The Language Of God? The KJV Idiom

This is Part Two of a two-part article. Read Part One here. In Search of Scholarly Support President Clark's misapprehension of the nature of Joseph Smith's revelations was unfortunate. Yet it was not on this but on scholarly grounds that he made his most elaborate case for the authorized text. He was modest and honest enough to preface his academic argument with the disclaimer that he was not a genuine biblical scholar. As he acknowledged, he knew no biblical language, had no formal training, and based his assessment entirely on secondary materials. His use of these secondary sources was, however, prodigious. If his major concern with the revised Bibles was that they were laced with a modern humanism, his undergirding contention was that an ancient humanism -- the heresy of Arianism -- tainted the Greek text upon which the revisions rested. [The 4th-century Arian controversy was waged on sophisticated, highly nuanced metaphysical and ontological ground. As used by J. Reuben Clark, Arianism meant essentially that the humanity of Jesus was emphasized and his divinity minimized or lost.] In order to legitimate the doctrinally more acceptable King James Bible, President Clark championed the "Textus Receptus" (TR), the Byzantine-based Greek text from which the KJV had been translated. Those scholars who similarly supported the Byzantine text, Clark called "Sound" or "High" Textualists; those who did not, he pejoratively labeled "Extreme Textualists." The details of modern textual criticism are complex and available elsewhere. But to understand Clark's academic reasoning, a brief account of the development of the New Testament texts behind the KJV and the revised versions is necessary. Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament in 1516. His edition was based on only six manuscripts, dating from the 11th to the 15th centuries, and these in turn came essentially from a single tradition which, anciently, had several rivals. Thus, by modern standards, his edition was inadequate. In fact, for small parts of the New Testament where he lacked any Greek manuscripts, Erasmus simply translated the Latin Vulgate into what he conjectured the original might have been! One intriguing result is that there are no Greek manuscripts at all behind a dozen or so readings in the KJV. Thirty years later, Robert Estienne (Stephanus) produced Greek editions following Erasmus in the text but using several additional manuscripts and introducing a critical apparatus to show alternate readings in the margins. His text was thus only a minimal improvement over Erasmus's. Theodore Beza enriched this tradition somewhat by publishing nine editions of the Greek New Testament between 1565 and 1604. Two of these influenced the King James translators. The resultant text became the Textus Receptus. It is unfortunate that so influential a version as the King James was based on the TR, a text incorporating relatively few, relatively late, and relatively poor manuscripts. Not only had Beza and his predecessors ignored several earlier manuscripts than those they used, but for three centuries after 1611, additional manuscripts more ancient than those used by the King James scholars became available. A far more important development was the gradual recognition by scholars after 1725 that there were manuscript traditions or "families" -- not merely numerous manuscripts -- that differed from the TR. This insight led to continual improvement of textual classifications and allowed "lower" criticism to proceed on a more scientific basis, reaching a peak with the landmark work of Cambridge scholars B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, who in 1881-82 published The New Testament in the Original Greek. Hort and Westcott positioned four major "families" of ancient texts. Of these, they said, the "Syrian," represented by the Byzantine tradition, was the latest and most corrupt. The least corrupt, or "neutral" tradition, was the "Alexandrian." This represented a direct challenge to the Byzantine-based King James Bible. The theory was bitterly attacked but won the support of most scholars and underlies virtually all subsequent work in New Testament criticism. As Raymond Brown observes, if the King James was a translation of the Textus Receptus, the RV and the subsequent RSV were heavily influenced by principles akin to those of the Westcott-Hort Greek Testament. Because he believed that the revised versions undermined cherished Christian ideals, J. Reuben Clark turned the guns of his formidable mind against the Westcott-Hort text. He followed critics who protested that the Westcott-Hort construction was overly dependent on the Alexandrian text-type, particularly the famous codices (manuscript volumes), Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. He further followed those who alleged that these codices were not only 4th-century (that is, late) manuscripts, but that they represented a text-type that only originated in the 4th century, under heretical conditions, which is why the early church rejected them. Most serious scholars were unpersuaded by such theories, and subsequent discoveries have demonstrated that the Alexandrian text-type goes back at least to the 2nd century. Westcott and Hort definitely established that certain traditions were generally preferable to others, and it remains true that the Alexandrian type has the best credentials. The able textual studies of even arch-conservative Protestants like Benjamin B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen argue that the Byzantine text-type is essentially a late one. But some of President Clark's contentions have merit. The Westcott-Hort theory has, in the 20th century, been modified in many respects. Among other things, the textual traditions identified by the theory have been reclassified. Modern scholars recognize, unlike Westcott-Hort, that no text group has descended essentially uncontaminated from the original autographs. Also, while the Byzantine text is not generally preferable to the Alexandrian, some of the Byzantine readings (as with all the major traditions) are genuinely ancient. Westcott and Hort had indeed, as Clark charged, been overly dependent on the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus codices. However, President Clark failed to allow that modern critical editions are eclectic, established on a case-by-case basis, using the best available evidence. They do not slavishly depend on the Alexandrian or any other tradition. But President Clark went further in his criticism. Because modifications in the critical text were ongoing and scholars admitted they were likely to continue indefinitely, Clark implied that we therefore need not take too seriously changes that went beyond the TR (and thus beyond the KJV). This perspective, however, did not give sufficient weight to the tentative nature of all progress in human knowledge. In any event, the case for the RSV was never based solely on the existence of better manuscripts than those available to King James's translators. The discovery of a wealth of papyri in the 20th century has significantly deepened scholars' understanding of the New Testament language as a whole, making better translations inevitable. Linguistic progress has been even more dramatic in the case of the Old Testament. Perhaps the most enduring argument marshaled for the King James Bible against its challengers has been its unmatched literary elegance. As we have noted, this was not self-evident when the work first appeared in 1611. But within fifty years of its publication its excellence was increasingly acknowledged; feelings of reverence became ever more deeply attached to this beauty. During most of the 19th century, Latter-day Saints said little about the Bible's literary value, much less that this criterion should take priority over accuracy. Their oft-repeated refrain was that all texts and translations were corrupt, and they professed to care most about precision, not beauty. However, with the arrival of the Joseph Smith revision and the threatening appearance of major new revisions, the literary importance of the KJV was increasingly stressed. For J. Reuben Clark, this was an important issue. "Could any language be too great, too elegant, too beautiful, too majestic, too divine-like to record the doings and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ?" he said. The language of God was ill-served when rendered "on the level of the ordinary press reporter's style of today." This concern for literary beauty had practical consequences. Before publishing Why the King James Version , Clark approached Church president David O. McKay for permission. McKay resisted. "We ought to be a little careful," he said, "about criticizing the Revised Version," since in some places it proved more accurate than the familiar text and it also eliminated confusing, outdated terms. Clark countered that President McKay, who had literary training, would probably not wish to rewrite Shakespeare's plays for the same purpose. The Church president acknowledged the point and assented to Clark's publication of the book. President Clark's belief in the decisive importance of the linguistic superiority of the KJV was a plausible perspective, certainly. The KJV is a literary masterpiece and has perhaps more power in certain instances to awaken religious feelings than more pedestrian translations. But this belief could hardly pass as the official Church view when the prophet and president of the Church remained unenthusiastic. And President Clark's quip about Shakespeare would apply only if one's central purpose in reading scripture were literary. But for Latter-day Saints the Bible served other purposes. And unlike Shakespeare, the Testaments were not original products of 16th- and 17th-century England. Translating the Bible afresh was not analogous to marring the original Shakespeare but to offering a new translation of Shakespeare to, say, German-speaking peoples, when Germans already possess a beautiful but inaccurate rendition they hold dear. The literary argument had other weaknesses. President McKay pointed out the most obvious ones: an archaic style and terms that were sometimes charming but markedly difficult for most modern readers to understand. Clark allowed the problem but insisted that the Authorized Version could be understood in all essential parts by the careful, thoughtful reader. A little work with a reference book, he felt, could overcome this small obstacle. Perhaps President Clark's own diligence led him to overestimate the ambitions of the ordinary reader. Even so, his own experience undermined his position. Difficult Jacobean words and phrases might here and there be overcome by the few who would bother to consult reference material, or when readers encountered familiar material such as the Sermon on the Mount. But such measures would hardly suffice for those attempting to understand, say, the intricate and sustained arguments of the Epistle to the Romans. President Clark himself admitted he did not grasp much of Paul, which is no wonder. The famous apostle is difficult enough to read for any length of time in the original Greek; for the average reader, the challenge is yet more severe in archaic English. For the Church's young members, attempting to view the overall message of Paul or Isaiah or Hebrews through the dense lens of Elizabethan prose is very nearly hopeless. Other facts further diluted the "beautiful literature" argument. In presenting ancient documents to a modern world, modern translators had, in many passages, been faced with either retaining the elegance of the KJV or offering a modern accurate rendition. To choose elegance over accuracy ran explicitly counter to the calls of Brigham Young and others for exactness in translation. It also ran implicitly against a more general dislike of elaborate religious display; Latter-day Saints and Protestants alike had long disparaged what they saw as the gorgeous robes, overly ornate cathedrals, ostentatious public ceremonies, and other trappings of Catholicism. Yet for Mormons to insist on retaining a beautiful language no longer accessible to the common person differed only in degree from contemporaneous American Catholics who insisted on a beautiful and mysterious Latin Mass. Earlier in the century, Latter-day Saints had already expressed reserve toward the tendency of scholars to inflate the humble dialects of many of the original biblical writings into a "masterly English." Twentieth-century scholars made a similar point, demonstrating what the scholars of the RV and ASV, to say nothing of the KJV, did not know, namely that the New Testament had been written in Koine or "common" Greek. As one eminent authority has put it, "an elaborate, elegant style is unsuited to" biblical translation, "and in proportion as it is rendered in a conscious literary style, it is misrepresented to the modern reader." Beyond the literary argument, an even weaker claim for the authorized translation was President Clark's assertion that it was the Bible of Mormon tradition, one that had successfully guided the Church from its beginning. This was technically true, of course, but, as already suggested, Joseph Smith would have been the last person to make allegiance to an inaccurate Bible an official practice when he knew of an alternative. His use of the KJV was incidental to the time and location of his birth and, even then, he refused to be confined by it. The Book of Mormon itself scoffed at tradition-bound souls who refused progress in hearing the word of God. President Clark reinforced his "argument by tradition" by noting that "the great bulk of our people know and use only the Authorized Version, and do not have access either to the Revised Versions... or to other versions." Moreover, he said, "references in our Standard Church Works and our Church literature are to the Authorized Version," and Bible commentaries and dictionaries are in good part keyed to it. In a comment perhaps more revealing than he knew, Clark added that the "Authorized Version is to most of us The Bible, and we would feel we had been disloyal to the record of God's dealings with men if we were to use any other text (we love the Word of God as therein given)." The sentiment was appropriately reverent, but the logic was not cogent. And what little force the point then held is rapidly evaporating. Gaining familiarity with other versions and access to them were scarcely insurmountable problems even in President Clark's time. And what was then a minor difficulty was only compounded by his making the KJV seem more official to ordinary believers. Commentaries and dictionaries by the most competent scholars are, of course, no longer "keyed" primarily to the KJV. In a subset of the tradition argument, President Clark made much of the fact that the RV and ASV had not displaced the King James Version in popularity. He was sure that the RSV would fare no better. There was substance to this claim, since the KJV had, in fact, retained an entrenched loyalty. But this became less and less true as time went on. Recent translations like the New English Bible, Today's English Bible, the New International Version, the RSV itself, and a number of others have continued to gain an increasing share of the market. And even if the weight of President Clark's assertion had endured, to insist on a Bible that is more popular than accurate remains a problematic posture. Clark's final defense of the Authorized Version (or final assault on the revised translations) arose from his doctrinal concerns. In this defense, President Clark implied that the King James translators had been inspired, while the Revised Standard Version scholars had not: no "clear cut statement of the Revisers is noted that... they either sought or enjoyed the help of the Spirit of the Lord.... It would seem the whole Revision was approached in the same spirit they would employ in the translation of any classical work." Against this President Clark contrasted the KJV translators' work as described in their preface: And in what sort did these assemble? In the trust of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of judgment, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the key of David... ; they prayed to the Lord... to the effect that St. Augustine did; O let thy Scriptures be my pure delight; let me not be deceived in them, neither let me deceive by them. In this confidence, and with this devotion, did they assemble together. Thus, Clark implied, the KJV scholars -- and not the Revised scholars -- were "amenable to the promptings of the Holy Spirit." This position was a bit awkward. First, the newly implied claim that the KJV translators were inspired was directly opposed to the almost unanimous contention of Church leaders from 1830 to President Clark's own time. Second, we might argue that including "non-believing" translators on the Revisers' committee helped minimize sectarian bias in the finished product. Third, whatever the advantages or disadvantages of secularity, the Revised translators did, in fact, invoke the hand of God over their work. In an essay so pious that it would have embarrassed the self-respecting modern translators of any work but holy scripture, the British Revision concluded its preface thus: We now conclude, humbly commending our labours to Almighty God, and praying that his favour and blessing may be vouchsafed to that which has been done in his name. We recognised from the first the responsibility of the undertaking; and through our manifold experience of its abounding difficulties we have felt more and more, as we went onward, that such a work can never be accomplished by organised efforts of scholarship and criticism, unless assisted by Divine help. Thus, in the review of the work which we have been permitted to complete, our closing words must be words of mingled thanksgiving, humility, and prayer. Of thanksgiving, for the many blessings vouchsafed to us throughout... our corporate labours; of humility, for our failings and imperfections in the fulfillment of our task; and of prayer to Almighty God, that the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be more clearly and more freshly shown forth to all who shall be readers of this Book. The preface to editions of the later RSV went on to say: The Bible is more than a historical document to be preserved. And it is more than a classic of English literature to be cherished and admired. It is a record of God's dealing with men, of God's revelation of Himself and His will. It records the life and work of Him in whom the word of God became flesh and dwelt among men. [The] Word must not be disguised in phrases that are no longer clear, or hidden under words that have changed or lost their meaning. J. Reuben Clark found such professions weak, reserved for the end of the respective prefaces of which they were a part, and more remarkable for what they did not say than for what they did. Their authors, he seemed to feel, damned themselves with faint praise of God. Now we must readily acknowledge that the Revisers were more restrained in their overt piety than their KJV predecessors, whose eloquent preface continued at great length. But President Clark made no allowance for the difference between modern tastes and those of an age of rhetorical flourish. He seemed to take the worshipful KJV preface at face value, as though it could with little change be transferred to the 19th and 20th centuries. That such a wholesale transfer would have been inapt may be seen by a glance at what modern standards would judge as the obsequious, almost idolatrous 1611 dedication to the increasingly unpopular and autocratic King James. So distressing was James's behavior to the Puritans that his reign became but a preface to that of Charles I, whose more extreme actions prompted the great Puritan exodus to New England, then British civil war, and finally his own execution. Despite such tensions, the age of literary extravagance induced the Puritans, who were well represented among the Authorized translators, to support "The Epistle Dedicatory" to King James: "Great and manifold were the blessings, most dread Sovereign, which Almighty God, the, Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us the people of England, when first he sent Your Majesty's Royal Person to rule and reign over us." The appearance of "Your Majesty" was "as of the Sun in his strength, instantly [dispelling] mists... accompanied with peace and tranquility at home and abroad." "Your very name is precious" and Your subjects look to You "as that sanctified Person, who, under God, is the immediate Author of their true happiness." Similar effusion was not absent from the Authorized "Translators to the Reader"; J. Reuben Clark was expecting too much if he thought its grandiloquence should be duplicated by modern scholars. Repercussions Under careful scrutiny, then, J. Reuben Clark's justifications of the King James Bible do not fare well. While the various points of excellence of the Authorized Version ought not be treated lightly, to insist on it as an official version guarantees significant misunderstanding (or non-understanding) by ordinary Saints. Moreover, although Clark held his views passionately, he was literally the first to admit his opinions were personal. The initial words of Why the King James Version were: "For this book I alone am responsible. It is not a Church publication." Yet President Clark held an exceedingly prominent position in Mormondom. Despite his own disavowal, there were inevitably many who believed his words represented God's opinion on the issues, especially since some other Church officials actively supported his views. In addition, President Clark was unusually erudite. Because of his forcefulness, making it seem that to abandon the King James translation in favor of another was to abandon one's faith, and perhaps also because no one of influence and competence publicly presented an alternative view, his book galvanized conservative impulses among the Saints and quickly acquired a quasi-official aura. Virtually all subsequent apologies for the Authorized Bible depended primarily on President Clark or used similar arguments less ably than he. On rare occasions, leaders have offered reasons for continued KJV usage that Clark did not call upon. Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, suggested the Authorized Version was retained because it was accepted by most Protestants, providing "common ground for proselyting purposes." President Smith's assertion was perfectly true in the 1950s when he wrote and therefore, quite apart from Clark's reasoning, the KJV was a logical choice for the Saints if proselyting, rather than scriptural understanding or scriptural accuracy, was the controlling criterion. However, even if we were to accept this rationale, it becomes less true with each passing year. By 1979, when the Church produced its new edition of the Authorized Bible, only 34.8 percent of American homes used the KJV as their primary Bible. This is actually an impressive figure and proves that the KJV is still the popular choice among U.S. Protestants. But its dominance is waning; it no longer represents "the majority of Protestants." And what of the country's fifty million Catholics? In recent years, LDS religious educators have not usually borrowed the slightly more developed defenses offered contemporarily by the few fundamentalist scholars who continue to push the Textus Receptus. Instead, they have tended to cite J. Reuben Clark or use his logic and to augment his uniquely Mormon argument that Joseph Smith's modern revelations verify the accuracy of the KJV. One teacher compares many passages where he feels modern translations obscure "doctrines of the Restoration," whereas KJV language "triggers" them. For instance, the "dispensation of the fulness of times" (Eph. 1:10) has a very specific Restorationist meaning for most Latter-day Saints. Therefore, translating the Greek phrase behind it as "when the time is right" or "when the time fully comes," as some scholars do, mars a proof-text for a popular Mormon concept and abandons "unique terminology seemingly preferred by God." This approach, like President Clark's, ignores the fact that all sorts of popular illusions are based precisely on this process, which allows -- forces -- theology to depend on incidental KJV phraseology rather than on the genuine intent of the original authors or on some other basis. As a result (to stay with the same example), the KJV translation of Ephesians 1:10 helps confine Mormon thought to an early 19th-century dispensational mind-set popularized by John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren. Another LDS writer uses Joseph Smith's modern revelations to verify the accuracy of the KJV from a slightly different angle. He notes that the Prophet translated the Book of Mormon and recorded his own revelations in the idiom of the KJV. The writer goes on to suggest that this style must be preferred by God, since Smith's successor prophets have continued to record revelations in the same idiom. He cites as "obvious illustrations" Doctrine and Covenants 135, 136, and 138 by John Taylor, Brigham Young, and Joseph F. Smith respectively. Because of this continued use of KJV language, he writes, the clear "intent is that [all scripture] be woven together as one book.” This line of thought gives little weight to the probability that Joseph Smith cast his revelations in KJV idiom because, raised on the KJV, he (unconsciously?) equated it with religious terminology. But he did the same thing with early accounts of his first vision, yet greatly lessened the tendency in later accounts (particularly the one now canonized), as his confidence in his prophetic calling grew. And Brigham Young, who thought his sermons "as good scripture as... this Bible," did not preach in KJV idiom. Furthermore, of the three "obvious illustrations" cited to show the necessary continuance of King James English, only D&C 136 is clearly created in the image of the KJV. Section 138 uses transitional language, retaining heavy vestiges of Elizabethan style because the section is an inspired commentary on and expansion of certain KJV passages. But the section itself is not unambiguously in KJV form. Section 135 is manifestly not in Jacobean idiom; it retains only slight traces of the KJV simply because of its biblical subject matter. The work of such teachers, sincere though it is, has magnified misconceptions among a younger generation of Latter-day Saints. Thus, the inertia of tradition and the continued absence of a competent public alternative to the personal opinions of J. Reuben Clark, have all helped support the increasingly unopposed reign of the King James Bible in Mormondom. The 1979 publication of an "official" LDS edition of the KJV, widely promoted by Church officials and diverse Mormon organizations, has ensured the dominance of this version for the indefinite future. This publication in essence completed the metamorphosis of the King James Bible from the common into the official version among English-speaking Latter-day Saints. As the Church approaches the 21st century, it has settled on an early 17th-century translation as its official Bible. Prospects for immediate change seem discouraging. But we must remember that Mormon attitudes toward the KJV have evolved in concert with historical processes that continue to unfold. Since its inception, Mormonism has time and again proved its resilience and dynamism by creatively adapting to the developments of the modern world. As they look toward the future, informed Saints may be justified in having faith that the present state of affairs is but a way station, not a final resting place.

The Language of God? The KJV Idiom