Rockwall, TX (May 15, 2025) – Do high-school students still suffer the required reading of books written hundreds of years ago?
As a teenager, I had little interest in an assignment to read Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I became hooked and read more of his plays, which kept me up past midnight—unable to close the book until someone had married or died. (I might still have this habit.)
That immersion with Shakespeare proved valuable in college, but not for English Lit. After joining a Bible study, I purchased the “official” King James Version of the Bible (the KJV, first published in 1611). What poetic lines and artful phrases I discovered in those gilt-edged pages! I also noticed familiar phrases still in use today.
For the first time in decades, I recently began traveling through the KJV from start to finish. However, its archaic wording now confuses me after reading modern Bible versions for so long. Even so, revisiting the colorful King’s English has been interesting.
In the KJV, Abraham “gave up the ghost” (Genesis 25:8*). David laments his friend Jonathan’s death, saying, “How are the mighty fallen” (2 Samuel 1:27). In the book of Job, the suffering man says he escaped death “with the skin of my teeth” (19:20).
The prophet Isaiah wrote that there is no peace for the wicked (Isaiah 48:22). Yet he was communicating God’s words, not his own. The minor prophets did the same: Hosea spoke for God saying, “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7); Amos 4:12 warned, “prepare to meet thy God.”
Those who love vibrant expressions could appreciate the sacrificial life of William Tyndale, whose scholarly work in the 1500s helped usher in the golden age of the English language. His brilliant word-crafting gave beauty to England’s previously course language. (Just a few of Tyndale’s words: beggarly, busybody, castaway, finisher, offscouring, taskmaster, viper.) Many of the hundreds of words and phrases Tyndale created were appropriated by both Shakespeare and the KJV.**
Tyndale’s passion for words were not for the sake of scholarship itself but to give England the Bible in her own language. He painstakingly rendered the Hebrew and Greek words of the Old and New Testaments by creating new words needed to interpret scripture with accuracy.
The Bible, whether the KJV or another version, is called the Holy Bible since it comes from God. The apostle Paul wrote, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). And the Lord is “holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3).
One example of divinely inspired writing is found in the opening of The Gospel According to John. The apostle describes the Son of God in this remarkable way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
That somewhat puzzling verse becomes clearer as we continue reading: On the evening before Jesus’ death on the cross, he told his disciples, “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself … Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John 14:10, 11).
Furthermore, the opening lines of Hebrews explain that God once spoke through the prophets but now has “spoken unto us by His Son, … the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power…” (Hebrews 1:1 – 3).
By God’s mercy through Christ, we’ll someday behold the Word himself, or as Hebrews 12:2 says, “the author and finisher of our faith.” *All quoted scriptures: KJV; **From Tyndale, by David Teems
Faith Columnist Patti Richter writes and edits Christian faith articles and has co-authored Signs of His Presence: Experiencing God’s Comfort in Times of Suffering. Read more of her essays at BlueRibbonNews.com
Words That Speak – from Start to Finish added by Melanie M on
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