The Bible is unreadable

[stlukesguild]

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.

[Red-Headed]

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.

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

[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. 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).

[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.

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.

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.

[Virgil]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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. 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.

[L.M. The Third]

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?

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)

[Red-Headed]

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,

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!

[Virgil]

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Ok, I guess we just disagree.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

[andave_ya]

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.

[Morden]

Yes, andave_ya, that is all true, and moreso each time one reads it. Amen.

[Red-Headed]

Well, on a short note; I think there is poetry in the KJV. After all, the psalms were meant to be sung....right? (OK, maybe in Hebrew)

[NickAdams]

This might be of interest in regards to the "Old Testament", it's poetry and translations:

http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/23_parallel.html

http://www.cresourcei.org/parallel.html

http://www.bible-researcher.com/hebrew-poetry.html

[chrismythoi]

i think the bible is very readable. the only exceptions are genealogies, but they only occur in the 'history' books and are not so frequent as to destroy the flow of the story.
my favourite parts of the bible are Job, Exodus, 1 Samuel, Mark, Revelation and maybe also Song of Songs. Ecclesiastes is good, along with Wisodm and Ecclesiasticus, both found in the Catholic Bible.

You must bear in mind when reading the Bible that such conceptions as genre, 'readability' and audience appreciation were not necessarily the powerful filters they are today in writing. it is a much more subtle and dificult form of literature that takes perseverance. it is also not a novel so dont expect to read it all straight through in the way you would war and peace for example.

the thing that ultimately makes the bible readable for me is that it is the basis of billions of people's faith, and the questions that can therefore arise from engaging with such a text are many.

however for those of you wishing to appreciate biblical literature, i would point you ini the direction of the following scholars who may shed light onto the topic for anyone wishing to enjoy the bible as art...

robert alter
j cheryl exum
david clines
david gunn and danna fewell
meir sternberg
laurence turner
jan fokkelman

these may be a good start.

[mortalterror]

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.

I cringe and a little part of me dies inside whenever you compare Shakespeare to Cormac McCarthy or Blood Meridian to Moby Dick.