The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

Why do some people prefer to use non-current terms for talking about Christian things?

Examples are:
God-breathed rather than inspired
rightly dividing rather than correctly handling or accurately handling

Non-exclusive possibilities that come to mind are

• because of the KJV legacy
• an association of an obscure meaning with mystery (of God)
• a desire to have a sacred terms reserved in some way for believers
• they sound more reverent or spiritual
• a reflection of a worldview that sees the world divided into the sacred and profane.

My preference is always to use plain modern English and it always strikes me when I hear people move from everyday language into a religious language.

Do you do this? And if so is it for any of the listed reasons or another?

_________________
John

My soul looks back in wonder at how I got over

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

I think part of the reason is a sort of tribalism--like technical people have their own jargon and each generation has its own slang.

But, like you, I think it is far better to be understood by whomever I am speaking to. If I run into one of the merry wives, I will try my hand at Old English, for their convenience, but otherwise I will abstain.

If I learned a piece of scripture from the KJV bible, then that's what I tend to quote to myself, and to others. I really like the 23rd Psalm, for example, in the King James version. For me, it's a matter of personal preference and familiarity. I don't always care for more contemporary and modern bible translations, and they are not what I experienced in my earlier years.

Then again, I do have a B.A. in English, and I eschew slang and endeavor to articulate properly whenever possible to avoid obfuscation.

(grin)

_________________
PROUD MILITARY WIFE ❤ PLEASE KEEP MY WONDERFUL DH IN YOUR PRAYERS

John, I think all of your proposed reasons factor in.

Some Christians I know use thou forms when they pray (at least publicly). On the one hand, it's archaic and tends to obscure the relational aspect of prayer (that God is a real person to whom one is speaking). On the other hand, it's kind of cool to have an entire pronoun and verbal form reserved exclusively for addressing God. Kind of a Romans 14:6 issue.

Btw, I don't think 'rightly dividing' is an archaism. I think it's just KJV's erroneously literal rendering of a Greek verb they apparently didn't quite understand.

I just love the term "God-breathed," by the way.

_________________
PROUD MILITARY WIFE ❤ PLEASE KEEP MY WONDERFUL DH IN YOUR PRAYERS

Jargon is OK within your club or professional group; but outside it is a method of excluding those present by obfuscation which would not be Rom 14:6.

For me, using Thou and similar terms always brings to mind the Yorkshire variation of English such as heard in All Creatures Great and Small. I can't bring myself to use it in The Lord's Prayer. In Yorkshire it certainly would not have been reserved for God, nor In DH Lawrence's Nottinghamshire where I lived for a while. Mellors uses it when addressing Lady Chatterly in Lady Chatterly's Lover.

_________________
John

My soul looks back in wonder at how I got over

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

The only time I use "thou" is when singing "Be Thou my vision ..."

_________________
PROUD MILITARY WIFE ❤ PLEASE KEEP MY WONDERFUL DH IN YOUR PRAYERS

Molly,

You know what one I miss the most?
"Thus"


"Spake" was pretty cool too.

_________________
Behold, now is "THE ACCEPTABLE TIME,"
behold, now is "THE DAY OF SALVATION" --
The apostle Paul, NASB

I have no issue with those terms. What bothers me more than that type of thing is when someone flaunts their knowledge of Greek or Hebrew like when someone is taking about the bible and randomly inserts the original word and leaves out the English word. I find it to be self-edifying.

_________________
All scripture KJV unless otherwise stated.

Studying old English and old literature is interesting but I realize that there are many words which are outdated. For example, the KJV has words with an old English basis and these words are obsolete and some mean totally different things in our language today. In the "Interpreter's Bible Dictionary," vol. K-Q, pp. 584-588 are pages which list obsolete terms. I believe to communicate the truth of scripture we should use 2 and 3 syllable Anglo-Saxon words, in other words simple English.

I have studied Old and Middle English but I do like modern versions of literature.