KJV English: Shakespearean Gibberish or God’s English?

“And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.” (Isaiah 29:12)  It’s commonly believed by professing Christians that the old fashioned Authorized Version was translated in the English style of Shakespeare or Queen Elizabeth’s time; and therefore it’s hard to read and we should read modern English versions. Well, based on the passage in Isaiah we’ve quoted above, we know that God doesn’t accept the “hard to read” excuse to not submit to reading the wholesome words (1 Timothy 6:3) of the scripture. The purpose and goal of this article is to prove the notion of the KJV being written in “Shakespearean gibberish” to be lazy ignorance.  So how did ol’ Billy Shakespeare write? Whilst it is true that the ol’ boy employed the use of “thee’s” and “thou’s” in his works, he also spoke in a refined, regular style of dialogue. In the first line of scene one in All’s Well that Ends Well, we read, “You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, sir, a father: he that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance.” In Act 1 of Scene 2 in The Comedy of Errors, we read, “Therefore give out you are of Epidamnum, Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate. This very day a Syracusian merchant Is apprehended for arrival here; And not being able to buy out his life According to the statute of the town, Dies ere the weary sun set in the west. There is your money that I had to keep.” In Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 1, we read, “SAMPSON No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. GREGORY Do you quarrel, sir? ABRAHAM Quarrel sir! no, sir. SAMPSON If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.”  The use of “you” as a singular second-person pronoun is applied throughout Elizabethan English, as we see in this short sample of Shakespeare’s works. Ben Yagoda made a noteworthy observation in an article, “David Crystal writes in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English that by Shakespeare’s time, ‘you’ was used by people of lower rank or status to those above them (such as ordinary people to nobles, children to parents, servants to masters, nobles to the monarch), and was also the standard way for the upper classes to talk to each other. […] By contrast, thou / thee were used by people of higher rank to those beneath them, and by the lower classes to each other; also in elevated poetic style, in addressing God, and in talking to witches, ghosts and other supernatural beings.” The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1675 quotation: “No Man will You God but will use the pronoun Thou to him.” Needless to say, this ambiguity and variability were gold in the hand of a writer like Shakespeare, and he played with it endlessly, sometimes having a character switch modes of address within a speech to indicate a change in attitude.” So what IS the difference between the English of the King James Bible and Shakespeare’s? Shakespeare’s use of refined, higher language was designed to ENTERTAIN the masses; which is why he “played” with certain words. The Holy Ghost of God on the other hand, never speaks or writes to entertain, though SOME clowns may think so (Ezekiel 33:30-33). The Lord speaks to CONVICT (Jeremiah 23:29); and the joke is on the sinner when he passes over “Thus saith the Lord”. Furthermore, Shakespeare’s writings tend to be of a more complex style due to his “playfulness” with words. An example from the popular Hamlet, “The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day, and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, Th’ extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine, and of the truth herein This present object made probation.”  Mr. Steven Houck in his article The King James Version of the Bible, wrote about the translators, “They were so concerned about it that they even took over the very phraseology of the Hebrew and Greek. We find in our Bibles, all kinds of Hebrew expressions and concepts that are not natural to the English way of speaking. In fact, it can even be said that the English of the King James Version is not the English of the 17th century, nor of any century. It is an English that is unique, for it is Biblical English-an English formed by the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible. It is Biblical English because the translators were more interested in being faithful to the originals than in making their translation in the street language of the day, as do translators today.” Contrast that, dear reader, with the sloppy translation philosophy of “dynamic equivalence” adopted by translators in the 20th century and forward; in which the jots and tittles (Matthew 5:18) of scripture are mangled up and diluted to conform to the modern sinner’s language and personal taste! Never mind the fact these modern translations since the 1880s Revised Version are based on Roman Catholic-biased manuscripts; the well-meant intention of replacing the King James Bible with the modern versions because they are easier to understand is just WRONG! The Lord Jesus Christ is said to be SEPARATE from sinners (Hebrews 7:26); so is it a big deal if his words are written in a style distinct from ‘Murican English (John 7:46)? If you read the very next verse of the introductory text of this article, you will find that those who make excuses to NOT submit to the reading of the Book are just “make believers” rather than true believers. That’s right, you’ve got more “make-believers” in the religious world than you do Bible-believers (Matthew 7:13).  With the crucial information about this article’s topic presented, let’s look at some verses about how the Holy Spirit views the difficulty level of his words.  “They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge.” (Proverbs 8:9). If you truly want to understand that ol’ Book so the words could be plain, you ought to do it the old school way by giving THE SENSE (Nehemiah 8:8) and comparing passages with other passages (1 Corinthians 2:13). An old fashioned Webster’s 1828 Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary (helps – 1 Corinthians 12:28) will take you far in your personal study of the pure words (Psalm 12:6).  “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:16). Only SOME (certain) parts of scripture are hard to understand; but they can be understood by adhering to the simple internal rules of Bible interpretation. Studying your Bible takes work, but if you’re sincere, you’ll roll up your spiritual sleeves and “bust your behind” to get understanding (Proverbs 4:7; 15:28). Call it a labour of love (1 Thessalonians 1:3) for the Lord Jesus Christ who was slain for worthless sinners that didn’t bother seeking him (1 Timothy 1:15; Romans 3:11).