Recently, I was privileged to accompany Bryan Samms on an interview of Dr. Mark Ward, New Testament scholar and author of the book, Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible. Mark gifted me a copy of his book and mentioned that I would be free to publish a review if I so desired. I appreciate his generosity and enjoyed meeting him. Here are my thoughts after reading the book.
Having grown up in a KJV-only environment, I knew exactly why Mark wrote this book: to bring some light upon a subject that is inevitably filled with emotional debate. It is easy to see why. To someone who believes that the King James Bible is the only acceptable translation in English, all other translations that deviate from it in the slightest are diluted at best and Satanic at worst. Furthermore, the users of such other translations are viewed as deceived at best and heretics at worst.
You can see where this would get pretty heated, right?
First, I love that Mark includes a chapter entitled, “What We Lose as the Church Stops Using the KJV.” He demonstrates that he has a fondness and reverence for the King James Bible, and that he recognizes that adopting a more modern translation is a decision not to be taken lightly. He readily admits that there is still value in using a four-hundred-year-old translation.
Second, Mark attempts to persuade the reader that making the Bible more readable does not in fact change the Word of God; rather, it is a good and necessary thing to do. He reinforces this assertion by quoting the King James translators themselves:
We do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest [poorest] translation of the Bible in English set forth by men of our profession … containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God: as the King’s speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it be not interpreted by every translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere (pp. 127-128).
The two traditional counters to using a more modern translation are either 1) the KJV is just as readable, or 2) the KJV is based on better underlying text families. Mark focuses on the first issue, and does a fantastic job.
Out of all his reasons for why one would need an updated English translation, Mark’s chapter on “false friends” was, to me, by far the most clear and convincing reason. He defines false friends as “words that are still in common use but have changed meaning in ways that modern readers are highly unlikely to recognize” (p. 31). In other words, if I come across a word in the KJV that I don’t recognize, I can simply look it up. But if I come across a word in the KJV that I think I know the meaning of, I won’t be as likely to look it up. Mark goes through words that sound rather ordinary and gives their actual intended meanings, words like halt, commendeth, many, convenient, wait, and remove (p. 41). I can almost guarantee you that the meanings that you’re thinking of right now are different from the actual meanings of these words.
Third, Mark makes a case for a Bible in our modern vernacular. He writes:
And when the Jewish people themselves lost their ability to speak Hebrew while in exile (though the priests apparently maintained it), the Bible had to be translated for them. Upon their return to the promised land, Ezra and the other priests “read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Neh 8:8). It’s not perfectly certain what “gave the sense” means—whether a translation or an explanation or both. But at some point before the time of Christ, enough Jews stopped speaking Hebrew that the Hebrew Bible had to be translated into Greek, producing what we now call the Septuagint (p. 63).
Also, Mark maintains, “The New Testament apostles quote the Septuagint, itself a vernacular translation” (p. 63). The argument that God’s Word ought to be written eloquently and in a high and lofty fashion, like the Elizabethan English of the KJV, is negated, Mark writes: “The New Testament authors could have chosen to use a more classical, literary, elevated style of Greek, but the distance between the hardest Greek (Luke, Hebrews) and the easiest (John, Mark) is similar to the distance between the English of a political commentator and that of the man in the lobby we keep talking about” (p. 67). In other words, the Bible was written in the language of the common man!
This book, while academic in nature, is extremely easy to read. Mark stays on target and is relentless in his argument on why modern translations are necessary and must be readable, as the KJV translators themselves admitted. The average reader from a KJV-only background will find his own perspective treated with respect and with a spirit of Christlike brotherhood. To my KJV-only friends, I highly recommend that you read this book.
You can get your own copy of Authorized here.
What are your thoughts? Leave me a comment!