Today I visited the King James Bible exhibit in the bottom floor of the Harold B. Lee Library. I was especially excited when Professor Burton posted about this as a possible field trip to blog about because I have had some challenging and intriguing thoughts and questions about the King James Bible for quite some time now. These questions first arose in my Theory of Knowledge high school class. The format of the class was much like this one, where we blogged about how knowledge is communicated and transmitted and the different forms of knowledge. One day we discussed the different forms of translations and how they can change and distort knowledge. My teacher mentioned that in the King James Bible it states that it was written for the "Common Man" meaning it was the translation into english that most men could read when it was published. The latin bible and hebrew old testament versions could only be read by priests and rabbis who understood latin and hebrew. So many complex doctrines and concepts were made simple to allow the "common man" of that day to understand them. He said that we lost many truths and intellectual concepts from this translation and that we would not know what we missed from the latin and hebrew versions. 
This made me start to question how accurate the Bible that I had been reading all my life actually was. Was I reading about things that never happened? I thought about this as well in my Book of Mormon class this semester when we study that one of the reasons why the Book of Mormon is so important is because it includes covenants of the Lord that were lost in the "original book" or the Bible. The book of mormon states in 2nd Nephi that plain and precious truths were lost from the bible by those false priests who translated it. They purposely left out the revelations in the old testament of christ and foreshadowing to his coming so that those of the Jewish faith would not believe that Jesus was the true messiah. The Book of Mormon places most of the blame not on the translation process but on the false priests who took out the plain and precious truths. So now I was really concerned because I did not know what I could believe sincerely from the Bible and what was not true or distorted from many years of translating. I went to the exhibit to enlighten myself on the effect translating print has for how we can successfully still transmit and communicate knowledge through the ages.
The exhibit was very informative and i learned about the many versions of the Bible and how the King James Bible is actually the product of multiple translations put together to form the "one principal good one." I also learned that the Latin version of the bible that was common among monks was translated from greek and hebrew by Saint Jerome in 382 AD. It took him 23 years to translate from greek and hebrew into latin. There were many other versions and translations that followed and then of course the first edition of the King James Bible was translated by Robert Barker in 1611. It is amazing when the translating of the Bible is compared to the translating of the Book of Mormon. It took a whole host of Bible scholars at least a day to translate one page, while Joseph Smith was translating almost 10 pages a day. He took around 90 days to translate the Book of Mormon while the King James Bible took 7 years! Anyway this just goes to show the accuracy and precision of Joseph Smith's translating process, he did not have to delve over what to include and what not to because he was translating everything as it was written.
By going to the King James Bible Exhibit I may not have found the answer I was looking for to figure out how true the Bible actually is, but I realized that it doesn't matter how accurate the Bible is compared to the Book of Mormon. I realized as I saw the different versions and quotes from famous figures such as Lincoln and Shakespeare, that the importance of the bible comes from its sharing of stories and doctrine that has inspired us through the ages. It may not have all the plain and precious truths and covenants of the Lord, but it has enough for me. (And anyway, I have the Book of Mormon to make up for the rest!)
Fun little side note, many famous writers at the time the bible was translated were asked to make revisions to make it sound smoother and flow better. Many believe William Shakespeare to be one of them. In 1610, Shakespeare was 46. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the front is "shake" and the 46th word from the end is "spear" COINCIDENCE ?! I THINK NOT!
Stay tuned for my next blog on our Rosetta project where the production process behind an ancient language on a stone tablet will be revealed!!! Here is a sneak preview:
I really enjoyed your post, Andrew! Awesome exhibit, huh?! I went there about a month ago and I was surprised because I had no idea that there existed so many different editions of the Bible in English. I was really impressed with the end of the exhibit, where it showed you how much of the literature that exists in our society was influenced by the King James Bible--Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, just to name a few. And apart from including these things, I was impressed with what the King James Bible was actually influenced by. I had no idea the works of Shakespeare actually influenced the wording and Old English that is used in the Bible. Amazing!
ReplyDeleteAndrew, your point about simplifying the Bible in order to appeal to the common man and consequently losing precious doctrine is very valid. Even more simple versions of the Bible are available nowadays and on my mission I was surprised at some of the things that get left behind that leave the reader confused.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things that get left behind in the newer ones, Scott! I completely agree! One year on the track bus, I went through my coach's "coach study edition" of the Bible and looked up the Isaiah scripture masteries and meant completely different things than the Kings James. Also, with the Bible being influenced by other writings such as Shakespeare's plays, we've been studying that in my writing class! We just finished Macbeth, and we found many allusions to the Bible. Inter-class connections!
ReplyDeleteSide note to Jenna: I love your "inter-class connections!"
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I really liked the King James exhibit - the historical information it provides is fairly interesting, but the best part is just being able to look at all those old bibles (and some other old books) and think about how precious they've been to people over time.
And they have been precious and continue to be so, even if they don't contain a fulness of truth.
ReplyDeleteHuh, it's funny, but I never really thought about how the Bible got translated into Latin before. It's almost as if that was just THE official version for so long that I didn't really make the connection to the Hebrew and Greek, even though I knew they had come first.
ReplyDeleteI want to see this exhibit, when is it open until?
ReplyDeleteDad