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| How Great "Thou" Is |
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| Written by David Gaddy | |||
| Wednesday, 31 December 1969 23:59 | |||
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Many find the archaic lingo of the King James Version daunting and hard to understand. They feel intimidated by the Thee's and Thou's. As such, we live in a capitalistic society that t...
Many find the archaic lingo of the King James Version daunting and hard to understand. They feel intimidated by the Thee's and Thou's. As such, we live in a capitalistic society that thrives upon supply and demand. Therefore new translations and revisions of the bible are all about us. Most of which (NIV,NLT,etc) are based on the incomplete and often inaccurate Alexandrian manuscripts. Even the revered King James Version got a facelift and spawned the New King James Version which departs from the original Byzantine manuscripts all in the name of convienence. It seems that everyone would rather have the Bible come to us instead of us going to the bible. Most of the archaic language used in the King James Version can be readily understood if the reader is intent on understanding it. Although many new translations are about, few are as accurate as the King James and the translations that served as it's building blocks; such as the Tyndale, Geneva, Greate, and Bishops translations. All of which use old english terms such as Ye and Thee. The point of this study is to look at that old english language to help us to understand the importance of those archaic terms and why we should strive to understand them instead of changing them to fit our needs. In the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, the english language was just getting started well. Many grammaric standards had not been set and it was common and acceptable to have multiple spellings of the same word. Sometimes these subtle differences had an impact on the context of what was being said. Such was the terms: Ye, Thee, Thou, Thine, Thy, and a multitude of th's at the end of verbs. The roughly understood standard for using these terms was the use of Y and T. Y was generally used for a referance to a plural term such as "ye". T was used to denote singular use of a word such as "thou". However the modern english term "you" is used to denote both singular and plural usages of the word. A good example to look at from scripture is:
Now in reading this passage from the New King James Version, ask yourself, "Who is God angry with in here?". At first glance, it sounds as if God is upset with Moses for not obeying him. But when we see the translation of the King James it reads:
If we simply understand that ye is a plural term, then it is obvious that the Lord is not angry with Moses alone, but with the children of Israel and their disobedience. This is just one example, for there are literally thousands of usages of these type of words in the scripture. One reponse to this analysis may be that it is too difficult to keep up with those different terms for our modern word you. If you think that it is too hard, remember that the original languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic are much more grammatically complex than even our old english. The translation of these languages into English is no small task and not something to be taken lightly since even a small error can change the tense or mood of the writing. If the old english is complex then it is one step closer to the complexity of the original writing. If we come to the understanding that easier isn't always better, then perhaps we can learn to examine the word of God instead of making it easy to read.
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