Answering "Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version," part three

Part One     Part Two

In the third post in his series (one, two, three), Michael Riley at Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) argues that the degradation of the English language at its present state does not stop the modern versions from being conservative in consistency with being a conservative church with conservative worship like RAM teaches.  It seems that pastors in the UK when Scott Aniol visited there brought this as an argument against, that a translation into modern English conflicted with conservatism, unlike the King James Version.  Riley to his credit sympathizes with the argument and shows understanding of it for the first five and a half paragraphs before disavowing it.

I don't know what arguments the UK conservative pastors bring about the inability of the present English language to represent the original text of the Bible.  I have my own thoughts about it that are not what I would consider to be akin to very poor and even false KJV only style arguments.  I've written a lot about it recently because of the new book by Mark Ward, where he argues that the English of the KJV is unable to communicate sufficiently to a contemporary English audience -- they won't get most of it because of various reasons, especially what Ward calls "false friends," words or phrases that people do not understand anymore, yet that they think they do understand.

Riley agrees that English has degraded.  The almost entirely English audience that reads English has also taken a major decline with a steep trajectory downward.  Linguists with no skin in the issue of the translation of scripture have agreed that modern English has lost the ability of past English to communicate a formal social standard -- a particular structure, seriousness, and governing of rules of discourse.  Is the English of today a craft that can transmit adequately or appropriately the content of scripture?  Is there an interchange in priority from God to man, a diminishing of divine character by a casualness and commonality past suitability?  Even if the modern English hasn't become incongruous with the Word of God, is it so close to being so, should the godly of the culture put on the brakes to further erosion?

The new translations have not arisen from church agreement to the degree that a standard, single Bible could come from the unified effort, proceeding with reverence, respect, and holy motives.  In the opinion of many, they have reeked of pragmatism and pandering.  Do those doing the work not see the damage done by producing multitudinous translations?  Is all the variation and the plausible subjectivity of it an even worse friend than the apparent false friends?

Lawyers still understand the need for the precision of formality, that functions according to certain codes that do seem to proceed from natural or moral law.  We still follow the same Constitution of the United States without calls of updates.  We don't modernize the Declaration of Independence.  If we do change the Constitution, add an amendment, it is very difficult and so also very seldom.  Amendments read like the original, keeping it in the same spirit with a similar tone.

The Bible is a document of exponentially greater value than any other book or literature.  It deserves the veneration of scarce change.  Modern versions don't give it that.  Modern translators fiddle and fiddle as if they were Nero and Rome burned.  They scamper through the graveyard across the burial plots of sorts.  It contributes to lack of respect like we see in almost every institution.  If we can't take scripture seriously, when God is of highest value, then everything else will be lost as well.  This all flies in the face of conservatism.