I got asked this question the other day and there’s a simple answer, which I shall write in the form of a question:
Why would I read a bible written in a language nobody speaks anymore?
Would you read a bible in Esperanto? What about one translated into Egyptian Hieroglyphs? Even if you had a grasp on these languages, wouldn’t it just make a difficult task that much more difficult?
Actually, I do have a KJV bible at home, which I occasionally reference in my studies, and also an American Standard Version, which is written archaic English too. It’s good to have lots of translations, purely because ancient languages are very different to modern languages and no translation does a perfect job of rendering the ancient into modern on every single scripture. Still, it must surely be better to read a translation in your own language…
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Why? Because, those were the common languages in use by the people who were reading the scriptures around the time they were written.
The New Testament, despite being written by Jews under Roman rule, was written neither in Hebrew nor in Latin. Instead it was written in Koine Greek. Why? Because one of the lasting remnants of the Greek empire was the Greek language and therefore majority of people at that time would have understood Koine Greek.
So, the bible was always intended to be accessible for all people and written in a language that the reader could easily understand. Quite why the mainstream religions insist on sticking to the archaic is beyond me to explain. But then, so many of them completely disregard most of the bible anyway.
The KJV has numerous inaccuracies of translation and was tainted from the start. To quote Wikipedia: “The king gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.” That doesn’t sound like am impartial basis upon which to commence an accurate translation to me.
Whatever your denomination, any study of the bible is incomplete without a reasonable background knowledge of the various ancient languages used in its writing. A good place to start is with an interlinear translation, which features the original Greek text, with a literal word-for-word translation, and then a modern language translation – all on the same page. It’s ideal for spotting the creative license taken by the KJV translators in support of their particular brand of religion. By thus distilling the various translations we use, we can be more sure that we won’t mis-read, mis-understand or mis-apply any scripture.
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