2014: Time to move on from the KJV

FWIW, let me add that at a recent graduation at a Church operated university, one of the main speakers was a high ranking member of the Churh’s Education Department. I don’t remember his name. He quoted a passage from the NT, and he used the NIV. I was pleasantly surprised.

Let one, therefore, no longer hide his face in the hyssop, but straightway uncover it toward the matter.

Uh… in other words… let’s face it.

The KJV is outdated, hard to read, inaccurate, and arcane. It is time for the Church to move on to something newer and better.

In 2011, celegrating the 400th anniversary of the KJV, the Church held a BYU Symposium lauding the KJV and supporting its continued use. A couple of articles:

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/60587/King-James-Bible-Symposium-Prophets-New-Translation.html

http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/60569/King-James-Bible-Symposium-Why-the-KJV.html

Here, we are told that the KJV was Joseph Smith’s homepage. It was the baseline for the JST, the language of the BofM and D&C closely resemble it, it is poetic and artistic.

I had long heard that the main reason for it’s continued use was that the JST was based on it, and therefore, the JST wouldn’t make as much sense if paired with another version. Well, say I, Wo unto the child born of woman that declares thusly. Here’s the thing… I recently picked up a copy of the Spanish LDS Bible. It is obviously not the KJV. In fact, it is the 1909 Reina-Valera version of the Bible with conservative modernization of the lingo into what is now called the Reina-Valera 2009 Edition. Here’s a shocker… the LDS’s Reina-Valera 2009 edition contains the JST footnotes and endnotes… in Spanish. So… yeah… we apparently don’t need the KJV to make sense of the JST.

PS… the JST footnotes and endnotes are not canonized. The only parts of Joseph’s New Translation that are canonized are found in Moses and Joseph Smith – Matthew. But those stand on their own and do not need to be read with the KJV in one hand to make any sense of them. The PofGP has been translated into every major language in which the Church has a significant membership, such as Latvian/Dutch/Swahili (LDS) and Catalan/Tagalog/Romanian (CTR). The JST has been translated only into Spanish. If the 1.2 million members of the Church in Brazil, with its 27 missions and 6 temples, can’t read the JST, then I would argue that it isn’t a necessity. But if you love the JST, I’m sure that you are smart enough to make use of it even if you aren’t using the KJV as the prime bible.

On the “poetic” and “artistic” front. Sure, the KJV sounds poetic when we read it with all its thees, thous and shouldsts. But that’s not the way the original Bible was written… some of it, but not all. For example, talking about disputes between Christians about whether to follow Mosaic dietary laws, Paul sounds poetic, lofty and a bit pompous in the KJV, but strait-forward and clear in the NIV

KJV – For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.

NIV – Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.

Also, it is crucial that we realize that there has been a tremendous amount of discovery, scholarship and study of the earliest NT manuscripts in the last 400 years. The Textus Receptus, from which the KJV was translated, is viewed by modern scholars as a scattershot and inadequate version of the originals; full of the very errors that JS pointed to when he declared “as far as it is translated correctly.”

Personally, I vote for the NRSV. The NIV is OK too. I recommend biblegateway.com where you can look up any verse and compare it side-by-side between the KJV and any other version.

Thanks for the good reading. Also curious, why did you not choose the English Standard Version? (I don’t know anything about any of it, but am thinking that 2014, O.T. year in GD, would be a good time to learn.)