No One in the Bible Spoke English

Did anyone besides me grow up reading the King James Bible?

Shakespeare was 40 years old when King James commissioned a new translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into English, and he was 47 when it was published in 1611.

During those 7 years, Shakespeare wrote a dozen plays including Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. So if the cadence, rhythm and phrasing of the King James Bible reminds you of Shakespeare, well, it’s because that’s how people spoke back then.

But only if they lived in England.

In the year 1611, approximately 597,000,000 people lived and breathed and wandered the earth. Of these, only 5,600,000 spoke English. So the great-good-gift given by generous King James benefitted slightly less than 1 percent of the world.

But still, I like the King James Bible.

The book of Genesis opened my mind to the law of duality and to the power of words. The book of Ecclesiastes gives me perspective; few things are as important as they seem, and nothing is permanent. The Gospel of John fills me with wonder and gives me hope.

The King James Bible tells me the English language is a constantly evolving, shapeshifting animal.

It has been 410 years since King James translated the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into the English of Shakespeare, and during those years the words “spirit” and “ghost” have traded places.

We think of “spirit” today as the ethos or essence of a thing, and we think of “ghost” as a frightening apparition from beyond the grave. But in the 1611 Bible, those definitions are transposed:

In the 14th chapter of Matthew’s Good News we read,

“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.”

Holy Ghost appears 89 times in the King James Bible. In the 14th chapter of John’s Good News we read the words Jesus spoke during the Last Supper to his remaining 11 disciples, just after Judas Iscariot walked out of the room to betray him to the religious leaders who despised him and the Romans who would crucify him:

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

No matter which translation you read, the Bible is a wonderful book. It takes you into an ancient Middle Earth populated by Pharaohs, Philistines, and Pharisees.

Pharaohs: those imperious, mysterious rulers of mystical, magical Egypt.

Philistines: pagan Greeks whose champion, a giant named Goliath, was defeated by a young shepherd boy named David who later became King of Israel.

Pharisees: leaders of the faith into which Jesus was born. When he grew up, Jesus criticized the Pharisees harshly for their tendency to behave like today’s Taliban, focusing all their energy on the enforcement of the letter of the law but missing the spirit of God’s law entirely. When you read what Jesus said to them! Oh, my!

Unlike Jesus, I was born into the Christian faith. Now that I have grown up, I continue to have faith in Christ.

But I sometimes worry that a percentage of America’s Christians have embraced that same self-righteousness for which Jesus so stridently criticized the leaders of his own faith 2000 years ago.

Roy H. Williams