Re: Help with Greek was Re: Babel Text in Obrenje

Raymond Brown scripsit:

> Well, if by 'fairly modern' you mean about a century or so out of date.
> Fairly modern, certainly, compared with now.  But the translators of the
> KJV deliberately eschewed a contemporary form and harked back to Tudor
> English in order to give their translation a sense of 'timelessness'.
Their job was not so much to translate the Scriptures, as to revise the
existing (Protestant) translations having regard to the originals.
Hence the even-for-1611 archaisms like "Our Father which art in heaven".
As for "Tudor English", the Tudors were less than five years off the throne
when the job was begun.

        [...] Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfited at the
        same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser:
        so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us,
        and being holpen by their labours, doe endevour to make that
        better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause
        to mislike us; they, we persuade our selves, if they were alive,
        would thanke us.

        [...] Truly (good Christian Reader) wee never thought from the
        beginning, that we should neede to make a new Translation, nor
        yet to make of a bad one a good one, [...] but to make a good
        one better, or out of many good ones, one principall good one,
        not justly to be excepted against; that hath bene our indeavour,
        that our marke.

                -- KJV, "The translators to the reader", speaking of the
                previous translations into English.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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