Tom Sawyer

If any adult in Western society hasn't read the Bible, it is safe to say that he's improperly educated. I agree that it's something that every school library should have in it.

sotto voce

That would be a printed vernacular translation, presumably. Now there is not a printed translation in the world that is not the subject of controversy, some of it leading to claims of heresy. The debate almost invariably boils down to political influence, slant, if not naked alteration. So in the very places that children ought to be getting straight, unadulterated information, they are not receiving their rights. What is more, they are given little assistance in finding where this bias occurs, or even in knowing that it exists. It's time for the conspiracy of silence to end.

What would never had occurred, under a true Christendom, was total loss of Greek koine. It would have become, with Hebrew, the dominant world language. It's another way we know that Constantine was a deeply wretched person. Translations should be the reluctant exception, not the preferred rule.

Obfuscation in printed versions is particularly true of the tome known as the King James Bible. Why does Dawkins so predictably promote it on this occasion, as he has on many others? The reason given is cultural and literary, but if so, why has he and many others who claim this motive so glaringly fail to support the reading of other classical books? Surely the primacy of accuracy ought to be the primary concern of a well-known skeptic, and ought to be seen to be his concern? Surely, many will take this as inept warning that the 'KJV' is less than what Christians find acceptable.

They will be correct to do so. Very few in Dawkins' own country now use the 'KJV', that became known as 'the steam Bible' concurrently with the rapid phasing out of steam railways in Britain in the 1960s. Dawkins has been unduly influenced by the American fundamentalists with whom he has so much in common. He's made a fool of himself, again. The 'Bible' that Dawkins advocates was put together (translated is far too strong a word) by people who did not even know that the New Testament was written in non-classical Greek! It is based on a text-type that holds sentences that are found in no known Greek manuscript. It contains a known forgery, and several spurious passages, yet gives no warning of any of them.

As the belated but vastly superior official revision of this Bible, the RSV, put in its preface, the ancient version had 'grave defects' and was unfit for purpose. In fact, it had been an unjustifiable version for well over two centuries, due to scholarly advances. Since 1946, when the RSV began to appear, scholarship in all relevant fields has moved on even more. So 'Dinosaur Dawkins' might seem a particularly apt and well-deserved epithet. Or maybe Richard 'Grave Defects' Dawkins would be suitable, and unexceptionable judgement of one whose profession is supposed to be precision.

The real reason for picking out this version is its off-putting archaism, that defeats even competent English readers, even if they don't realise it. This is known because a KJVOer will invariably refuse to accept a KJV with modernised verb endings and prepositions. Phoneys like to say 'unto' in pious tones; Dawkins stands right behind them. The fact that it seemingly supports polytheism and works justification is just a bonus.

People discovered what the Bible really meant (or a lot more of it, anyway) when they opened the NIV. It was the NIV that frightened the KJV-only movement into existence. Nobody complained that people were neglecting the 'KJV' before the NIV was published. In 1966, a new Bible version in contemporary English was met with the reaction "This can't be the Bible, I understand it" so often that it was uncanny. But it is the inaccessible, off-putting and heretical 'Bible' that Dawkins and a weird right-wing British politician support. Now is that faith in Jesus, or not?

Those involved in mission to young people would sooner use no Bible at all than this archaic volume, because, to use another cliché, it would 'put them off for life'. It could come as no surprise if Richards Dawkins, while browsing, has read these very words, and decided to promote this potent deterrent to faith as often as he can. That is certainly the effect.

Sheshbazzar

I agree with this view.
I have a hundred relatives that prominently display Bible's in their homes, but they are never read and most set for decades without ever being opened.
They are placed there as icons and religio/political statements of their self-identity as being 'good Christian Americans', which legitimizes Christianity, while the claim legitimizes (and excuses) whatever vile and inhumane opinions they might wish to wrap up in religion and the flag.

Roger Pearse

A clarifying thought: UK Christians almost never use the KJV any more. They are, on the contrary, indelibly associated with modern translations. Use of the KJV (or Latin grace at meals) is preferred by those who mostly don't want the bible understood. So Dawkins' call for the bible to be made available in the KJV probably indicates something along these lines; a desire to position the bible as unreadable.

sotto voce

It's also used by the likes of Rowan Atkinson to get mocking laughter. As it was by the Cambridge Footlights set back in the '60s, though with much more responsibility, as the 'KJV' was still in extensive use, and absurdly used.

Underseer

Technically, anyone who isn't Greek is a barbarian.

spin

I don't think this is correct regarding Dawkins. He seems to be very old school in his aesthetics. The King James Version is strongly considered as literature in its own right and its distribution at the time was responsible for a lot of christian terminology entering the English cultural heritage. Phrases that are lost in modern translations but appear in renaissance literature and for the centuries following. Waste and void. Vanity of vanities. Son of man. And many more that are not to be found in your modern translations, but which he cites. Of course it is not just words and phrases but also images, stories and parables, but it is the sonorous use of language that he has in mind. You find excerpts of the 1611 text in literary anthologies for its succinct colloquial English poetic. There have been university course on the bible for literary students. I remember a course text by Northrop Frye. It is not for obscurantism that Dawkins would want the KJV, but for the same misguided literary ideas of those who would make school students struggle with Shakespearean English.

It wouldn't make sense for his polemical requirements that the text is unreadable. He wants people to consider the contents and that asks for the text to be read. I think he does put his intentions clearly enough in his essay. It is not "a desire to position the bible as unreadable", but to show its contents' unpalatability. You gotta be able to read it to get there.

sotto voce

Speaking as a Catholic, of course. Such a shame that the Vulgate had to go, don't you think? :innocent1:

Behind the times, anyway. It's noticeable that atheists love the 'KJV', and you can see why. Quite a lot of their objections to the Bible just disappear if a more modern version is used!

Of course, in an advanced place like this, nobody tries on that trick; but Dawks still like to do so where they can. RD remains doggedly loyal to them, few though they are now.

sotto voce

Even if the Greeks go back to minding their small-holdings.

Toto

No they don't. Modern translations still endorse slavery and genocide, not to mention sexism, a flat earth, apocalyptic thinking, etc.