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By Root 1074 0

down to depths of response which it takes time and effort for the reader to reach. Literature, and especially religious literature, is not primarily concerned with being clear and reasonable; it is connotative rather than direct, suggestive rather than explicit, decorative and incantatory rather than functional. To make the Bible readable in the modern sense means to flatten out, tone down, and convert into tepid expository prose what in K.J.V. is wild, full of awe, poetic, and passionate. It means stepping down the voltage of K.J.V. so it won’t blow any fuses. Babes and sucklings (or infants) can play with R.S.V. without the slightest danger of electrocution.

In K.J.V., God describes the battle horse to Job: “Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?...The glory of his nostrils is terrible....He saith among the trumpets, Ha, Ha.” R.S.V. steps it down to “Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with strength?...His majestic snorting is terrible....When the trumpet sounds, he says, ‘Aha!’” The trick is turned by replacing the metaphorical “thunder” with the literal “strength,” by converting the thrilling “glory of his nostrils” into the prosaic “majestic snorting” (a snort can be many things, but never majestic), and toning down the wild “Ha, Ha” into the conversational “Aha!” A like fate has overtaken the Sermon on the Mount. Comparing this as rendered in K.J.V and in R.S.V. is like hearing a poet read his verses while someone stands by and paraphrases. The exalted has become flat, the pungent bland, the rhythm crippled, phrases dear for centuries to English-speaking people have disappeared or are maimed. For example:

But let your communication be “Yea, Yea,” “Nay, Nay.”

Let what you say be simply, “Yes,” or “No.”

Behold the fowls of the air.

Look at the birds of the air.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon, etc....

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Thus you will know them by their fruits.

The Song of Solomon is now slightly off key. “Our vines have tender grapes” has become “Our vineyards are in blossom”—the Revisers have a weakness for Spelling It Out. Instead of “Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor” we get “Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine,” which disturbingly suggests a cocktail party; the lyrical “How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!” is changed into the mawkish “How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden!” Repetition, another poetic (and hieratic) device, is generally avoided, perhaps because it is felt to be of no expository value. The K.J.V. Lord cries out, “I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people” (Acts 7:34), but the R.S.V. Lord merely states, “I have surely seen the ill-treatment of my people.” The ominous and brooding effect, in the description of hell in Mark 9, of repeating in verses 44, 46, and 48, the great line “Where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” is escaped by omitting verses 44 and 46.

There is an attempt at poetry; a fancy “literary” word is often used in place of a homely one. Now, as Wordsworth observed, a simple word is always more poetic than a “poetic” one. A stylistic virtue of K.J.V. is the tact with which it uses stately, sonorous Latin-root abstract words and humble, concrete Anglo-Saxon words, each in its appropriate place. If the Revisers pull to earth K.J.V.’s swelling Latin passages, they also give a bogus elevation, a false refinement to its direct, homely passages; if they tone down some strings, they tone up others, adjusting them all to produce a dead monotone. Thus “dirt” becomes “mire” (Psalms 18:42), “clothes” “mantle” (Matthew 24:18), “I brake the jaws of the wicked” “I