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OT: The KJV Bible (was: Help with Greek was Re: Babel Text in

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 13, 2002, 22:24
Raymond Brown scripsit:

> I am told that the KJV does not differ greatly from the Tyndale > translations (New Testament 1525 -revised 1534 & 1535; Pentateuch 1530; the > Book of Jonah, 1531; 'Epistles of the Old Testament', 1534), which > essentially fixed the language of all subsequent English until the 20th > cent.
Well, it's hard to say: the KJV is usually presented (including by me) in a modernized orthography, whereas Tyndale's is not.
> But my thesis is that the KJV was not an attempt to give a translation of > the Greek & Hebrew scriptures in contemporary English of the early 17th > century, but was rather a revision of editions whose language & style had > already been set in the early 16th century.
We violently agree, then.
> It was also deliberately > literary in style, giving the impression that the scriptures as a whole > were written in literary Hebrew and Greek - this is far from the case, at > least in the matter of Greek (my knowledge of Hebrew is, alas, far too > meager for me to make a similar judgment about the Hebrew scriptures).
I am not a Biblical scholar, and anyone who was would say of my Hebrew and Greek what Samuel Johnson said (with far less justification) of Milton's "Tetrachordon" sonnets: that the first was execrable, and the second "not excellent". --Northrop Frye, _The Great Code_ -- 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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Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>