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Is The king James version losing influence?

ozso

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I say three cheers for any Protestant who is willing to consider all of the 73 books that Catholics regard as canonical. Even if they think of the 73 books as 66 fully canonical and 7 not quite so much. It is better than throwing the whole lot of the 7 away as well as pats of Daniel and Esther.
There are books that both individual Protestants and Catholics don't care for. There's a lot of Christians who disregard Revelation. And others who ignore books like Song of Songs. In all of the theological discussions I've seen there are certain books that are virtually never quoted.
 
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trophy33

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Eastern Orthodox Bibles typically have 76 books, though this number can vary, with some versions, like the Greek Orthodox Bible, having 79 books, and the Russian Orthodox Bible potentially including more, such as 3 Maccabees and Psalm 151.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has an even larger canon of 81 books.

Catholics have 73 and protestants 66, but historically, protestants also had 73. They were removed from the protestant Bibles relatively recently. But when one reads writings of protestants like Luther, Calvin, Hus etc, they quoted from those books and called them Scripture.

But as ozso said, individual Christians prefer specific books and ignore others and so effectively have their individual canons. Some books are in the official canons rather for historical reasons only and most Christians do not use them.
 
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Clare73

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Yes, I get that - I also would value to have the Apocrypha readily available - there is still very useful; and many ideas/quotes in the NT actually come from those books.
I'm curious. . .can you give three of those ideas?
Still I value the Hebrew ranking of authority: TNK - Torah, Prophets and Writings. Even Yeshua adhered to that. As far as I know even the collection what we now call OT was not fully crystallised yet in Yeshua's time (Song of Songs was still contested).
 
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Xeno.of.athens

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There are books that both individual Protestants and Catholics don't care for. There's a lot of Christians who disregard Revelation. And others who ignore books like Song of Songs. In all of the theological discussions I've seen there are certain books that are virtually never quoted.
I agree that there are books that are never quoted. And I can sympathise with some people who want to avoid The apocalypse of st John- it's full of very obscure references and you need to work very hard to do a decent job of interpreting any of them.

And yes, outside of the 73 canonical books, there are definitely books that Catholics regard as apocryphal, and some as pseudepigraphic.

In addition, within the Catholic cannon, I'd be inclined treat Jonah as a kind of comedic short novel. And possibly to treat Tobit as a kind of morality tale. And what is one to do with Ecclesiastes? From a Catholic perspective, all of these have an important role to play and The Church has used some of them in the formulation of doctrine.

But I cannot walk away from what is taught in Dei Verbum. From my perspective, it's extremely useful to have dogmatic statements from The Church. They function very well as guide rails. Even in discussions like this.
 
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The Liturgist

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Actually in the USA, the KJV is widely available and easily affordable as it is sold in Dollar Tree stores. It is available in both Testaments and New Testament editions.



Also the Gideons exclusively distribute it after experimenting with other editions.
 
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The Liturgist

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Which I prefer as this tells it all.

But, you must remember, the canon means nothing unless you’ve acquainted yourself with the Ethiopian, that is to say, Alexandrian, method of hermeneutics and their interpretation of these books, that is to say, what the Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox think they actually mean .

The Ethiopians do not interpret 1 Enoch for example in a literal historical context, but as Christological prophecy based on Luke ch. 24 using the typological-allegorical approach favored by the catechtical school of Alexandria, for the Church of Ethiopia until the 20th century was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and shares the same doctrine as the Coptic church, which by the way uses what is basically the Greek Orthodox canon, which has books the Ethiopians lack (the Ethiopian canon is not a superset of the other canons, contrary to popular belief) and lacks books like 1 Enoch, Jubilees that the Ethiopians have, but the two churches have never had an issue about this nor has it come up in internal Oriental Orthodox dialogues nor in OO-EO dialogue nor in OO-RC dialogue.

By the way the martyred Emperor Haile Selassie is responsible for convening the Council of Addis Ababa, which brought together the heads of the Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac, Indian and Coptic churches and resulted in them adopting the name Oriental Orthodox so as to identify themselves in an ecumenical context. Like the Armenians, Romanians, Bulgarians, North Macedonians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Moldovans, Russians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Croatians and Slovenians, the Ethiopians are among those Christian nations to have suffered both at the hands of Muslims and Communists.
 
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Apple Sky

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But, you must remember, the canon means nothing unless you’ve acquainted yourself with the Ethiopian, that is to say, Alexandrian, method of hermeneutics and their interpretation of these books, that is to say, what the Ethiopian Orthodox and Eritrean Orthodox think they actually mean .

The Ethiopians do not interpret 1 Enoch for example in a literal historical context, but as Christological prophecy based on Luke ch. 24 using the typological-allegorical approach favored by the catechtical school of Alexandria, for the Church of Ethiopia until the 20th century was part of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and shares the same doctrine as the Coptic church, which by the way uses what is basically the Greek Orthodox canon, which has books the Ethiopians lack (the Ethiopian canon is not a superset of the other canons, contrary to popular belief) and lacks books like 1 Enoch, Jubilees that the Ethiopians have, but the two churches have never had an issue about this nor has it come up in internal Oriental Orthodox dialogues nor in OO-EO dialogue nor in OO-RC dialogue.

By the way the martyred Emperor Haile Selassie is responsible for convening the Council of Addis Ababa, which brought together the heads of the Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac, Indian and Coptic churches and resulted in them adopting the name Oriental Orthodox so as to identify themselves in an ecumenical context. Like the Armenians, Romanians, Bulgarians, North Macedonians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Moldovans, Russians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Croatians and Slovenians, the Ethiopians are among those Christian nations to have suffered both at the hands of Muslims and Communists.

What ever I will still continue read it.
 
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Fervent

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It's beautiful to read but I think as others indicated, it was a product of its time.
That beauty is actually part of the issue with it. The original writings don't have that high register, eloquently almost poetically written form for a great deal of the text. The true character of the original text, with its unevenness and largely colloquiel qualities are lost in the even toned, high register of Jacobean English. If the KJV alone was the only English translation, one would think the NT was written in Attic Greek rather than Koine.
 
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The Liturgist

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What ever I will still continue read it.

I’m not saying you should not read it, I’m recommending you study the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its history and doctrines in order to fully appreciate the meaning of the work, the reason why they have those books and how they interpret them, and also how their faith has not only carried them through horrible famines but has also allowed them to evangelize groups one would think couldn’t be evangelized, such as the Rastafarians (who have a false understanding of the church and who smoke extreme amounts of marijuana, an activity which is prohibited by the Ethiopian church).
 
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Reluctant Theologian

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I'm curious. . .can you give three of those ideas?
Recently we had a Bible lecture in our church that had this as a topic; it was a surprise to myself as well. Still if one thinks about it, it is not that strange. The Septuagint (LXX) Greek translation of the TNK/OT included those Deuterocanonical books and was the defacto Bible for Greek-speaking communities in the Roman Empire - the LXX is quoted heavily by the NT authors (about 70% of TNK/OT quotes in the NT are from the LXX). So the writings and thoughts of the LXX (including those Apocrypha) were abundant among the Jewish diaspora in the Roman Empire.

This observation creates an interesting dilemma if one adheres to strict word-for-word inspiration and infallibility for the NT writings; because of those many LXX quotes one also has to subscribe to the same authority for those LXX parts - which is merely a translation which is now known to have errors and inconsistencies (although some differences between the LXX and the Masoretic text are due to core manuscript differences).

Anyway, the core observation is that the LXX was simply a dominant element in the world of both NT authors and audience.

I don't have the full list of NT - Deuterocanonical similarities presented at that Bible lecture evening available myself, but here are three:

2 Maccabees 7:7–9
Hebrews 11:35–36

Sirach 5:7
2 Corinthians 6:2

Especially this last one is striking:

Sirach 28:2
Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.​
Matthew 6:14
For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.​
What surprises me in general is the seemingly extensive developing view and description of Wisdom (mentioned in Proverbs) into something that very closely mirrors the concept of 'Logos' in the Greek philosophical world (and bridged with the Jewish worldview by Philo) and ultimately then is used by John in John 1:1 to describe Yeshua coming from heaven into this world.
 
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JulieB67

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I still love the fact that I can take the KJV and translate every word back to the Hebrew/Greek with a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance because many words do get lost in translation. For someone without many tools, I still like to utilize that to help get that original meaning at times when sometimes one word in English can be translated back to several different Greek words at times when it comes to different verses.

But I realize everyone will have their different preference.
 
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Xeno.of.athens

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That beauty is actually part of the issue with it. The original writings don't have that high register, eloquently almost poetically written form for a great deal of the text. The true character of the original text, with its unevenness and largely colloquiel qualities are lost in the even toned, high register of Jacobean English. If the KJV alone was the only English translation, one would think the NT was written in Attic Greek rather than Koine.
And one would think it was the work of scholars of rare accomplishment.
 
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Clare73

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Recently we had a Bible lecture in our church that had this as a topic; it was a surprise to myself as well. Still if one thinks about it, it is not that strange. The Septuagint (LXX) Greek translation of the TNK/OT included those Deuterocanonical books and was the defacto Bible for Greek-speaking communities in the Roman Empire - the LXX is quoted heavily by the NT authors (about 70% of TNK/OT quotes in the NT are from the LXX). So the writings and thoughts of the LXX (including those Apocrypha) were abundant among the Jewish diaspora in the Roman Empire.
This observation creates an interesting dilemma if one adheres to strict word-for-word inspiration and infallibility for the NT writings; because of those many LXX quotes one also has to subscribe to the same authority for those LXX parts - which is merely a translation which is now known to have errors and inconsistencies (although some differences between the LXX and the Masoretic text are due to core manuscript differences).

Anyway, the core observation is that the LXX was simply a dominant element in the world of both NT authors and audience.

I don't have the full list of NT - Deuterocanonical similarities presented at that Bible lecture evening available myself, but here are three:

2 Maccabees 7:7–9
Hebrews 11:35–36

Sirach 5:7
2 Corinthians 6:2

Especially this last one is striking:

Sirach 28:2
Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.​
Matthew 6:14
For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.​
What surprises me in general is the seemingly extensive developing view and description of Wisdom (mentioned in Proverbs) into something that very closely mirrors the concept of 'Logos' in the Greek philosophical world (and bridged with the Jewish worldview by Philo) and ultimately then is used by John in John 1:1 to describe Yeshua coming from heaven into this world.​
Was he not writing to a Greek culture ruled by Romans?
 
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ViaCrucis

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I'm an elder Millennial (we're sometimes called Xennials, because we were born at the cusp of the Gen X-Millennial divide), and while I haven't gone looking for a KJV in my local stores, the last time I looked at the book area of a local Walmart, the KJV was right there and available for purchase--though this was literally years ago. So at least in terms of the ubiquity of the KJV, it's still pretty ubiquitous here in the US I'd say. Especially since the US is also the heartland of KJV-Onlyism and Protestant Fundamentalism.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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The Liturgist

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I'm an elder Millennial (we're sometimes called Xennials, because we were born at the cusp of the Gen X-Millennial divide), and while I haven't gone looking for a KJV in my local stores, the last time I looked at the book area of a local Walmart, the KJV was right there and available for purchase--though this was literally years ago. So at least in terms of the ubiquity of the KJV, it's still pretty ubiquitous here in the US I'd say. Especially since the US is also the heartland of KJV-Onlyism and Protestant Fundamentalism.

-CryptoLutheran

Indeed, I think people born between 1975 and 1990, who spent their early childhood without the internet and most of their childhood without mobile phones, are in a very different group than Millenials born after say, 1995, who are basically Zoomers. You and I probably had the same experience in school despite our age difference.

By the way I have always loved your posts and regard you as a friend; I haven’t communicated with you personally to the extent that I have with @MarkRohfrietsch or @Ain't Zwinglian but I absolutely love your contributions to the forum; indeed I would say you’re one of the top theologians, an elite group including @Shane R @Ain't Zwinglian @prodromos and @hedrick and also one priest who posts only in The Ancient Way, but excluding myself, because you present traditional liturgical Christianity in a manner ordinary members can understand. In addition, I have a particular love of liturgical beauty and the different forms of traditional Christian worship which fills all of my posts, whereas you lack such a preoccupation. But perhaps in time we might become friends as I have become friends with Mark and @Ain't Zwinglian.
 
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Shane R

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There are subtle differences between an American KJV and the Authorized Version. I was saying Morning Prayer at the request of a very old Anglican bishop recently and he went off on me for using an 'un-authorized' Bible. I had in fact read the appointed lessons from the Cambridge Standard Text of the Authorized Version. I thought: Is this guy ignorant or senile? Turns out he was both. He didn't know what the Standard Text was.
 
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Lukaris

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Also the Gideons exclusively distribute it after experimenting with other editions.
The Gideon New Testament ( with Psalms & Proverbs) pocket Bibles are really handy to have. I have a KJV, NKJV, & ESV editions.
 
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