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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: KJV [was: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
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Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 16:16:25 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.archaeology:56415 sci.lang:64754

In article <3292b27f.21777432@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
frank murray <fmurray@pobox.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 20 Nov 1996 04:55:54 GMT, deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von
>Brighoff) wrote:
>
>>	There is a very large corpus of Elizabethan and Jacobean writings
>>from a variety of different registers (e.g. informal letters, poems, legal
>>documents, etc.).  From these, we can reconstruct the common formal
>>standard written registers of each period (you are the first to bring up
>>spoken registers, which are a different matter) and compare them to the
>>language of the KJV and Shakespeare, respectively.  This comparison
>>reveals that Shakespeare's language diverged quite a deal more from the
>>standard of his time than the language of the KJV did from the standard of
>>its time.
>
>hmmm...as i remember the kjv was published in 1611, though the
>translation of it was finished in 1610 at which time shakespeare was
>46 years old...where is the divergence in time??...

	My mistake.  An earlier poster introduced the Jacobean/Elizabethan
distinction and I unreflexively adopted it, forgetting at the time the 
speculation that Shakespeare himself had a hand in adapting the Psalms.
However, it is still true that, since the KJV was purposely written in an
archaic style in its time, the style of earlier documents is relevant for
making comparisons.

	Perhaps the greatest single feature in which the KJV is
"stylistically unfaithful" to the Hebrew Bible is in consistency.  The
only way for the Biblical translators to give a sense of the original in
this respect would be to have people of very different temperament working
on different sections.


-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
