to be dragged through David's later career as a paranoid megalomaniac... Maybe it was disappointment about the "boy gone bad", or maybe the endless lists of obscure destroyed tribes, people and places, but I couldn't go on. I turned to Blood Meridian and 'the Wire' for simpler language and manageable violence...

Maybe I need a good Bible commentary? But it's difficult to find readable ones! They tend to add pedantic scholarship to obscurity. Maybe I just need to skip the Bible and read Shakespeare, Milton, Dante... with good notes explaining the biblical references in full!

Anyone read "Asimov's Guide to the Bible"? Does that give good advice on skipping?

I have read the Bible and have it here alongside me, and I strongly endorse all the good things that have been said above about reading the Bible, and especially the KJV. I'd like to add just one practical note.

One really ought to read the whole thing once. Just slog through it!
At least that way you will know what is in it, before throwing stones.

And, who knows, you might come to appreciate it in some sense. But you don't have to. After you read it, that is up to you.

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Originally Posted by Red-Headed

The Bible is unreadable

I've decided to wait for the movie...

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Start with Life of Brian.;)

Wow...slogging through the Bible? I'm speechless. The only thing I don't find very interesting in the Bible is the long lists of names. It's a History too, so if you like reading history, you should like this. But then, since your only reading it "just 'cause," you might not be struck with it the way a Christian or a wannabe Christian would. Maybe you should wait a bit before trying again, meanwhile trying to be more open-minded towards religion. The right state of mind might help you to get through it better.

I didn't mind the lists of names.
I read through them just to see what names were like, and also on the chance that there might be some structure or relatedness to them rather than just the randomness of names. And I only had to do them once, no matter how much I look at and reread other parts of the Bible, so no big loss.

Not every thing in life comes with jelly and sugar on top.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Personally I would beg to differ with the assertions as the the "unreadability" of the Bible. I would personally place it along side of Shakespeare, Dante, and a few other absolute essential texts... speaking purely in aesthetic terms. If you are reading the Bible in English I would insist that there is only one translation of the entire text worthy of consideration and that is the King James Version.

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I used to say that myself StLukes, but I've changed my opinion. I've been in the process of reading different books of the Bible both in the King James Version and a modern translation (I'm using the Roman Catholic translation New American Bible, NAB) and while the King James sounds poetic in places it it is very awkward and archaic and tedious in others. Sure for the occaisional passage the king James soars, but as a whole I don't find it worth it. I have come to definitely prefer the modern translation, at least the NAB version.

Here are a couple of web sites on what to look for in a translation:
http://www.catholic.com/library/Bibl...ions_Guide.asp

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Originally Posted by NickAdams

Start with Life of Brian.;)

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Yeah, but that's New Testament. I should really start at the beginning! Maybe somewhere around the Ten Commandments!

Personally, I don't find the King James Version to be any more archaic than Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Donne, Herrick, or even Milton. In other words... it certainly is written in a form of English that is outdated... but in no way inferior. If anything, it actually has the advantage of a far greater sense of poetry. It must also be credited, along-side of Shakespeare, of actually being the virtual foundation of "modern English". Milton, Christopher Smart, Thomas Traherne, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and endless writers are deeply in debt to the language and the flow and the cadence of the Bible as imagined in the KJV.

I can't speak specifically to the Roman Catholic New American Bible translation, but I will say that most contemporary translations I have read have been perhaps easier to understand in terms of "meaning" but frequently lose any sense of the poetry and are reduced to a middling pedestrian quality. As many scholars have pointed out, many of the modern translations are actually less accurate than the KJV in that they downplay the poetry, the metaphor, the intentional use of repetition and the often kill the intent with their attempt at naturalism and colloquialism.

I would certainly not limit my experience to the KJV, but look into a number of quality translations of various sections or books of the Bible in order to gain an alternative view. I believe multiple translations are a must when dealing with such an iconic work, and I have employed such with Homer, Virgil, and Dante and others as well. Again, I would especially recommend Robert Alter's translations of The Five Books of Moses, The David Story, and the Psalms. I'd also recommend A Poet's Book of Psalms edited by Lawrence Wieder in which the author selects what he considers to be the finest English translation of each of the Psalms (as poetry) by poets including Robert Burns, John Milton, Phillip Sidney, John Davies, Thomas Wyatt, Christopher Smart, Thomas Campion, Mary Sidney Herbert, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc... and one might wish to make a further exploration of the translation of Psalms by Sidney, his sister, Christopher Smart, and others. I'd also recommend Stephen Mitchell's Job and Chana and Ariel Bloch's Song of Songs. Another recommendation would be that of Richard Lattimore's translations of the Gospels and other New Testament books from the Greek.

As an interesting aside it might be noted that poetic translations of the Psalms were almost immediately begun following the completion of the KJV as it was recognized that there was a real shortcoming there. The KJV or the Psalms are quite beautiful... but with a few key exceptions (the most obvious being the beloved 23rd Psalm) they read as English prose... lovely prose... but prose none-the-less. various poets immediately took up the challenge of translating these Hebrew poems into English verse.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Personally, I don't find the King James Version to be any more archaic than Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Donne, Herrick, or even Milton.

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The KJV often employs out-dated (even for the Jacobeans) nominative pronouns like 'thou' & other archaic forms originally to give it some gravitas for its intended audience. These were not in general use in southern English. Some, like 'thee' (accusative) still exist as the familial in parts of the North. The dative 'Yeow' is still used in parts of the Midlands (Black Country) but now only as a familial.

Speaking of translations... the King James Translation which I own is published by Everyman's Library (Knopf) and includes a rather good introduction of the history of the Bible and the history of the translations of the same. There are any number of earlier translations including that of the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Martin Luther's German, John Wycliffe's, and William Tyndale's (which was a model for and provided a great deal of the actual language of the KJV). One should understand the the great excitement concerning the discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and other ancient parchments was due to the fact that there are no Hebrew "originals" of the Biblical writings from between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls until around the 9th or 10th century. What we have is a translation of a translation. What has come down to us are early Greek translations (with many inconsistencies) and the translation of Jerome... which was based upon his collections of various translations... most importantly from the Hebrew. There are any number of books which explore the history of the Bible including The Book: A History of the Bible (copiously illustrated in color) by Christopher Hamel; Surpassing Wonder: the Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, by Donald Akenson; An Introduction to the Old Testament, by Walter Brueggemann; The Literary Guide to the Bible and The Art of Biblical Poetry, by Robert Alter.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

One should understand the the great excitement concerning the discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and other ancient parchments was due to the fact that there are no Hebrew "originals" of the Biblical writings from between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls until around the 9th or 10th century. What we have is a translation of a translation.

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It's all a matter of hermeneutics, semiotics & subjective ontology eventually... :eek:

The KJV often employs out-dated (even for the Jacobeans) nominative pronouns like 'thou' & other archaic forms originally to give it some gravitas for its intended audience.

Interestingly enough it is often supposed that thou and you are an English variant on the formal vs informal address... not unlike tu and vous in French... with thou being obviously the formal form. In reality, thou originated as the form used for the expression of intimacy, familiarity, or even disrespect. It is still used... along with variations such as thee and prithee (albeit inconsistently) by Shakespeare, Spenser, and other writers... although it almost certainly owes its survival to William Tyndale's translation of the Bible in which he employed the forms in an attempt to preserve the singular and plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek originals. Tyndale's use was replicated in the King James Version and because of this link it became thought of as denoting formality... which was actually the opposite of its original intent. This usage was further kept alive by imitation and usage by English poets as well as by various religious groups such as the Society of Friends (or Quakers) and other such groups, as well as in certain regional dialects. It actually shows up in the Southern United States (and can be found, for example, in a number of songs by Stephen Foster).

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

The KJV often employs out-dated (even for the Jacobeans) nominative pronouns like 'thou' & other archaic forms originally to give it some gravitas for its intended audience.

Interestingly enough it is often supposed that thou and you are an English variant on the formal vs informal address... not unlike tu and vous in French... with thou being obviously the formal form.

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Like I said, the nominative & accusative have evolved over the years. The accusative 'thee' is now used as the informal (familial) in dialect in parts of the north of England. If you ever spend any time in Manchester you will hear it quite a bit, along with many Dane descended words such as 'bairn' (child).

In the Midlands some inflectives, notably dative, also became familials (informal). Yeow (sounds like 'yow') being the most common, particularly in the Black Country. There was no real Danelaw influence on the Frisian descended Black Country speech as the Danes (with the exception of Wolverhampton) didn't actually settle there (the English wouldn't let them). So Midland's dialect is the oldest known Anglo-Saxon variant. My mother was from the Black Country & I can both speak & understand the dialect. Although it is unintelligible in most of Worcestershire. Oddly, Shakespeare spells many words with diphthongs that mimic much Black Country speech in assonance particularly. Many of his rhyme schemes only make sense if you take this into account. :eek2:

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Personally, I don't find the King James Version to be any more archaic than Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlow, Donne, Herrick, or even Milton. In other words... it certainly is written in a form of English that is outdated... but in no way inferior. If anything, it actually has the advantage of a far greater sense of poetry. It must also be credited, along-side of Shakespeare, of actually being the virtual foundation of "modern English". Milton, Christopher Smart, Thomas Traherne, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and endless writers are deeply in debt to the language and the flow and the cadence of the Bible as imagined in the KJV.

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Like Red-Headed says below, the KJV was consciously written to be archaic, so it's really in a language that never existed. I agree there are passages that rise to poetry, but those passages are few in between and in the meantime I struggle to understand the language. It's just down right awkard to read in places. Plus modern scholarship has arrived at more precise translations.

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Originally Posted by Red-Headed

The KJV often employs out-dated (even for the Jacobeans) nominative pronouns like 'thou' & other archaic forms originally to give it some gravitas for its intended audience. These were not in general use in southern English. Some, like 'thee' (accusative) still exist as the familial in parts of the North. The dative 'Yeow' is still used in parts of the Midlands (Black Country) but now only as a familial.

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It goes beyond "thees" and "thous. It goes to sentence structure as well. What makes for good poetry makes for poor readability. Unfortunately I don't find enough of the poetic passages. It's a chore to get through.

Like Red-Headed says below, the KJV was consciously written to be archaic, so it's really in a language that never existed.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The King James Version largely employed the language of the time, although translators made some efforts to covey certain aspects of the cadence or flow or even the vocabulary of the original Hebrew with the use of a poetic license. It also might be noted that a concern of the translators was to produce a Bible that would be appropriate, and resonate in public reading... thus, in a period of rapid linguistic change, they avoided contemporary idioms and neologisms; tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass. Of course, one might just as well argue that Shakespeare is written in a language that in no way mirrors the common speech of the time... nor was James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, or Cormac McCarthy. Beyond this... a vast majority of whatever archaisms were placed within the KJV were the result of the decision by translators to maintain a good deal from the Tyndale Bible, the Bishop's Bible, and the Great Bible in order to maintain a sense of continuity or familiarity with the readers.

I agree there are passages that rise to poetry, but those passages are few in between and in the meantime I struggle to understand the language.

Again... I don't find the poetic passages to be few or far between at all. I will admit that this may be owed in part to my familiarity with older English literature... especially poetry.

It's just down right awkard to read in places.

Again... is this "awkwardness" a flaw of the writing or is it merely do to a difficulty with the vocabulary, cadence, sentence structure, etc... of earlier English literature? Surely it is no more "awkward" than Sir Thomas Browne, Philip Sidney, Robert Burton, Francis Bacon, Thomas More or any other writer of prose of the era... and surely its a hell of a lot easier than Chaucer.

Plus modern scholarship has arrived at more precise translations.

Precise... but in what way? The clear, literal translation is not necessarily e best. The reality is that the King James Version is incredibly accurate. The translations were undertaken by some 47 scholars working in teams or committees. They worked primarily from the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts. They were also free to consult earlier translations including the Latin Vulgate and other early Latin versions, the Tyndale Bible, the Bishop's Bible, the Coverdale Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, etc... The greatest inaccuracies were related to attempts to avoid anything that suggested Puritanism... thus terms such as "congregation" were avoided.

By the 18th century there were essentially dozens if not hundreds of versions of the KJV as a result of poor editing practices. It was then decided to establish an authorized "standard edition" which was to be based upon a version edited at Oxford. At this time many thousands of small edits had been made. The King James Version would still go through further revisions in the form of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and the Revised King James Version (RKJV). What is intriguing is that almost all of these translations go out of their way to maintain what was highly beloved by the general readers in much the same manner as the KJV sought to maintain aspects of the Tyndale and the Bishop's Bible.

Robert Alter, one of the leading scholars on Hebrew and the Bible, notes that a great majority of the newer translations of the Bible are just as accurate... and inaccurate as the KJV. Efforts at using informal colloquialisms have often resulted in the most ridiculous gaffes and zingers that completely miss the true intention. Alter notes that a number of the modern translations are written in clear English prose which gains, perhaps in understanding over the KJV but loses out in the splendor and richness of the older translation. The splendor of this translation is something that most of the translators recognize, and efforts are commonly made to maintain a good deal of what they find to be the best of the KJV. He also notes that the newer translations are often no more accurate in conveying the true sound, cadence, and flow of the Hebrew originals (nor are they without biases: Catholic, Southern Baptist, etc...) The translation of the Hebrew term עַלְמָה (ʿalmāh) in Isaiah 7:14 as "young woman" rather than the traditional Christian translation of "virgin" led to outrage and the start of the King James Only Movement. In no way would I argue that the KJV should be the only translation one should read. A great Bible that I saw years ago (but which was far too expensive for me at the time) placed various translations side by side in columns: Tyndale, KJV, RKJV, RSV, etc... Again... accessing a variety of translations may be the best solution.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I've a feeling that might be the way to go, i.e., read the parts that good writers and poets have felt worth translating.... Any recommendations along this line?

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Personally I think many of these great writers and poets would point to the Bible and say, "There is literary greatness."
Here are some names of those who have declared in varying terms their highest respect for the Bible:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, Sir William Jones, John Milton, Bacon, Daniel Webster, John Adams, Lincoln, Napoleon, Sir Isaac Newton, Cowper, Newton, Franklin, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Tennyson, and the list goes on and on.
Shakespeare alone has some five hundred Biblical quotations, allusions, etc.

Heres a quote from a Dr. James L. Vance.

"The Bible is not only many books, it is a literature. History, poetry, philosophy, theology, oratory, humor, sarcasm, irony, music, drama, tragedy, strategy, love tales, war tales, travelogues, laws, jurisprudence, songs, sermons, warning, prayers all are here. Was there ever such a literature? The Bible begins with agarden and ends with a city. It starts with a morning followed by a night, and ends with a day that shall know no night...It finds man at the shut gates of the lost Eden and leaves him before the open door at the top of the road."
(Found in I Love Books)

From the same book:

"George Saintsbury, most fastidious of critics, once declared that the best example known to him of absolutely perfect English prose is the sixth and seventh verses of the eighth chapter of the Song of Solomon:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned."

Another critic, Dr. William Lyon Phelps, said, "I have lived all my life with music, books and works of art, yet I cannot tell what is the best picture ever painted, or what is the best music written or the best play. I can, however tell you what is the... best poetry in the world...The best poetry is the 23d, the 90th and the 103d psalms.I stand in line with priests, atheists, skeptics, devotees, agnostics, and evangelists when I say that the Authorized Version of the Bible is the best example of English literature that the world has ever seen. I believe the knowledge of the Bible without a college course more valuable than a college course without the Bible."

I have friends who teach reading using phonics and one once had a coworker who said that the KJV Bible works up in grade level from the first chapter of Genesis on. I think Gen. 1 is about grade 5 grade level and it goes up.

I think there are a couple of reasons many find the Bible difficult reading. The first being that we know longer read as much or as thought-provoking literature as we should. So many today lack self-discipline in what they read, and seek only to be entertained.

The second reason I hold as a Christian, so I'm sure plenty won't agree with me: It is simply this "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Like Red-Headed says below, the KJV was consciously written to be archaic, so it's really in a language that never existed.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The King James Version largely employed the language of the time,

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Well, only if you think that most people really did speak in Shakespearean verse in Jacobean England.

Langland's West Midland dialect & speech is probably more accurately represented in Piers Plowman. In fact I recognise dialect words in the passage below (the translation is my own).

In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne
I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were;
In habite as an hermite vnholy of workes
Went wyde in this world wonders to here.
Ac on a May mornynge on Maluerne hulles
Me byfel a ferly, of fairy me thougt:
I was very forwandred and went me to rest
Vnder a brode bank bi a bornes side
And as I lay and lened and looked in the wateres
I slombred in a slepying, it sweyued so merye.

~ William Langland (perhaps c.1330 - c.1386)

In a summer season, when pleasant was the sun
I dressed myself in the clothes of a shepherd;
In the habit of a not so holy hermit,
I went out wide in the world wonders to hear.
On a May morning on the Malvern hills
I fell across the land of fairy I thought:
I was very lost and I went to rest
Under a broad bank by the side of a bourne
And as I lay I leaned and looked into the water,
I slumbered and slept, it sounded so pleasant.

Shakespeare, like Langland was a mostly self-educated man & tried to improve his social standing by trying to lose his Midlands accent & dialect & adopting more Southern speech.

I doubt very much whether the KJB represented the colloquial speech of either the Elizabethan or Jacobean period. The inflexional endings for the third person present indicative of verbs had already been assimilated from the north & the midlands of England to become the standard even before Shakespeare was born.

When Chaucer used 'he fyndes' & 'he brynges' in the Canterbury Tales he is actually mimicking what was then a peculiar midland dialect. Chaucer would have used 'he fyndeth' or 'he bryngeth'. This was antiquated in the south by the time the KJB was compiled. As I said earlier, this was to give it a sense of gravitas.

Middle English started to split from old English primarily with development of simpler inflexions, especially in nouns & adjectives. This eventually blurred many of the distinctions between vowel sounds & unstressed syllables. The next development was an increased reliance on word-order (syntax) & prepositions to mark the relationships of words in a sentence. This & the mixture of Romance & Scandinavian Old Norse paved the way for the English of the time of the KJB.

During the Elizabethan era the language changed more than it had ever before, with thousands of new words & concepts coming into the English language. In fact it was our Renaissance.

I don't know where you get the idea that King James English was anything like colloquial English when it was written!

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

Like Red-Headed says below, the KJV was consciously written to be archaic, so it's really in a language that never existed.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The King James Version largely employed the language of the time, although translators made some efforts to covey certain aspects of the cadence or flow or even the vocabulary of the original Hebrew with the use of a poetic license. It also might be noted that a concern of the translators was to produce a Bible that would be appropriate, and resonate in public reading... thus, in a period of rapid linguistic change, they avoided contemporary idioms and neologisms; tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass.

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Well, I'm not an expert in 15th cedntury English so I can't speak definitively. But I have read other writing of the period and I can't correlate the writing style to any other work. Can anyone? I would be interested in such a comparison. For instance compare malory's Le Morte with this and though both are different, I find Malory much more readable. I do think you are incorrect about only avoiding contemporary idioms. I'm pretty sure it was a conscious effort to affect sentence structure as well. If I had more time now I would pull some examples. I will try to later.

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Of course, one might just as well argue that Shakespeare is written in a language that in no way mirrors the common speech of the time... nor was James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, or Cormac McCarthy. Beyond this... a vast majority of whatever archaisms were placed within the KJV were the result of the decision by translators to maintain a good deal from the Tyndale Bible, the Bishop's Bible, and the Great Bible in order to maintain a sense of continuity or familiarity with the readers.

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I certainly disagree about Joyce, Eliot, and McCarthy. Whatever their difficulties, it is not sentence structure. As to Shakespeare, he's a poet who strains the language for poetic effect. The Bible is a prose work with an objective of clarity and communication. I'm not familiar with those previous bibles. I can't comment.

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I agree there are passages that rise to poetry, but those passages are few in between and in the meantime I struggle to understand the language.

Again... I don't find the poetic passages to be few or far between at all. I will admit that this may be owed in part to my familiarity with older English literature... especially poetry.

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Ok, I guess we just disagree. ;)

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It's just down right awkard to read in places.

Again... is this "awkwardness" a flaw of the writing or is it merely do to a difficulty with the vocabulary, cadence, sentence structure, etc... of earlier English literature? Surely it is no more "awkward" than Sir Thomas Browne, Philip Sidney, Robert Burton, Francis Bacon, Thomas More or any other writer of prose of the era... and surely its a hell of a lot easier than Chaucer.

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Again, Chaucer is poetry and of a significantly different time period. Yes, it's as different as those other writers, but, and I haven't read them in a while or along side the KJV to compare, those writers seem to be speaking in an English I can hear. This is the first time I've really read the KJV extensively and I'm shocked at its awkwardness of phrasing. Is it poetic? Sure, at places, but why should a prose work be poetic? TS Eliot made a critical examination of Milton where he said that Milton did not write in a real English (I'm paraphrasing) but stretched the language beyond its proper form. I agree, but I would allow Milton was a poet and had the right to stretch language for whatever effect he wished. I might argue that the KJV has the same flaw without the saving grace of being a poem. Clarity in prose is paramount.

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Plus modern scholarship has arrived at more precise translations.

Precise... but in what way? The clear, literal translation is not necessarily e best. The reality is that the King James Version is incredibly accurate. The translations were undertaken by some 47 scholars working in teams or committees. They worked primarily from the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts.

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Precise does not in any way mean literal. Just the opposite. Where the KJV is supposed to have failed is in the understanding of connotations of the ancient language. Modern scholarship understands those ancient languages far better (not literal but with the full connotations that all words have) than they did then.

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Robert Alter, one of the leading scholars on Hebrew and the Bible, notes that a great majority of the newer translations of the Bible are just as accurate... and inaccurate as the KJV.

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Well, that's one opinion. I've seen others that disagree.

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Efforts at using informal colloquialisms have often resulted in the most ridiculous gaffes and zingers that completely miss the true intention. Alter notes that a number of the modern translations are written in clear English prose which gains, perhaps in understanding over the KJV but loses out in the splendor and richness of the older translation. The splendor of this translation is something that most of the translators recognize, and efforts are commonly made to maintain a good deal of what they find to be the best of the KJV. He also notes that the newer translations are often no more accurate in conveying the true sound, cadence, and flow of the Hebrew originals (nor are they without biases: Catholic, Southern Baptist, etc...) The translation of the Hebrew term עַלְמָה (ʿalmāh) in Isaiah 7:14 as "young woman" rather than the traditional Christian translation of "virgin" led to outrage and the start of the King James Only Movement. In no way would I argue that the KJV should be the only translation one should read. A great Bible that I saw years ago (but which was far too expensive for me at the time) placed various translations side by side in columns: Tyndale, KJV, RKJV, RSV, etc... Again... accessing a variety of translations may be the best solution.

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I just saw in a book store a version that puts the translations side by side. I think the price has come down now and is managable. Sure, I think reading the KJV in sections would do a lover of the English language some good. But if you're looking to read for understanding and clarity, you can do a lot better.

unreadable? yowch. Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are hard-core, I admit, for all but the most dedicated of Bible scholars. But the rest of it...especially the gospels...are enough to bring one to his knees. It is different, I'm sure, for a person who isn't a born-again Christian to get that level of feeling out of the text, but at the right place and time it will hit you like a bag of bricks, even sometimes when you won't let it, and all of a sudden Christ will be revealed to you in all His glory, and you'll see why so many so deeply cleave to the precepts in that Book. At that point you'll even hold Leviticus dear, because it is the Word of God.