Thanks to Claude Mariottini for alerting me to this challenge. Read Claude’s own response on points of translational detail, picking up on some unfortunately chosen examples in the article.
While I have sympathy with Greenberg’s complaint about the numbers of tailored editions, I fear he is simply wrong to confuse the obfuscating obsolesence of some Tudor expressions with language befitting the mystery of God.
This was the challenge Paul Greenberg put at the heart of his article.
I’d like to think that, if you placed one of the newer versions side by side with the King James, even someone who’d never heard of either could appreciate the superiority of the older translation. All it takes is an ear for the English language.
There are many places where that might be so, but I would like to enter a plea to the contrary. First the KJV and then the NRSV of 2 Corinthians 6:11-13
O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Now for a recompence in the same, (I speak as unto my children,) be ye also enlarged.
We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.
If your ear for the English language suggests the former is superior, I would suggest getting it syringed with communicative common sense as soon as possible.
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I don’t know, Doug, I kind of like the KJV in this case. I adore the expression “straitened in your bowels” — and after all, we know the savior himself was overtaken by compassion to the extent that he was moved to his bowels, right? Maybe pastors like Steven Anderson are right and we need to develop an ear for the archaic.
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