From Chapter 4 – Thees and Thous

The issue of specific archaisms in the AV is one that has been abundantly over-labored but should be addressed. Though more may exist, Hills offers only seventeen serious examples of words which have changed meaning since 1611.¹

Nevertheless, almost every modern version justifies its existence on the basis of these archaisms; and certainly it must be admitted that there is something to be said for updating obsolete words. Why is it, though, that we do not feel such a compulsion with regard to Shakespeare’s works? The answer is probably that while all should be literate in Shakespeare, there are probably many who never will be.

Holy Scripture should be made as accessible as possible, to all levels of literacy. Hence, the appearance of a masterful updated edition of the classic AV now allows anyone with a desire to use the old Anglican Bible to do so, less the archaisms.

The 21st Century King James Version is an exact reproduction of the AV with accurate, modern equivalents for all the several archaisms found throughout its last revision.² The complaint of difficult archaisms is no longer available for those who want to impatiently dismiss this sacred classic.

Moreover, there is actually an advantage to the antiquated pronouns that modern translation advocates are either uninformed about, or else rather quiet regarding.

Late in the twentieth century, Thomas Nelson, knowing a market when they saw one, made an attempt to update the old workhorse of both high church liturgists, as well as low church fundamentalists, but also gave way like the Revised Version before it, this time in the Old Testament text, and by ditching the Tyndalian/Elizabethan second person singular/plural distinctions (i.e., the thees and thous) in their “New” New King James Bible.

Dr. Mikre-Sellassie, a United Bible Societies translation consultant, rehearsed in an article he wrote for The Bible Translator in April of 1988 (pp. 230 -237), why the “thees” and “thous” cannot be dispensed with in good conscience.

While many marketing-types think these terms are the shibboleth by which consumers will judge whether a Bible is “modern” or not (while trying to make up their minds at the shelf of their local religious bookstore), it is no justification for erasing the important grammatical function these terms actually fulfill. I shall let him speak in his own voice:

Translators, and especially those in common language projects, may find it strange and surprising to hear a consultant recommending use of the King James Version for translation . . . . The archaic English pronouns of the KJV distinguish number in the second person pronoun in all cases, as shown in [the accompanying] table. Thus the KJV can certainly render an important service to those translators who do not have any knowledge of the source languages of the Bible and therefore work only from an English base, in easily distinguishing between “you singular” and “you plural.”³

Hence, it is impossible to communicate this important grammatical point without Elizabethan/Biblical English terms, as found in the AV and as retained in the KJ21.

Endnotes

(1) Hills, The King James Version, pp. 217-218.
(2) The 21st Century King James Version (Gary, South Dakota: 21st Century King James Bible Publishers, 1994).
(3) Ammanuel Mikre-Sellassie, “Problems in Translating Pronouns From English Versions,” The Bible Translator vol. 39 (April 1988): pp. 230-237.