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Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

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Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#201

Post by vinceguidry »

yati wrote: post #198
vixen99 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Orwell have a point when he contrasted a verse from the KJ version (antiquated!) bible with his own modern (' a parody but not a very gross one') version. "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." "Objective…

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept.

Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#202

Post by simias »

ginko wrote: post #158
haskal wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bible is by far the most translated text (and a reasonably sized one). I just wish it wasn't written in a weird way. I learned a little bit of Korean by reading the bible as the primary source and when I tried to speak, I only got weird looks. I get why. It is like someone asking you "How art thou?"

I find it a bit weird that people stick with such antiquated translations of the bible in English. The German translations are pretty much standard German. Even the Luther Bible is quite readable to this day.

I don't think it's weird, in fact I think it's very interesting and telling of the world we live in. After all you could make the same argument for the Bible in Latin, why did the catholic church stick with it up until less than a century ago? And let's not even mention the Quran or Vedic Sanskrit.

The USA is now the world's superpower, English is its language and it's become the de-facto lingua franca of the world, a new Latin. But all that is fresh and new, in the grand scheme of things. Religions and cultures call for relics, for heritage, for proofs that there's something greater than a sum of people living in the same place at the same time.

The King James Bible is one of these artifacts. It's the one true bible for our Anglocentric world and like the Latin of the catholic church it's probably going to outlive the language it's been written in by a long margin (unless of course the USA manage to collapse before that and some other civilization takes over).

Besides that, there's clearly a certain fascination for overly formal and/or outdated English in the American psyche. Look at how Received Pronunciation is so popular in American media (especially in fantasy, but not only) even though it's effectively only used by a small minority of mostly British and Indian speakers.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#203

Post by yati »

vinceguidry wrote: post #201
yati wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept. Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

I see, thanks for the clarification.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#204

Post by hu3 »

ithkuil wrote: post #173
kozak wrote: post #164

Could someone please explain to a non-English speaker why is it considered correct (in non-religious context, as many of the commenters here do) to write "the bible" instead of "the Bible" and "new testament" instead of "New Testament"? Aren't they proper names of the books? We don't say "the art of computer programming" instead of "The Art of Computer Programming" when we reference Donald Knuth's book, do we? Looks…

English also has a specific convention for spelling titles: https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_titl...

That link says the correct form is The Bible:

> Titles should be written in title case. This means only using capital letters for the principal words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions do not get capital letters unless they start the title. For example:

> The Last of the Mohicans

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#205

Post by dooglius »

yati wrote: post #198
vixen99 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Orwell have a point when he contrasted a verse from the KJ version (antiquated!) bible with his own modern (' a parody but not a very gross one') version. "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." "Objective…

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

As a counterpoint, I'm a native English speaker, and I found the second much easier to understand, whereas the first seemed like a maze.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#206

Post by ithkuil »

hu3 wrote: post #204
ithkuil wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English also has a specific convention for spelling titles: https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_titl...

That link says the correct form is The Bible: > Titles should be written in title case. This means only using capital letters for the principal words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions do not get capital letters unless they start the title. For example: > The Last of the Mohicans

But the article is not necessarily part of the title.

E.g.

> Bible scholar N.T. Wright says ...

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#207

Post by whatshisface »

gwd wrote: post #188
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? I'm struggling to imaging something recorded in this draft that is useful, and not already known? A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious.

> A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious. As another commenter said, it seems obvious to you because it's been incorporated into our culture. For instance, I lived in Turkey for a few months, and I had a Turkish roommate who was a devout Muslim. He gave me an English translation of the Qur'an to read, and I gave him a Turkish translation of the New Testament. He decided he would come and show me the places where it…

That reminds me of a surprisingly popular argument against religion which goes something like, "God is supposed to be good, but look, this part of the Bible disagrees with my cultural norms."

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#208

Post by whatshisface »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #168
nemosaltat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Tyndale was burned at the stake for his efforts.

You can understand why, the meaning of the NT goes pretty hard against established religion as it cuts priests out of the loop entirely. It also has a very strong, communist/shared wealth message. If you're rich or powerful and don't believe it would be anathema. Letting just anyone read that ...

There's also a whole lot of "give unto Cesar what is Cesar's," and some "come on guys, don't start the Jewish-Roman wars, they're going to be a bad idea." I don't see why rich people should be bothered by that.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#210

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #161
etxm wrote: post #105

Besides oil, what else has mankind killed each other over as much as religion? Edit: sensitive ass down voters that can’t ack their own bigoted bullshit. I was force fed the Bible for years. Read that shit, or “interpret it” as you will. It’s all contradictory bullshit. If god is so infallible why does his word change between versions? How can _you_ interpret it differently? Maybe because it was written but a bunch o…

Please keep religious flamewar off HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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