Beginning this year, I have coupled my reading of the King James version of the New Testament with the Royal Standard English Dictionary. Each week, I study the selected chapters up for discussion in light of this new information in search of new meaning through connotation and denotation in the notations. Already, I have seen a change in what each phrase means to me.
The King James edition of the Bible was completed in 1611. It marks the first major and official English translation of the bible and represents heavily the Anglican leanings of the dogma as opposed to those promulgated by their Catholic cousins. By 1611, much of what we know of as Middle English had fallen out of favor and was on its way to complete revision into what most of us recognize as Modern English, or the English to which we were subjected in public schooling.
The Royal Standard English Dictionary was completed in 1788 at the behest and hand of William Perry, adjunct faculty at the University of Edinburgh. It was the first major dictionary to be bought and sold throughout the Americas, in part because its completion coincided with cessation of hostilities in the Revolution and in part perhaps because it was of Scottish origin and therefore less offensive.
While still not perfectly chronologically aligned, I have noticed several key differences in what the passages mean when you read them with only the definitions available in English linguistic canon of 1788. That alone represents over 150 years of time passed between the Bible read and the language taught to those who read it, and as I have elsewhere observed English tends to rewrite itself on a periodicity that length or shorter it constitutes but an approximation to the original translation. I have not yet come into possession of a more historically appropriate dictionary of the English language if one exists, and if so, i am interested.
What I have learned is that words matter a great deal in our interpretations. Our mind is cued to read such that often it needs only the first and last letter of a word to know the exact word we mean. Likewise, our mind reads into a passage any omitted 'f's as in 'if' 'of' etc. in long passages with that repeated motif. Perhaps our mind also assumes, based on what we were taught about a language. Indeed, your mastery of any tongue is limited to the education and educator by which you gained whatever degree of fluency you enjoy.
Over 400 years have passed since the Bible was translated into English in the tome I use. At that time, they filtered meaning based on their mastery of their own tongue. In our day, fluency is a thing of the past, and we prefer to fabricate new words than to use ones that already exist, and much of what we create is ruderal at best. Rather than attempt to understand what the men who wrote the passages intended to convey, men among us have retranslated the Bible into 'modern' English to 'make it easier to understand'. Every time you translate something, you lose meaning.
I find it kind of strange that in school we were asked to interpret what the author meant and now we concern ourselves with what we might mean instead.
The King James edition of the Bible was completed in 1611. It marks the first major and official English translation of the bible and represents heavily the Anglican leanings of the dogma as opposed to those promulgated by their Catholic cousins. By 1611, much of what we know of as Middle English had fallen out of favor and was on its way to complete revision into what most of us recognize as Modern English, or the English to which we were subjected in public schooling.
The Royal Standard English Dictionary was completed in 1788 at the behest and hand of William Perry, adjunct faculty at the University of Edinburgh. It was the first major dictionary to be bought and sold throughout the Americas, in part because its completion coincided with cessation of hostilities in the Revolution and in part perhaps because it was of Scottish origin and therefore less offensive.
While still not perfectly chronologically aligned, I have noticed several key differences in what the passages mean when you read them with only the definitions available in English linguistic canon of 1788. That alone represents over 150 years of time passed between the Bible read and the language taught to those who read it, and as I have elsewhere observed English tends to rewrite itself on a periodicity that length or shorter it constitutes but an approximation to the original translation. I have not yet come into possession of a more historically appropriate dictionary of the English language if one exists, and if so, i am interested.
What I have learned is that words matter a great deal in our interpretations. Our mind is cued to read such that often it needs only the first and last letter of a word to know the exact word we mean. Likewise, our mind reads into a passage any omitted 'f's as in 'if' 'of' etc. in long passages with that repeated motif. Perhaps our mind also assumes, based on what we were taught about a language. Indeed, your mastery of any tongue is limited to the education and educator by which you gained whatever degree of fluency you enjoy.
Over 400 years have passed since the Bible was translated into English in the tome I use. At that time, they filtered meaning based on their mastery of their own tongue. In our day, fluency is a thing of the past, and we prefer to fabricate new words than to use ones that already exist, and much of what we create is ruderal at best. Rather than attempt to understand what the men who wrote the passages intended to convey, men among us have retranslated the Bible into 'modern' English to 'make it easier to understand'. Every time you translate something, you lose meaning.
I find it kind of strange that in school we were asked to interpret what the author meant and now we concern ourselves with what we might mean instead.
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