Wednesday, February 12, 2014

New Translations to Dumb Down the Bible


One of the biggest complaints that people make about the King James Bible is that it is "too hard to understand." Many people also claim that the KJV is written in "Old English." In reality, the KJV is written in Modern English, and every word in the KJV is found in a current Webster's English Dictionary. Most of the words in the KJV that people do not know are not "archaic." They are actually just words that we don't use very often today because our language is constantly being dumbed down! The texting generation is too lazy to learn some new vocabulary and read an intelligent book. That would be too much work!

To solve the problem, I have thought of a new concept for a Bible version. It is called the KJV1 which stands for "King James Version - 1 Syllable Edition." It gets rid of all those big words in the KJV and allows only single syllable words. No more big words!

In the start God made the sky and the earth.
And the earth had no form, and was void; and dark was on the face of the deep. And the Ghost of God move on the face of the wet.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God split the light from the dark.
And God call the light Day, and the dark he called Night. And the eve and the morn were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a thing in the midst of the wet, and let it split the wet from the wet.

Another thing people complain about with the KJV is that "it is not the way people talk anymore." Sometimes they will bring up evangelism, saying that if we are going to reach people with the Gospel, we need to talk the way they talk. Therefore we also need an Ebonics Bible for soul-winning in the inner cities. I am not sure that I am qualified to translate the entire Bible into Ebonics, but I will take a stab at one verse.


Matthew 22:12 (KJV)

And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

Matthew 22:12 (Ebonics)
And he was like, Fool, How you up in here not wearin' no wedding clothes? He was like, I don't even know!


In reality, I do a lot of soul-winning in the inner city, and everyone I preach the Gospel to understands the KJV just fine. Are there difficult passages in the KJV? Of course! But instead of trying to dumb down the Bible, you should get smarter! Study to show thyself approved unto God! Our language is getting simpler and simpler as video games and TV rot the minds of our youth. Churches need to educate people in the language of God's word instead of embracing dumbed-down versions like the New Living Translation, which will only encourage people to remain ignorant and uneducated.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

well put

Anonymous said...

well put

Anonymous said...

HAHA loved the ebonics!

Unknown said...

I found the 1 syllable version too hard to read with that archaic 2 syllable word 'divide'.

Mama to 12, so far said...

Funny! Very funny!

sanderson1611 said...

Sorry, Kevin. I changed it to "split" for you to make it a little easier to understand! haha

Sibylle said...

I can't wait for your documentary about the Bible versions. I study translation, and it is really a passion of mine to compare translations. Usually I do it with other languages (Luther Bible, Schlachter 2000, all them compared to the KJV), but it is really interesting to see that what they did really has nothing to do with the original Bible.

Anonymous said...

Great post Pastor Anderson. I wholeheartedly agree with you that people just need to get smarter....which amounts to turning off the tube, turning off their phones, and holding intelligent conversations face to face. AND getting into their KJV.

Rudy R.

Lynn said...

I just love your sense of humour!!!

Unknown said...

And he was like, Fool, How you up in here not wearin' no wedding clothes? He was like, I don't even know!KILLED ME