Assistance for KJV users - word updates

[Nazaroo]

By the way, if you would like to have a King James Bible,
with a very complete built-in word-list printed in the back,
and complete with various helps and cross-references,
you can order bibles like this from:

The Trinitarian Bible Society

This Bible distributing society is dedicated to distributing uncorrupted protestant versions of the bible in all languages.

They publish excellent bibles in various formats with help-studies and special features built in.

When I was younger, I found the local people who ran the branch of the TBS very kind people, and very helpful and generous. I hope your experience with them is as good as mine was as a young seeker.

Enjoy!

 

[Nazaroo]

I'm adding these notes here to help those using the King James Version, in case they missed my discussion in the other thread:


Old English "but" and "except"

First let us examine and show that in Old English, these two common words also did the duty of "unless", with a couple of examples:

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3 Old King James version)

Obviously, even a modern English reader is clearly cued by the subject matter and content that the ordinary (modern) usage and meaning of 'except' is not meant here. In less stilted and more modern English, the meaning is clearly expressed with "unless".

"Most assuredly, I say to you,
unless one is born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3 New King James version)


In this instance, the modern translators had no problem understanding the intent, and most importantly, preserving the conditional aspect of this sentence. They knew from the subject matter that a modern reader would not expect or accept the word "except" in this context. Here Jesus is clearly not saying that no one can see the kingdom of God, but rather just stating some hypothetical necessary conditions.

Other 'forced' cases include John 3:5, and 6:44.

Again, with the old usage of the word "but" we see that a modern reader can often be more comfortable with "unless". This is true, even though "but" still can carry the meaning adequately for a reader familiar with its 'conditional' or 'hypothetical' usage:

"I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6, Old King James)

"I am the way, the truth, and the life:
No man comes to the Father, unless it is through Me." (modern English)

Here we see the New King James translators actually safely preserving an Old English usage, and retaining a 'King James' flavour at least, by substituting one Old English idiom for another (!):

"I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through Me." (New King James)


In this case, the sentence has lost nearly all 'conditional' feel and aspect, and this is part of the problem with preserving an older, dying usage.

Unfortunately, the modern reader is much more used to interpreting both "except" and "but" as flat unconditional exclusionary statements. And this is where the danger of misunderstanding will inevitably creep in.


Problems with "but" and "except":

Now lets look at how things can go wrong when conditionals fade and vanish in the murky world of Old English that looks like New English:

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man,
no, not the angels which are in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father." (Mark 13:32 Old King James)

Could Jesus really be saying that there is something He doesn't know about, that the Father does? Is Jesus really less than omniscent, less than God manifest in the flesh? Not in the original Greek!

peri de thV hmeraV ekeinhV h wraV oudeiV oiden,
oude oi aggeloi oi en ouranw,
oude o UioV, ei mh o Pathr." (Mark 13:32 Greek)

"But about that hour, no one knows,
not even the angels in heaven,
nor even the Son, if not the Father." (Literal)

That is, "if the Father doesn't know." This statement by Jesus in its most primitive form in Mark does not say that the Father doesn't know, nor does it say that the Son doesn't know. Instead, it asserts that all knowledge must come from the Father, even the Son's knowledge. This does not at all imply a lack of knowledge by the Son, but rather an assertion of the Son's source. See for instance John 5:22, 6:46,51 8:23,42,55 14:11 etc.)

"But of that day and hour no one knows,
not even the angels in heaven,
nor the Son, but only the Father. (Mark 13:32 New King James)

Here sadly, the NKJV translators have mistaken the Old English conditional use of "but" for an unconditional flat statement. They have even gone to the extreme of adding a word, "only" in order to fully form the (wrong) English idiom, a flat unconditional exclusive statement, and to harmonize it with a parallel passage in Matthew. But this was unnecessary and unfortunately the last trace of the original intent of the passage has been lost. This should have been rendered consistently with the other cases of conditional sentences, and in harmony with important scripture such as the those in John. Nor can we appeal to Acts to bolster a claim about Jesus Himself not knowing the time of the end:

"It is not for YOU to know the times or the seasons,
which the Father has put under His own authority." (Acts 1:7)

"ouc umwn esti gnwnai cronouV n kairouV
ouV o Pathr eqeto en to idia exousia" (Acts 1:7)

In this case, it is US who are not given knowledge:
Jesus doesn't deny Himself access to it.




Problems with 'unless':

So the reader may ask, why not just uniformly translate 'if not' with 'unless'? Doesn't this eliminate all the dangers of misinterpretation? Yes!
But it has one small drawback of its own. On the one hand, we can't just substitute 'unless' anywhere. It can only be used in certain cases where appropriate content allows. But in all cases where 'except' could be misleading, and 'unless' is inappropriate, we can fall back on a more literal "if not", provided we take care with word order and elipsis.

The other drawback is this: Because 'unless' is a newer term in the English arsenal, it has a stricter set of stylistic uses, and specifically, it allows less elipsis than either the English 'if not' or the Greek ' ei mh '. That means that in places where it is quite comfortable for the Greek (and English) to drop the entire clause and substitute a substantive (noun) place-holder, we have to supply the missing parts to make a 'good English' construction with 'unless'. Let's see that in action:

"No one is good if not One, God." (Good in English or Greek)

"No one is good unless One, God." (unusual or stilted English)

"No one is good unless One is, God." (comfortable or 'good' English)

Notice that to make the sentence comfortable, we had to supply at least the verb 'to be' to create the 'clause' in the "if" half of the Conditional Sentence. This was not required with the older and more common "if not". Some elipsis was allowed. A full reconstruction of the thought of the sentence would be:

"No one is good unless One is good, that is, God."

Here we can see that some of the clause was 'droppable'. This is a learned stylism picked up unconsciously by a native English speaker, but a bit harder to master with English as a second language.

It should be grasped that we are not 'adding words' to the original in this case, but rather properly constructing a good unambiguous idiom in English.

 

[Nazaroo]

Here's some interesting facts about 'English' words actually in the KJV that were borrowed from Jerome's Vulgate, and coined by early translators into English:

The first recorded use of many of the words used in ordinary English today can be found in the early translations of the Bible into English. When John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English from Jerome's Latin Vulgate in the fourteenth century, he enlarged the English language by adapting many Latin words into his English Bible. The words treasure and mystery, glory and horror, female and sex all owe their English usage to Wycliffe's Bible. Tyndale, translating from the Hebrew and Greek in the 16th century, did not borrow as much from the Latin as did Wycliffe. He did coin words from the Dutch and Germanic sources (after all, he did his translation work while in those two countries) as well as French. Beautiful and ungodly were such words. Many of Tyndale's coined words were compound words, such as fisherman, castaway, and busybody. Both of Wycliffe's and Tyndale's translations included phrases which readily entered the language with their Bible translations - phrases like a city on a hill, my brother's keeper, ye of little faith, salt of the earth, and thirty pieces of silver. Below is a chart of words and phrases coined by the early English translators of the Bible.

Wycliffe's translation from the Vulgate (1382/88)

Word Bible Passage
​

Derivation

female Genesis 1:27
Jerome's Vulgate used Latin femina. Wycliffe's female was based on the related Latin word, femella. The English word male had first appeared 7 years earlier.

sex Genesis 6:19
Jerome's Latin uses sexus here. Later translations replace "sex" with "kind"
.
Sodom and Gomorrah Genesis 13:10

childbearing Genesis 25:24
Compounded of the Old English noun cild ("child") and the verb beran ("to carry or bear"). KJV later uses the word in I Timothy 2:15.

wrinkle Genesis 38:14
Wycliffe describes Tamar as wearing "a rocket cloth with many wrynclis". It probably comes from wrinclod, past participle of the verb wrinclian, meaning "to wind about." This verb is also source of our verb "to wring". Tyndale later used the word in Ephesians 5:27, "without spot or wrinkle."

affliction Exodus 3:7
Derived from the Latin prefix ad ("to") and the root figere ("to strike or beat against")

graven image Exodus 20:4
Wycliffe's spelling: grauuen ymage

needlework Exodus 26:1
Coined by Wycliffe. KJV later uses "cunning work." Other translations used the French derivative broidery.

consume Leviticus 16:23
The Latin root sumere derives from emere "to buy", which is also the root of redeem.

firstfruits Numbers 18:12
Coined by Wycliffe. The Latin Vulgate equivalent, primitiae was used in Exodus 23:16.

cast Numbers 35:17

grasp Deuteronomy 28:29
Related to the Old Norse grapa (from which come "grab", "grip", "gripe".)

horror Deuteronomy 32:10; Ezekiel 32:10
From Latin Vulgate's in loco horroris. The Latin verb horrere means "to bristle or shudder" and was associated with a forbidding terrain.

shibboleth Judges 12:6

problem Judges 14:15
From Jerome's problema. This had been translated into the Latin from Greek, the prefix pro ("forward") and the root verb ballein ("to throw").

affinity Ruth 3:13
From the Latin affinis, a combination of ad ("to") and finis ("border" or "limit").

mutter II Samuel 12:19
From the Middle English moteren. Later
English translations use "whispering".

seer I Samuel 9:9
Old English seon ("to see"). Luther used the related Germanic Seher.

zealous I Kings 19:3
From Latin noun zelus and Greek zelos, meaning "ardent feeling."

botch II Chronicles 34:1; Isaiah 30:6; Deut. 28:27.
To repair or patch. From Old French boce ("lump", "boil", "swelling.")

scrape Job 2:8
From Old English screpan, sharing the Indo-European root sker, from which come sharo, shear, and scorpion.

wordy Job 16:21

contradiction Psalms 54:10
From Old French; a combination of Latin
contra ("against") and diccere ("to speak")

glory Proverbs 17:6; Luke 2:14; Romans 1:23; I Corinthians 10:31.
From Latin Vulgate (gloria) and the French (glorie).

bundle Song of Solomon 1:12
Probably from the Middle Dutch binden, meaning "to bind."

treasure Isaiah 39:6
From Latin thesaurus in Jerome's Vulgate.

childbearing Isaiah 49:21
From Old English cild ("child") and beran ("to carry or to bear").

feel Isaiah 59:10
From Old English felan, meaning "to grope".

doubtful Ezekiel 12:24
Adjective from Old French verb douter.

irrevocable Ezekiel 21:5
From Jerome's Latin irrecovabilis.

ministry Ezekiel 44:13; Colossians 4:17.
From Vulgate use of word for "office," ministerium

liquid Ezekiel 44:30
From Latin liquere.

transfer Ezekiel 48:14
From Jerome's Vulgate, transferre.

mystery Daniel 2:27; Romans 16:25.
From Jerome's Vulgate, mysterium.

Interpretation, interpret Dan 5:14; Dan 5:16
From the Latin Vulgate.

reap the whirlwind Hosea 8:7

puberty Malachi 2:14
From Latin Vulgate, pubertas.

salt of the earth Matthew 5:13
city set on a hill Matthew 5:14
ye of little faith Matthew 8:26
doctrine Matthew 15:9
From Jerome's Vulgate.

keys of the kingdom Matthew 16:19
born again John 3:3
argument Acts 1:13
ecstasy Acts 3:10
From Jerome's Vulgate.

exorcist Acts 19:13
From the Greek exorkizein.

civility Acts 22:28
Based on the Latin Vulgate, civitatem.

crime Acts 23:29; 25:16
From Jerome's Vulgate, crimen.

adoption Romans 8:23
From Jerome's Vulgate, adotptionem.

conscience I Cor. 8:7; II Cor. 5:11;I Peter 2:19
From Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

all things to all men I Corinthians 9:22

excellent I Corinthians 12:31
From Latin Vulgate's excellentiorum.

ambitious I Corinthians 13:5
From Latin Vulgate's ambitiosa.

liberty II Corinthians 3:17
From Latin Vulgate's libertas.

legacy II Corinthians 5:20
From Latin Vulgate.

communication II Corinthians 9:13
From Latin Vulgate, communicationis.

allegory Galatians 4:24
From Latin Vulgate's allegoriam, Jerome's transliteration of the original Greek allegoria.

persuasion Galatians 5:8
From Latin.

offense; offend Philippians 1:10; James 3:2
From the Latin Vulgate.

quiet I Thessalonians
From Latin.

root of all evil I Timothy 6:10
uncertainty I Timothy 6:17
From Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

novelty I Timothy 6:20
From Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

quick and the dead I Peter 4:5

plague Revelation 9:18
From Jerome's Latin Vulgate, plaga.

___________________________________

Tyndale's translation from the Hebrew and Greek (1525-26 & 1530/34)

Word Bible Passage Derivation

brother's keeper Genesis 4:9
land of Nod Genesis 4:16
pillar of salt Genesis 19:26
full of days Genesis 35:29
coat of many colors Genesis 37:3
nurse Exodus 2:9
stranger in a strange land Exodus 2:22

Jehovah Exodus 6:3
Hebrew sacred and unpronounceable divine name, YHWH, combined with the vowels for the word "Adonai," a less sacred name for God.

Passover Exodus 12:11
His own translation of the Hebrew pesach.

sin of the fathers Exodus 20:5

eye for eye Exodus 21:24

scapegoat Leviticus 16:8
A combination of escape and goat.

eat, drink, and be merry Ecclesiastes 8:15

viper Matthew 3:7; Acts 28:3
From Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

no man can serve two masters Matthew 6:24

judge not Matthew 7:1
blind lead the blind Matthew 15:14
seventy times seven Matthew 18:22

beautiful Matthew 23:27
From the Latin bellus, "pretty" or "lovely" and the Old
French Beltat,

housetop Matthew 24:17
Literal translation of the Greek doma.

thirty pieces of silver Matthew 26:14
brokenhearted Luke 4:18
Combination of Anglo-Saxon breccan ("to break") and heorte.

fisherman Luke 5:2
Wycliffe translated the Latin piscatores, "fishers"; Tyndale developed the compound "fishermen."

cast the first stone John 8:7

stiff-necked Acts 7:51

sorcerer Acts 13:6
From the Latin root sors ("Lot," "share," "sort," as connected with fate and chance.

uproar Acts 21:38
English variant of Dutch oproer and German Aufruhr.

undergird Acts 27:17

ungodly Romans 5:6
From Middle Dutch ondoelijc.

castaway I Cor 9:27; II Corinthians 13:5

suffer fools gladly II Corinthians 11:19

infidel I Timothy 5:8
From Latin infidelis.

two-edged sword Hebrews 4:12

seashore Hebrews 11:12

busybody I Peter 4:15
Compound of Old English bisig and bodig.

alpha and omega Revelation 1:19
First and last letters of Greek alphabet.

rose-colored Revelation 17:3

__________________________________

Coverdale's translation (1535)


Zealous I Kings 19:10
From Latin zelus and Greek zelos.

bloodthirsty Psalms 25:9
daytime Psalms 22:2
Blab Proverbs 15:2
Old Norse blabbra and Old Dutch labben.

slaughter Isaiah 22:13
From Old Norse slatr and Old English sleaht; related to slay.

sprinkler Jeremiah 52:18
Old English/Germanic

consumer Malachi 3:2
From Latin.

blood money Matthew 27:6
voiceless Acts 8:32

__________________________________

Geneva Bible (1560)


burnt offering Genesis 8:20; 22:2.
network Exodus 27:4
my cup runneth over Psalms 23:5
stargazer Isaiah 47:13
holier than thou Isaiah 65:5
Ancient of Days Daniel 7:9
house divided Matthew 12:25
Get thee behind me, Satan Matthew 16:23
through a glass darkly I Corinthians 13:12


____________________________________

King James' Bible (1611)

Not live by word alone Matthew 4:4

(taken from http://www.hbu.edu/ Houston Baptist University)

 

[Nazaroo]

I'm bumping this to help students who are working with the KJV and NKJV.

Enjoy!
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

I have put the wordlist in a webpage here, with links for easy lookup and viewing:

KJV Wordlist

peace
Nazaroo