[bibleprotector]

It is laughable that anti-KJBO people build their case on the basis of their false assumptions.

Rick Norris and friends teach that if a person does not understand a word, or misunderstands it, that they will be lead astray or shipwrecked. In other words, there is no allowance for the Holy Ghost to help people in any way. If the KJB is "hard", it's too bad, and they will get dashed on the rocks.

This is exactly what Rick Norris claims (his usual manner is to grab quotes from his own pre-existing reservoir of articles, booklets and other materials which he has collated, the following is a quote he put on a forum which is a direct quote from page seven of his own booklet) —

Words still in use but whose meaning may have completely changed or may have changed a great deal can cause a misunderstanding of the truths of God's Word. Words used with quite different meaning from what they once possessed can be like hidden rocks which give no notice of their presence but on which a boat is more likely to be shipwrecked than on rocks that can be seen above the water. Readers may assume that they know these words and their meaning without realizing that the word had a very different meaning in 1611.

[Brother Tim]

So Norris thinks that the words of Scripture are rocks meant to be avoided if seen and feared if unseen!?!

So much for:
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalms 119:105)

[Will Kinney]

Originally Posted by bibleprotector

I am not operating under the assumption that there are any archaic words in the Bible, but if any word is unusual or difficult, I recommend first using the Bible only to find out the meaning, and secondly, using sources like the dictionary as a help. Too often what is supposed to be a help is really a hindrance because people elevate the words of man higher than God’s.

Good points. Gracias,
Will K

[magicref]

I'm certainly no expert in the Bible versions issue, and while I'm currently a "KJV Best" advocate, I'm not (yet! <grin>) a KJVO person. In any case, I had to come to the defense of the KJV in church last weekend.

The pastor was discussing 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22 "Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil."

He mentioned that we usually think of "abstain from all appearance of evil" as never acting in a way that others may mistake for wickedness, and this is how I always looked at it. However, taken in context with the previous verses, it may be more correct that this verse is referring to rejecting new prophecies that were not true. Since the Scriptures were not completed yet, NT believers had to be very careful about new prophecies. Paul was telling them not to despise them, but to prove them (like the Bereans), and to hold fast to those that are true, but to stay away from those that are not.

My main reason for posting this is that he began by saying that the KJV translation was a "bad translation".

As has been discussed in this thread, we need to learn to understand the KJV Bible, not keep revising it every couple of years to try and mold it to the current "understanding" of English words. I pointed out that the word "appearance" also means something that comes out of mid-air, as when a magician makes a rabbit appear. Thus, "abstain from all appearance of evil" perfectly well fits the understanding of "stay away from all new emerging evil [prophecies]".

When I approached him with this, he said he in no way meant to put down the KJV Bible, though in my mind saying that it was a bad translation was certainly putting it down!

Doug A.

[Will Kinney]

I pointed out that the word "appearance" also means something that comes out of mid-air, as when a magician makes a rabbit appear. Thus, "abstain from all appearance of evil" perfectly well fits the understanding of "stay away from all new emerging evil [prophecies]".

That's a good point. I hadn't quite seen it like that, but I think you are on to something. The KJB communicates both ideas with the same phrasing, and both can be right.

Thanks,
Will K

[tonybones2112]

Originally Posted by bibleprotector

I am wondering which words these are.

Matthew, back in the late 80s in America we have what is called Public TV, supported by private donations, and at that time had a series called The History Of English. There was a book that was published concurrent to the show. In the show they pointed out in 1601 there were 5 dialects of English with 3 "foreign" indigenous tongues. The dialects were North, South, East Midlands, West Miidlands, and Kent. The 3 languages were Welsh, Celt, and Gaelic. By 1631, 20 years after the publication of the KJV, there was one dialect and the indigenous languages had fallen into disuse.

This show pointed out the vocabulary of the KJV as being under 6000 words, with the 8 that were declared "archaic and obsolete." I suppose the book is around and probably copies of the show. My Cambridge ring binder notebook KJV had those 8 words on a page in the back, my copy is rotting in some dump someplace after my mother and I were dispossessed of our home and all our possessions in a bank foreclosure scam. God bless America. Right

I can't get over Norris claiming "6000-20,000 obsolete words" The total vocabulary of the KJV is only 6000. Has he been sniffing paint? He is saying every word in the KJV is obsolete. He's saying words that are not in the vocabulary are obsolete. a 20,000 word vocabulary is 4000 under the total used by Shakespeare, which was written in Elizabethan English, not Jacobean, as the KJV was.

I think Jack chick here in America has it dead on: The Jesuits as just as active today as they were in the 1500s. I read these people and think, Kutilek? Jesuit. James White? Jesuit. But to step into the intellectual manhole Norris has, claiming that the number of "obsolete" words a book has exceeds it's vocabulary by over 3 times is too much for even the Jesuits to accept.

Grace and peace brother.

Tony

[Will Kinney]

Hi Tony. I have just a bit more info on that PBS program.

I do not believe the Bible is supposed to be translated into contemporary street language. The English of the KJB 1611 was not written in "street language" even at that time.

According to Oxford University, and the PBS series 'The History of English':

William Shakespeare used a total vocabulary of just over 24,000 words. In 2003 16,000 of those words are "obsolete".

Edgar Allen Poe used a total vocabulary of under 18,000 words. In 2003 9,550 of those words are "obsolete".

The King James Bible contains a total vocabulary of just over 6,000 words. In 2003 approximately 8 of those words are "obsolete".

Look at the divine pattern through history. We believe the Hebrew Old Testament was inspired by God. Yet the Jewish people in Israel today do not speak in the same Hebrew as is found in their scriptures, but they understand it. Not one of them would even consider "updating" the Hebrew text.

Most Bible critics I meet tell us we need to "go to the Hebrew and the Greek" to find out what God really said. This is so ironic. If we find a few old "archaic words" in the King James Bible that are hard to understand, they recommend instead that we learn Hebrew and Greek! Now, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Besides this, all of the translators behind such versions as the NASB, NIV, ESV, Holman CSB believe the Hebrew texts have been corrupted or even lost in numerous places, so they reject these readings. Yet, even if we followed the Hebrew and Greek texts, we would then be learning hundreds and hundreds of "archaic words", because the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts do not read as do modern Greek and Hebrew!

The same is true of the Greek Orthodox church. The Greek New Testament is not written in the same Greek that is spoken today in Greece, yet they understand it. None of those who believe it to be God's words are clamoring for a modern, up to date, "comic book" version.

God knew beforehand that languages would change and I believe He intended that His word would be placed in a form of language that would be different from that spoken on the street. God's Book is not supposed to read like people on the street talk. It never did.

The King James Bible reads differently from any other book. It is not like a newspaper, nor is it meant to sound like one. The Bible is an ancient book filled with timeless wisdom. I am impressed by the fact that this King James Bible has been around for a long time; it reads differently than any other book; it speaks like no man does in the pulpit, on radio or television, and I have to think about what it is saying. I don't just breeze through it like a tabloid magazine. When I slow down to think about what it says, I find that God speaks to me.

Will K

[Will Kinney]

There is an book called, “Archaic Words and the Authorized Version”, by Laurence M. Vance. In it Mr. Vance shows how most of the so-called archaic words in the KJB are not archaic at all but are found in modern magazines, newspapers, and dictionaries. There are only about 200 words usually picked out by critics of the KJB, yet of the approximately 800,000 words in the Bible this is only .004 % of the total.

He also shows many examples of words in the modern versions which most people would have to look up in a dictionary.

Here are some of those words found in the "easy to read" NIV.

abashed, abominable, abutted, acclaim, adder, adhere, admonishing, advocate, alcove, algum, allocate, allots, ally, aloes, appease, ardent, armlets, arrayed, astir, atonement, awl, banishment, battlements, behemoth, belial, bereaves, betrothed, bier, blighted, booty, brayed, breaching, breakers, buffeted, burnished, calamus, capital (not a city), carnelian, carrion, centurions, chasm, chronic, chrysolite, cistern, citadel, citron, clefts, cohorts, colonnades, complacency, coney, concession, congealed, conjure, contrite, convocations, crest, cors, curds, dandled, dappled, debauchery, decimated, deluged, denarii, depose, derides, despoil, dire,dispossess, disrepute, dissipation, distill, dissuade, divination, dragnet, dropsy, duplicity, earthenware, ebony, emasculate, emission, encroach, enmity, enthralled, entreaty, ephod, epicurean, ewe, excrement, exodus, factions, felled, festal, fettered, figurehead, filigree, flagstaff, fomenting, forded, fowler, gadfly, galled, gird, gauntness, gecko, gloating, goiim, harrowing, haunt, hearld, henna, homers, hoopoe, ignoble, impaled, implore, incur, indignant, insatiable, insolence, intact, invoked, jambs, joists, jowls, lairs, lamentation, leviathan, libations, loins, magi, manifold, maritime, mattocks, maxims, mina, misdemeanor, mother-of-pearl, mustering, myrtles, naive, naught, Negev, Nephilim, nettles, nocturnal, nomad, notorious, Nubians, oblivion, obsolete, odious, offal, omer, oracles, overweening, parapet, parchments, pavilion, peals (noun, not the verb), perjurers, perpetuate, pestilence, pinions, phylacteries, plumage, pomp, porphyry, portent, potsherd, proconsul, propriety, poultice, Praetorium, pretext, profligate, promiscuity, provincial, providence, qualm, quarries, quivers (noun, not verb), ramparts, ransacked, ratified, ravish, rabble, rawboned, relish (not for hotdogs), recoils, recount, refrain, relent, rend, reposes, reprimanded, reputed, retinue, retorted, retribution, rifts, roebucks, rue, sachet, satraps, sated, shipwrights, siegeworks, sinews, sistrums, sledges, smelted, somber, soothsayer, sovereignty, spelt, stadia, stench, stipulation, sullen, tamarisk, tanner, temperate, tether, tetrarch, terebinth, thresher, throes, thronged, tiaras, tinder, tracts, transcends, tresses, turbulent, tyrannical, unscathed, unrelenting, usury, vassal, vaunts, vehemently, verdant, vexed, wadi, wanton, warranted, wield, winnowing and wrenched.

It is funny that I can put together the phrase from the KJB which says; "The very sad green giant was hungry” and in the NIV it would be: “The overweening dejected verdant Nephilim was famished."

Well, how about the New KJV? Can you pass this vocabulary test even with a few of my "helpful hints"? Let's see.

The vocabulary of the New King James Version, along with some "helpful hints".

Abase, abashed, abode, adhere, admonish, adversity, aground, algum, alienate, alighting, allays, allotment, alloy, aloof, alms, amend, amiss, annihilated, anise, antitype, arbitrate, apprehended, archives, armlets, ascertain, asps, attire, austere, backbite, banishment, baths (not to get clean), bdellium, befalls, beggarly, begetting, behemoth, belial, beseech, betrothal, beveled, birthstools, bittern, bleat, booty (not modern slang), borne, breach, brandished (not drunk), bray, bristling, buffet (not a restaurant), buckler (not a belt), bulrush, (not a stampede), burnished, butress (not a chair), calamus, caldron, capital (not a city), carcasses, carnally, carrion (not luggage), cassia, caulkers, centurion (not a 100 years), chalcedony, chalkstones, chaste (not pursued by a runner), chasten, (not related to previous chaste), chrysolite, chrysoprase, circumspect, cistern (not feminine of brethren), citadel, citron, clamor, cleft, cloven (not a spice), commission (not money), commonwealth (not shared money), compound (not a barracks), concede , compulsory, conciliation, concubine (not a tractor), congealed, contemptuously, confederacy (not the South), contingents (not same as large land masses), corban, coriander, countenance (not adding up ants), couriers (not an hordourve), covert, crags, crescents, crest (not the top of a hill), cropped (not food), cubit, custodian (not the one who cleans the school halls), curds, dainties (not effeminate), dandled, daubed, dappled, dayspring, denarii, deposed (not relaxing after a foto op), deride (not same as dismount), despoiled (not really, really rotten), diadem, diffuses (not to disarm a bomb), dilapidation (not the act of standing up), dispensation, disrepute, dissipation, diviner (not a grape grower), docile, dragnet (not a detective drama), dregs, drachmas, dropsy (not clumsiness), dross, dryshod, eczema (God bless you), edict, edification, elaborate, embellish, emitted, enigma, enmity, entrails (not a short cut), envoy, eventide, epistle, ephod, exorcise (not jogging), expiration (not a date on a carton of milk), faction, fallow, famish, fare (not average and not money), fatlings (not piglets), feigned (not passed out), festal, fetched, fidelity (not good sound), figurehead (not a statue of a head), filly, flanges, foreskin, fostered, fowlers (not a baseball term), fuller (not less empty), furlongs (not cat tails), gad, garland, garrison, gaunt, gecko, graven, Hellenists, hew (not a man's name), homers (not baseball), hoopoe (not a garden tool), immutability, indignant, insolence, insubordination, intervene, itinerant, jackdaw, jeopardy (a TV show, but what does it mean?), jubilation, kors (not a brand of beer), laden, lamentations, laud (not Boston pronunciation of lard), lusty, mail (not a letter), mammon, matrix (other than the movie), mattock (not a TV lawyer show), mercenaries, mina (not a type of bird), mite (not a bed bug), moorings, nativity, offal (not terrible), offscouring (not dandruff), omnipotent, onager (Job 39:5 - you won't believe this one!) oracle, pangs, papyrus (not a fruit), paramours, parapet(not a dog and a cat), penitents, perdition, phylacteries, pilfering, pillage, pims, pins (not like needles or bowling- has to do with a chariot), pinions (not a type of nut), plaited (not dishes), platitudes, potentate, potsherd, poultice (not chickens), Praetorium (not a place to pray), prattler, principality, prodigal, proconsul, prognosticators (not people who put things off till later), propitiation, pslatery, prow, pulverize, pyre, quadrans, quiver (not to shake), rampart (not a piece of a truck), ravenous, ravished, raze (not to lift up), reconciliation, recount (not to double check your arithmetic), rend, renown, reprisal, retinue, rifled (does not have to do with guns), rivulets, rogue, salute ( does not have to do with the army), satiate, satraps, scruples, sepulcher, shamefaced, shards, Sheol, shod, shuttle (not a type of bus or spaceship), siegeworks, sistrums (not an affectionate term for your sisters), skiff, soothsayer, spelt (not anything to do with spelling words), straits (not the opposite of crookeds), superfluous, supplanted, tamarisk, tares, tarries, temperate, terebinth, terrestrial, tetrarch, throng (not a skimpy bathing suit), timbrel, tittle (not the name of a book), tresses, usury, vagabond, vassal, vehement, vermilion, verdure, verity, vestments, waifs, wane, wanton (not desiring something), warp (not to bend), wend, wield, winebibber, woof (not a dog or stereo), wrought.

So you see, besides the very serious textual matter, the modern versions also have words hard to be understood. Try giving this list of words as a vocabulary test and see if your son or daughter, or even yourself gets a passing score.

Will K

[boaz212]

Just want to let you all know how much I have enjoyed reading this thread. I have learned a lot.

[bibleprotector]

What is funny is that Rick Norris' method of producing long lists is now adopted by other anti-KJBOs, because they want to look smart. They are, of course, pale imitations of the master of scholastolatry.

The thing is that Norris has actually done some research, so his lists hold up to some kind of investigation (though his conclusions are wrong, of course).

If someone comes along and asks, "which edition?" and produces a random list of dates, it is clear that they do not really know anything of what they are talking about when they produce a list like this:

Which one?

1611 edition of the KJV [facsimile digital reproduction in Gothic type]
1611 edition of the KJV [reprint in Roman type]
1612
1613
1631 "Wicked Bible"
1672 edition of the KJV with Geneva Bible notes [two volume photocopy]
1769 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1777 Oxford edition of the KJV
1782 first American edition of the KJV [reprint]
1790 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1795 Oxford edition of the KJV
1804 Oxford edition of the KJV
1810 Oxford edition of the KJV
1812 Oxford edition of the KJV
1817 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1824 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1824 London edition of the KJV [Eyre and Strahan]
1828 Oxford edition of the KJV
1829 Oxford edition of the KJV
1833 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1835 Oxford edition of the KJV
1837 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1838 Oxford edition of the KJV
1840 Oxford edition of the KJV
1842 Cambridge edition of the KJV [two small volumes]
1842 Edinburgh edition of the KJV
1843 American Bible Society edition of the KJV
1844 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1847 Oxford edition of the KJV
1850 Oxford edition of the KJV
1851 Edinburgh edition of the KJV
1853 American Bible Society edition of the KJV [special unique edition]
1857 Oxford edition of the KJV
1859 Oxford edition of the KJV
1860 London edition of the KJV [Eyre and Spottiswoode]
1865 Oxford edition of the KJV
1865 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1868 Oxford edition of the KJV
1869 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1870 Oxford edition of the KJV
1872 Cambridge edition of the KJV
1873 Cambridge edition of the KJV edited by Scrivener
1876 Oxford edition of the KJV
1880 Oxford edition of the KJV
1885 Oxford edition of the KJV
1887 Cambridge edition of the KJV
2005 Cambridge edition of the KJV edited by David Norton
2007 Pure Cambridge Edition by Bibleprotector

At least Rick Norris that was credible. I am sure he would start like this:

1611 "He"
1611 "She"
1612 8vo
1612 8vo
1612 Q. Roman
1612 Q. Roman
1613 F.
1613 Q.
1613 Q.
1616 F.
1617 F.

For someone to say the following is a sure sign of an amateur who knows nothing of what he speaks, nor whereof he affirms:
"1611 edition of the KJV [facsimile digital reproduction in Gothic type]
1611 edition of the KJV [reprint in Roman type]"

The reprint dated from 1833 (and subsequent years) is based on that one in blackletter typeface.

And the list is woefully short of important editions. What about really obvious dates, like the 1629 and the 1638. Anyone who really knows anything about King James Bible editions would surely know those two.

And what about the 1769 Oxford Edition. Omitting that one is just... words fail ...

And what about the 1762 Cambridge Edition.

I would like to know what exactly the differences are between the following two:
“1869 Cambridge edition of the KJV
...
1872 Cambridge edition of the KJV”.

The edition said to be mine is actually from Cambridge some hundred years beforehand.

Anyway, Will Kinney's answer to such accusations is here:

http://www.fundamentalforums.com/1429474-post184.html