Here are a couple of examples:

From chapter 1:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.”

From chapter 3:

I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

II. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.

IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.

V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, has chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; nd all to the praise of His glorious grace.

VI. As God has appointed the elect unto glory, so has He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. herefore, they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season, are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power, through faith, unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

VII. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extends or withholds mercy, as He pleases, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by; and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praised of His glorious justice.

This precision ultimately derives from theological Latin and Greek – where a word like foreordain carries a rather more certain semantic than we use today, as you can see. This is the Reformed language and context of the KJV and you can see it reflected in the translation of various scriptures, especially those that derive from original Greek rather than original Hebrew.

I believe Talmage died in 1933 and the NIV first appeared in 1973.

Presumably you meant someone else, or a different version?

What more do we need then those four beautiful words to shift the dominant weight of our sympathies (even if we still have sympathies for both sides) to the KJV side!

I will admit that when taking lit classes in college, modern translations of old non-English writers were much easier to understand then those in older, archaic English. But for me the issue is not just one of translation–its one of style. There are other great works beside the KJV from former eras that we could “retranslate” into contemporary English. To do so in order to discard the originals would be unfortunate. While I realize that the KJV is not an “original” in the translation sense (and that it has its faults) when viewed in the context of English classics, it IS itself an original.

Yes, the NIV continues to grow in market share, though people who have an opinion on authority still seem to hold to the KJV. It is an interesting shift, and one you will note in Talmage’s works (he liked the NIV in spots, was unhappy in others). Regardless of what people buy, almost everyone respects the KJV.

I’ve ordered a NET Bible and am waiting for it to show up.

The LDS Bible’s original draft had over two thirds of the footnotes cut before publication, just FYI.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed this thread.

Good point. It is as if the fact that Shakespeare wrote great English means that anything written during his time was great, when one of the reasons that Shakespeare’s language is great is that it stands out so much from what surrounds it.

Whether the English in the KJV is consistently rather than occasionally bad is something we could argue about, but I’m not up to it right now. Suffice it to say that I don’t agree. I think the language is often remarkably good and generally very good, though there are places where it is just awful, whether as translation or as original.

Of course, the most famous examples of linguistic uses from the era going from Henry to James are from the Elizabethan era and are arguably some of the best in any language. As you know, there are examples of Elizabethan English that are as bad anything written anywhere (Greatness comes and goes but abominations accumulate), but Shakespeare tends to give Elizabethan English a kind of brand equity that (say) early Colonial American English or even Victorian English do not have.

The neophilia and neophobia are two sides of the same coin, both being forms of temporal provincialism. There is a strong tendency to exalt the rather consistently bad English of the King James Bible mostly because it’s archaic and partly because it does have occasionally lucid moments. My point in railing against the term Elizabethan in connection with the KJV is that it’s seems to me that it is most often used to try exalt the (rather consistently bad) language of the KJV as Majestic and somehow Shakespearian by association. There’s even a conspiracy theory that alleges Shakespeare’s collusion with the at least one translation committee.

All of the bibles before the Bishop’s bible are most accurately characterized as Tudor English. Since the Tyndale Bibles, the Mathew, and the Coverdale Bibles were all published during the reign of Henry VIII. The Old Testament of the Geneva Bible was published 2 years into Elizabeth’s reign (the Geneva New Testament having been published when Mary I was still on the throne) and is still best categorized as Tudor.

The Bishop’s Bible was completed at the outset of Elizabeth’s reign, and is a terrible translation–almost nobody used it at the time, and nobody has used it since. The only sense in which the KJV can be said to be a “revision” of it, is that the same sponsoring body (the Church of England) elected to replace the Bishop’s Bible with the KJV, but they did so in order to displace the Geneva Bible rather than to address any specific inadequacy of the Bishop’s bible.

So aside from that and the Geneva Old Testament which was wrapped up just as Elizabeth’s reign was getting under way, Elizabeth’s reign was remarkably free from Bible translations. And the KJV does reflect the linguistic standards of King James’ day and is properly labeled as such. It only representing those standards associated with Tudor English insofar as they overlapped with Jacobean English. There is, of course, considerable overlap among Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean English–but there is almost no ground at all for claiming that the KJV is Elizabethan English.