What’s Your Excuse for Not Reading the Bible? #5

Rubens, Peter Paul. The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek. 1626.
Oil on panel, 65.5 x 82.4 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

This is the fifth in a series of articles on common excuses for not reading through the Bible.

I’ve spent the last 40+ years studying the Bible, but not necessarily trying to read each word from cover to cover. Several years ago I began setting aside time each day just to read the Bible, with the goal of getting through the whole thing over the course of a year. Having spent many years coming up with excuses not to read the Bible this way, I thought I’d record them here for you. But take note: I’ll be shooting them down in the end, so don’t get your hopes up.

Excuse #5: Why bother reading the entire Bible anyway?

It can be reasonably argued that we only need to read the New Testament.

We meet Jesus in the Gospels. One of the things I like about reading a different translation of the Bible is re-reading the Gospels and re-meeting Jesus. Same characters, same events, but different words so that it sounds fresh and makes you think.

The book of Acts is both an adventure story, as Paul travels thousands of miles on foot to establish churches and preach the gospel, and it is where we first see the teachings of Jesus being put into action by his disciples.

The Epistles address the kinds of issues we face in our churches. Your issues will be different from mine, but they’re all covered.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John tells us about the future. Well, it does with imagery and symbols, but it does nonetheless.

What could possibly be in the Old Testament that would benefit us in any way? I mean, once you have a general idea of what’s there then what’s the point of slogging through it? Creation? Yep; got it. Flood? Know about that. Chosen people? The Jews; heard about ’em. Exodus from Egypt, the Law, the tabernacle, wandering in the wilderness, taking of the promised land, establishment of a king and kingdom, building of a temple, division of the kingdom, good and bad kings, and deportation? Sure, fine, whatever. Return to the land, rebuilding of the temple, promise of a messiah? Yes, yes, I know.

The Familiarity of Home

I was never an athlete, but at 50 years old I started running because my heart was trying to kill me. I started slow. And dumb — the first time I ran a mile, I did it by running straight away from my house, then I had to walk back. It took time for me to figure out that I should run a circular route so I’d end up at home.

Eventually, I ran into parts of my neighborhood that, while just blocks away, were unfamiliar to me. A curious thing began to happen: my concept of “home” was expanding. My “home” went from the yard I mowed every week to an entire neighborhood. My “neighbors” were not just the ones who lived next door to me, whose names I couldn’t remember but whose faces were familiar, but now included a woman a mile away who was always out on her front porch smoking a cigarette. And after you run past the house a few times you happen to see a woman dropping off some kids, and realize the smoking lady is a grandmother who watches her grandkids while mom works.

When we read the entire Bible and not just the few passages our preacher quotes on Sunday morning, our spiritual neighborhood expands. We meet more of our biblical neighbors. We discover Job’s dark sense of humor, not just his suffering. We find that the woman at the well was no unclean Gentile, but, like Jesus, could probably trace her lineage back to Jacob, but through Manasseh and Ephraim. Her debate with Jesus over the correct mountain on which to worship was not the idle babble of some random pagan but accurately stated a religious difference between the remnant of Israel that returned and settled in Shechem, and that of Judah, which settled in Jerusalem.

We also begin to appreciate our own place in history; especially in the history of how God has related to his creation through the ages. Familiar New Testament passages take on new meaning as we see similar thoughts being expressed hundreds of years before. And we’re amazed at the degree to which the Old Testament prophets accurate predicted the events of the New Testament.

Continuity of History

I like to read the Bible chronologically. The more I do this the more I begin to see the entire Bible as one long story. When I start reading Genesis, I will first read John 1:1-5:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it.

It reminds me that this is a book that isn’t just ultimately about Jesus, but it’s literally the story of Jesus. I like to describe the logos or “the Word” or “the Word of God” as God’s message — what God has to say. That message was embodied — took on human flesh — in Jesus. Jesus is the embodiment of what God has to say. In Genesis, God spoke and the universe came into existence — that is, without that spoken message from God, that message that we know as the person “Jesus” — nothing was made that has been made.

God wants to have a relationship with humans; humans rejected God; God punished them and selected one family with which to start over; God tried giving them laws, tried living among them in a tabernacle, tried giving them a king they could see — but none of these things restored that relationship he originally had wanted. So he said he would send a prophet, then the “righteous branch” of David.

All of this happens before we even get to the New Testament. When reading chronologically, you come out of the Old Testament reading Malachi, which is as big of a build-up and as big of a cliff-hanger as you get in the Bible.

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me! The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple. Behold, the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, is coming!”

You come out of the Old Testament knowing that a prophet like Elijah is coming, and you read about John the Baptist. You know how it began in the Garden, how humans messed it up, and you know the only way this is going to every work is if God comes down here and does it himself. And then he does in the next day’s reading. Hollywood couldn’t write this kind of story.

And you wanted to skip the Old Testament — especially the prophets.

Jesus Death Has No Meaning Apart from the Old Testament Law

This is why some people get Jesus all wrong. They haven’t read the Old Testament. They say, “Jesus died as an example.” An example of what, exactly? “Well, Jesus died to show us he loved us.” Couldn’t he have just bought us flowers? How does just dying for some random crime (threatening to destroy the temple, I guess — of which he was innocent) demonstrate ‘love’? “He died for his disciples.” In what way? None of them were being threatened with death — he didn’t die instead of them.

But now insert the Law. Jesus was innocent of his crime, like an unblemished lamb. Jesus died in our place, like that lamb does when it gives its life on the altar to satisfy God’s justice.

At the same time, Jesus’ sacrifice was different. The next day, the Old Testament priest had to sacrifice another lamb, then another the day after that. But Jesus needed to die just once because he perfectly satisfied God’s need for sin to be punished.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus became a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. If you haven’t read the Old Testament, you don’t recognize what the New Testament is talking about. Melchizedek was a priest of Yahweh before Abraham, before Isaac, before Moses, before Aaron, before the Law. (And FYI, he was a contemporary of Job, which you won’t know if you don’t read the Old Testament, and if you did read it, you won’t know it if you read it in Bible order after the book of Esther instead of in chronological order.) He took a tenth of the spoils of Abraham’s battle with Chedorlaomer in the Valley of Siddim before the tenth (or “tithe”) was written into the Law. Jesus isn’t a high priest in the way that Aaron was a high priest; he’s of an entirely different order. An earlier order that wasn’t under the Law.

You won’t know this if you don’t read the Old Testament.

It’s great that you want to read the Bible, and it’s fantastic that you want to read and understand the New Testament. But it’s just one part of the story. And it’s a part that’s going to seem mighty strange if you don’t know what came before it.

What’s Your Excuse for Not Reading the Bible? #4

Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This is the fourth in a series of articles on common excuses for not reading through the Bible.

I’ve spent the last 40+ years studying the Bible, but not necessarily trying to read each word from cover to cover. Several years ago I began setting aside time each day just to read the Bible, with the goal of getting through the whole thing over the course of a year. Having spent many years coming up with excuses not to read the Bible this way, I thought I’d record them here for you. But take note: I’ll be shooting them down in the end, so don’t get your hopes up.

Excuse #4: I’m not a levitical priest. I don’t need lessons in animal dissection.

Several long passages in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Ezekiel describe, in minute detail, how to cut up, clean, discard, wave, dip one’s thumb into, and burn a variety of animals. These instructions were extremely important to the priests who ministered in the tabernacle and later, the temple. But beyond knowing that these sacrifices were done and what their purpose was, we don’t really need the details. We won’t be donning our ephods and slitting the throats of sheep during the Sunday morning worship service any time soon.

The passages I’m talking about go beyond “sacrifice a bull to Yahweh”. They explain how it is to be done — in detail. This makes sense in context, since these are literally instruction manuals for Aaron, his sons, and their descendants.

5The anointed priest shall take some of the blood of the bull, and bring it to the Tent of Meeting. 6The priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle some of the blood seven times before Yahweh, before the veil of the sanctuary. 7The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Yahweh, which is in the Tent of Meeting; and he shall pour out the rest of the blood of the bull at the base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the Tent of Meeting. 8He shall take all the fat of the bull of the sin offering from it: the fat that covers the innards, and all the fat that is on the innards, 9and the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins, and the cover on the liver, with the kidneys, he shall remove, 10as it is removed from the bull of the sacrifice of peace offerings. The priest shall burn them on the altar of burnt offering. 11He shall carry the bull’s skin, all its meat, with its head, and with its legs, its innards, and its dung 12—all the rest of the bull—outside of the camp to a clean place where the ashes are poured out, and burn it on wood with fire. It shall be burned where the ashes are poured out. — Leviticus 4:5-12

Yeah, but there’s not a lot of these verses, right?

I counted 468 verses (12,866 words) on this subject. That’s around 1.7% of the text (counting by words). If you’re reading the Bible in a year, you’ll spend just short of one whole week reading nothing but procedures for wringing the necks of doves and removing the lobes that cover the liver of bulls.

But it wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t important!

These details are absolutely important — if you’re a descendant of Levi ministering in the tabernacle or temple. But a more general understanding of the Old Testament sacrificial system is all that is needed for Christians trying to read and understand the Bible today. We need to know that God required a blood sacrifice for sin. Then we can understand what we read in Hebrews:

1For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. 2Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins? 3But in those sacrifices there is a yearly reminder of sins. 4For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. — Hebrews 10:1-4

11Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, 12but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, 13from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. 14For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. — Hebrews 10:11-14

One of the fascinating things about the Law is that it ostensibly existed as a guide for its followers to make themselves righteous before God, but that in reality its purpose was to teach us the futility of believing that merely following a set of rules can make us right with God. This more subtle and enlightened (i.e. “basic Christian”) understanding of the Law makes the idea of spending a week learning how to dissect a goat in a way that pleases God even less rewarding than it literally is.

Save yourself a week

I skim and skip these passages when I run into them. I give you permission to do likewise. Don’t let a description of the fat around the kidneys keep you from getting all the way through the Bible.

What’s Your Excuse for Reading Bible the #3 Not?

This is the third in a series of articles on common excuses for not reading through the Bible.

I’ve spent the last 40+ years studying the Bible, but not necessarily trying to read each word from cover to cover. Several years ago I began setting aside time each day just to read the Bible, with the goal of getting through the whole thing over the course of a year. Having spent many years coming up with excuses not to read the Bible this way, I thought I’d record them here for you. But take note: I’ll be shooting them down in the end, so don’t get your hopes up.

Excuse #3: The events in the Old Testament are out-of-order and confusing.

Christianity and the Jewish faith from which it sprang are somewhat unique among the belief systems of the world in that they have a rich connection to human history that is essential to understanding them. Christianity isn’t a philosophical system that suddenly developed in the mind of the Apostle Paul some 2000 years ago. It claims to have started in the very creation of space and time. Its details were revealed in God’s work of creation, in direct revelation to selected humans over thousands of years, and in an historical, first-person manifestation of God to humans in the person of Jesus Christ.

We could choose to ignore the gospels and just read the New Testament epistles to discover Christian doctrine, but our understanding is immensely enhanced when we understand the life and teachings of Jesus from the gospels. We could read just the New Testament, but we won’t understand the work of Jesus on the cross without some knowledge of the job of the Levitical priesthood from the Old Testament. We could try to live lives without sin, but won’t understand the futility of that goal if don’t know about the Mosaic law from the Old Testament. We could simply accept God’s choosing of Abraham, but won’t understand the motivation of this choice unless we have read about antediluvian life and the Noahic flood. We would be bewildered by the expectations of some arbitrary deity that destroyed all life in the flood unless we also understand who that deity is and what he did in the first chapters of Genesis.

How Are the Books of the Bible Arranged?

When we sit down to read the Bible, it appears to begin at the beginning of time in Genesis and end with the eternal state that follows the destruction and recreation of the known universe in Revelation. But once we know the Bible, we realize that everything in between is a jumbled mess.

The books of the Bible are arranged by genre, not by chronology. The Old Testament begins with the Pentateuch, or the books of the Law. Next are books of history, then books of wisdom and poetry, then the prophets. The New Testament starts with the gospels — 4 different accounts of the life of Jesus — then an historical book, Acts, followed by various letters written to churches and individuals, then the record of a revelation given to the Apostle John.

The Messed-Up Chronology of Kings and Chronicles

Constable, Thomas L., Dr.. “Constable’s Bible Study Notes”. Marion, IA: Laridian Inc., 2021.

The Old Testament starts out in chronological order, but fairly quickly gets confusing. The books of Kings and Chronicles cover much of the same material. If you’re reading through the Bible in a year, cover-to-cover, you’ll read 1 Kings in April and 2 Chronicles in May. As a result you’ll be re-reading the same events twice. On top of that, the order of events described within a single book is often not correct. For example, Rehoboam is king in Judah in 1 Kings 12, but isn’t actually crowned king until two chapters later. Then (a month later in your reading plan), he becomes king again in 2 Chronicles 10 before becoming king again two chapters later.

The Messed-Up Chronology of Job

The biblical character Job is among the most ancient persons in the Bible. He is believed to be a contemporary of Abraham (circa 2000 BCE). In the traditional 66-book Bible, the story of Job is found after the book of Esther and before the book of Psalms. The book of Esther describes events in Persia around 480 BCE, around the time that the first remnants of the Jews were returning to Judah after being deported. Most of the Psalms date to the time of King David, 500 years earlier (around 1000 BCE). Based on what you read before and after Job, it would be easy to get the impression that Job was a Jew (he was not), or that he was a contemporary of Saul, David, and Solomon (he was not), or that he lived after the deportation and captivity of Israel and Judah (he did not).

This isn’t just a matter of dating Job correctly. Reading about Job before meeting Abraham helps us better understand God’s relationship with humans at this point in history. Job didn’t have the benefit of God’s direct revelation to Abraham, nor of the Mosaic Law. But he still had an understanding of God’s character and holiness. Like Melchizadek (who may have been a contemporary of Job), he was a worshiper of Yahweh at a time when we traditionally picture humanity in darkness, awaiting the more well-known revelation of Yahweh to Abraham and eventually to Moses. His story challenges us to come to a better understanding of how God’s relationship with his creation morphed over time.

To Whom Did the Prophets Prophecy?

All of the prophets are lumped together at the end of the Old Testament, even though much of their work happened before the captivity of Israel and Judah, and certainly before the return of a remnant of the people to the land.

Conclusion

All of this confusion leads to a paradoxical conclusion: It’s necessary to understand the whole Bible before you can read and understand any of it. You need an historical framework when reading the Bible “out of order” (that is, reading it “in order”) so that you can reorganize it in your head as you read it.

I would strongly recommend finding a chronological reading plan for PocketBible and reading through the Bible in calendar order. You’ll be surprised how much your understanding of God improves when you can put his relationship with his creation in historical order.

What’s Your Excuse for Not Reading the Bible? #2

This is the second in a series of articles on common excuses for not reading through the Bible.

I’ve spent the last 40+ years studying the Bible, but not necessarily trying to read each word from cover to cover. Several years ago I began setting aside time each day just to read the Bible, with the goal of getting through the whole thing over the course of a year. Having spent many years coming up with excuses not to read the Bible this way, I thought I’d record them here for you. But take note: I’ll be shooting them down in the end, so don’t get your hopes up.

Excuse #2: I get bogged down in the endless genealogies (the dreaded “begats”)

If you’ve tried to read through the Bible you know the frustration of happily reading along, then running into a long list of “so-and-so begat so-and-so”. You want to be faithful and read every word, but come on — there are a lot of random, unpronounceable names here.

Somebody told me once that there are only 25 such genealogies in the Bible — suggesting I should just buckle down and keep reading. I think they severely underestimate the problem. Now, to be fair, when trying to count such lists, it is difficult to define what constitutes a purely “genealogical” passage. Some are lists of names are mostly there to describe where people settled. They just happen to be organized by family. Others are lists of related people along with their responsibilities in the service of the tabernacle, temple, or army. A few are census records, which are naturally organized by family. So the exact number of genealogies could be subject to interpretation

In the end it doesn’t matter. When you run into this passage, you know it’s boring, no matter how you classify it (1 Chronicles 1:1-27)

1Adam, Seth, Enosh, 2Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, 3Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, 4Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

5The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 6The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Diphath, and Togarmah. 7The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim.

8The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. 9The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama, Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 10Cush became the father of Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. 11Mizraim became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 12Pathrusim, Casluhim (where the Philistines came from), and Caphtorim. 13Canaan became the father of Sidon his firstborn, Heth, 14the Jebusite, the Amorite, the Girgashite, 15the Hivite, the Arkite, the Sinite, 16the Arvadite, the Zemarite, and the Hamathite.

17The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech. 18Arpachshad became the father of Shelah, and Shelah became the father of Eber. 19To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. 20Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 21Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 22Ebal, Abimael, Sheba, 23Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. 24Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, 25Eber, Peleg, Reu, 26Serug, Nahor, Terah, 27Abram (also called Abraham).

To make matters worse, this is just the first 27 of 397 verses that make up the first 9 chapters of 1 Chronicles, all of which are lists of names.

Out of curiosity, I made a detailed list of all the genealogies, census records, and lists of people I found in the Bible. I found 38 overt genealogies, 53 other lists of (sometimes related) people, and 5 census records (family names and counts). Together, these passages account for 3.5% of the text of the Bible. 3.5% doesn’t sound like much, but it means that in your one-year trip through the Bible, you’ll spend 13 days just reading lists of names.

Let’s put that in perspective: There are only 8 books in the Bible (all in the Old Testament) that are longer than that list of names. You’ll spend more time reading lists of names than you will reading Joshua, Judges, or Daniel. You’ll spend more time reading those names than you will reading any single book in the New Testament. — more time than you’ll spend in Luke, Acts, or Romans. In fact, you could read Romans through 3 times and have time left over to read more names.

How to Finish 13 Days’ Reading Instantly

So here’s the secret of those lists: The important people are going to be mentioned again. The in-betweeners are not. So if you simply skip those passages, you literally aren’t missing anything. And you’ve saved yourself 2 weeks of laboring through long lists of names.

Yeah, But Look at All You’re Missing!

A hardcore Bible scholar is going to complain that if you skip the genealogies, you could end up missing the fact that Ruth, a gentile, is an ancestor of David (and therefore Jesus). And that Jesus is a member of the tribe of Judah. And that Methuselah, the longest-living person in the Bible, died in the year that Noah’s flood began.

But then, you just read those facts here, so there you go. Problem solved. Skip the “begats”.

What’s Your Excuse for Not Reading the Bible? #1

This is the first in a series of articles on common excuses for not reading through the Bible.

I spent most of my Christian life studying the Bible as needed to teach a class, preach a sermon, or answer a question. I did some whole-book studies on my own or with friends. But other than a couple failed attempts early on, I never made an effort to read through the Bible cover-to-cover. New Testament? No problem. Genesis and Exodus? Sure. But Leviticus, Job, and all those prophets? Yeah, right. Not happening.

Several years ago I was encouraged by a group of people in our church to set aside time each day to read the Bible, with the goal of getting through the whole thing over the course of a year. In our group, you can choose any plan you want, as long as it gets you through the Bible in a year. Every month, we are encouraged to share what we’ve learned and report our progress. That first year was hard, but I repeated the exercise the following year and have done so since.

Having spent many years coming up with excuses, I thought I’d record them here in case you want to use them. Full disclosure: I will be shooting them down in the end, so don’t get your hopes up.

Excuse #1: The Bible is a long book, and I’m a busy person. I don’t have any time to read it.

Have you ever wondered why Bibles are always printed on that tissue-thin paper? Why the text is so small? They have to do those things in order to get it to fit in your hand. It’s a long book.

The Bible contains 1189 chapters and a total of 31,102 verses. Those verses combine to contain over 750,000 words. That’s the equivalent of about 11-12 average-length novels. It’s longer than the first 5 Harry Potter books, and you know how much you hate to read those!

About 25% of us don’t ever read any books. Another quarter of us read fewer than 4 each year. With the Bible equaling 11-12 books (or 5.2 Harry Potters), no wonder reading the Bible seems daunting to most people.

Figuring out how long it takes to read the Bible depends on your reading speed. A quick Web search turned up different estimates for adult reading speed. Depending on the site you visit, you’ll see:

  • 200-250 words per minute
  • 238 words per minute when reading non-fiction; 260 for fiction
  • 200-300 words per minute
  • 100-200 when reading for comprehension

Last year, we at Laridian decided to determine the average reading speed of adults when reading the Bible. We undertook a study of 1000 individuals to measure their reading speed. We used Old and New Testament sample texts and a modern English translation (the World English Bible). Our research suggests that 98% of people read between 229 and 251 words per minute when reading text from a modern translation of the Bible. At that rate, 98% of us should be able to read the Bible in 8-9 minutes per day.

Curious about your Bible reading speed? Take the test here.

That’s 8-9 minutes I don’t have!

Imagine adding 8-9 minutes to your morning routine. Most of us would have to get up 10 minutes earlier, and that’s just not going to happen! We could carve it out of the 3 hours per day we spend watching TV, but then how would we keep up with the Kardashians? One website says we spend 63 minutes each day eating. Maybe we could skip breakfast. Or dessert.

What I did was add it to the tasks I do each morning in front of my computer. Every morning I visit our church’s prayer list site, check for tech support issues that need my attention, visit Facebook and MeWe, and catch up on the news. It wasn’t a problem to launch PocketBible at the start of that session, do my reading, then continue my day. It was very painless.

Reading through the Bible in six months.

I’m a data-oriented person, so after a while I started timing my morning reading sessions. Turns out I was only taking about 7 minutes to read the passage for that day. So I started doing 2 readings each morning. It generally took less than 15 minutes, which wasn’t much more than the original 8-9 I thought I’d need. Next thing I knew, it was mid-July and I was finishing Revelation!

Everybody is different. Some are going to read slower, and some faster. The point is that a lack of time doesn’t need to be a deterrent. We all have 10 minutes we can spare somewhere. For 98% of us, that’s going to be plenty of time to spend each day to get through the Bible in a year.

Updated King James Version for PocketBible

Title_PageWe’ve just updated the text of the King James Version we use in PocketBible. Whether you’re a devoted reader of the KJV or only have it installed because it came bundled with your copy of PocketBible, you should welcome this move to a more pedigreed version of the text.

Laridian has long been criticized for the perceived lack of attention we’ve paid to our KJV text by those for whom the accuracy of this text is a major issue. The previous version of our text was from an unknown source and contained American spellings and modern replacements for many archaic words. In some cases, these aspects of the text went unnoticed but in others they were very apparent and called into question the quality of the rest of the text.

The most commonly cited problem was our use of the word thoroughly in 2 Timothy 3:17, where the original 1611 KJV uses the archaic word throughly. While it is the case that the word throughly is defined as “thoroughly; completely”, there are some who feel the original word conveys some additional meaning that is lost by the change to thoroughly. This, despite the fact that Vine’s Expository Dictionary says “For THROUGHLY see THOROUGHLY” and even Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary says “For this, thoroughly is now used”.  This is just one example, though arguably the most significant, of about 100 spelling changes between our previous edition of the KJV and our newest release.

A Little History

The Authorized or King James Version of the Bible was the result of a project to revise the text of the Bishops’ Bible, which was the Bible of the Church of England at the turn of the 17th century. In 1604, a committee of fifty-four men were appointed to undertake the revision. Work was delayed until 1607, by which time only forty-seven of the original appointees were available to work on the project. The instructions given to the translators were to alter the text of the Bishops’ Bible as little as possible and to use the text of Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, Whitchurch, or Geneva when those translations agree more closely with the original Hebrew and Greek texts. The editors worked in several teams, each tackling a portion of the books of the Bible. When the work was complete, representatives of each group oversaw a final editorial pass through the text and two men worked closely with the printer to supervise the first printing in 1611.

A number of factors made it impossible for any two early print runs of the KJV to be identical. First, the printing technology at the time required that a single page be created by laying out individual pieces of type (each representing one letter, punctuation mark, or space) to create a form. Once the entire print run for that page was completed, the type was reclaimed to create the next page. By necessity, then, the second and subsequent printings of the Bible had to be re-set from scratch using the original documents or the previous printing as a guide. While errors in the previous printings could be corrected at this time, the resetting of every page made it possibile for new errors to be introduced. In 1725, printers at Cambridge University came up with the idea of making a plaster mould of an entire form, then using this to cast a metal stereotype or cliché from which identical subsequent prints could be made. This helped reduce the errors from constant resetting of the text.

A second source of variation in the text was the lack of a standard English orthography (spelling). Most people in the 16th and 17th centuries experienced reading vicariously — the actors in Shakespeare’s plays repeated his words on stage, and the clergy read the Bible aloud to the congregation. As long as the words could be pronounced in a way the hearer could understand, the spelling of the word on the page was irrelevant. It would be another 150 years before the idea of “standard” spelling and even the concept of a dictionary of the English language would come about. In the meantime, there might be two or more different spellings of the same word within one printing of the Bible (or any book for that matter).

To complicate this further, and because correct spelling simply wasn’t an issue, typesetters would add or remove letters from words to make them fit better on a line of type. This introduced another opportunity for variation.

Even after stereotyping made it possible for one publisher to maintain consistency between printings of the same book, each publisher created their own forms and thereby introduced their own changes into the text. Publishers also felt free to add or remove footnotes, change punctuation, and revise the spelling or word usage for their particular audience.

The result of all of this is that we have literally hundreds of different versions of the King James Version text on bookshelves around the world, created over a period of more than 400 years by dozens of publishers using a variety of printing techniques. Each of these is labelled “King James Version” and none come with a list of how they differ from the printing before them, let alone the original 1611 text.

The Age of Electronic Publishing

In the late 20th century it became possible for anyone with a high-speed scanner and optical character recognition software to create an electronic copy of the King James Version text — and they did. Our previous King James Version text was the product of one such person’s efforts. We don’t know which of hundreds of available versions of the KJV text they used, but we know it had Americanized spellings (honorable for honourablerazor for rasorcounseller for counsellor, etc) and modern proper names (Jeremiah instead of Jeremy or JeremiasNoah instead of NoeIsaiah instead of Esaias, etc.). It also used a number of modern words in place of their archaic counterparts (the previously cited thoroughly in place of throughlyprivately in place of privilyfood in place of meattwo in place of twain, etc.).

Laridian’s Historic Position

Because the KJV has been around for 400 years; because it lived through every significant improvement in publishing since moveable type; and because we could find no two KJV Bibles (especially from different publishers) which agreed with each other, we took the position that there was no “best” KJV text. In every case cited by a customer, we could find an example of a KJV Bible from a major publisher that agreed with our version and another that agreed with them.

Lacking an obvious answer to the question “Which KJV is the KJV?” short of the 1611 text (which nobody reads since it uses “u” for “v”, “j” for “i”, and something like “f” for “long s”, rendering it virtually unreadable), we turned to two authoritative sources. First was Cambridge University, which is the steward of the Crown’s copyright on the King James Version in the United Kingdom. During a conversation over a meal, I asked if they had electronic files for the “official” King James Version — assuming there was such a thing, perhaps in a vault buried deep under London. Had I not been paying for their dinner, I would’ve been laughed out of the room. They repeated much of what I’ve stated above, and added the fact that every publisher over the years has made their own “corrections” and changes to the text, including Cambridge itself. They could offer me no advice other than to use one of their more recent printings (for which they had no electronic files). Since that would carry no more weight of being “the” KJV than the one we already had, that seemed like a waste of time.

I next turned to Dr. Peter Ruckman, perhaps the most well-known authority on the “KJV Only” position. Dr. Ruckman argues not only that the KJV is the only accurate English Bible in existence, but that it supersedes the original Hebrew and Greek texts in any question over interpretation of the Word of God. According to Dr. Ruckman, translations of the Bible should be made from it, not from Hebrew and Greek. I wrote Dr. Ruckman a letter asking for his recommendations for an “official” text of the King James Version that would satisfy the requirements of his most vocal followers for an accurate text. Dr. Ruckman scrawled “IDIOT” over my letter and sent it back to me, with the comment “any Gideon Bible”. I pulled my Gideon Bible off the shelf and found it to be a modern English version, not the KJV at all. Of course, I don’t believe Ruckman was making the case that the Gideons were the Keepers of the Authoritative King James Version Bible Text, but rather that I could literally grab any KJV Bible off the shelf, even the free Gideon Bible I found in a hotel, and use it in our software.

When the appeal to authority failed, we simply settled into distributing the KJV that we had and left it at that.

The Pure/Standard Cambridge Edition

Once or twice a year we are contacted by PocketBible users who have a serious problem with our KJV (usually citing the use of thoroughly in 2 Tim 3:17) and encouraging us to publish “the” KJV (and threatening us if we don’t). None of these users have ever been able to point to a definitive, authoritative source for this text, but recently we were directed to two sources: The Pure Cambridge Edition (PCE) at www.bibleprotector.com and Brandon Staggs’ Common Cambridge Edition at av1611.com. Both of these sites claim to have done extensive research to produce an electronic edition of the text that matches that in use by Cambridge University Press around 1900-1910, down to the last punctuation mark, capital letter, and use of italics.

We downloaded these texts and compared them to each other. They differ in about a dozen places, none of which are anywhere near as significant as the use of thoroughly for throughly in 2 Tim 3:17. After looking at some other similar sources, we settled on a version of the text that draws mostly from the Pure Cambridge Edition except in a couple places where we felt the Common Cambridge Edition was better. (In particular, we hyphenate Elelohe-Israel and Meribah-Kadesh instead of creating the “camel-case” spellings EleloheIsrael and MeribahKadesh used in the PCE, and we chose to leave out the footers THE END OF THE PROPHETS after Malachi 4:6 and THE END after Revelation 22:21.)

It was fairly trivial to convert this text to PocketBible format. The hard part was merging Strong’s numbers into it, but we’ve done that to create an updated version of our King James Version With Strong’s Numbers product as well. This has the additional benefit of bringing these two texts into agreement with each other, as even our own KJV and KJV/Strong’s texts had disagreed in a number of places.

Lessons Learned

We’ve gained a new appreciation not just for the King James Version in this process, but also for the history of the English language and printing technology. The myriad variations on the KJV text had led us to “give up” and settle for what was easy. However, this project created the desire to produce something of historical validity and significance, even if it can’t be said to be “the” KJV.

While we don’t agree with those who argue that the KJV is the only English Bible we should be reading, we do agree that it has historical significance and that we should provide a version of it that meets with the approval of those who put it on a taller pedestal than we do. We believe this edition of the KJV for PocketBible meets that standard.

We’re considering publishing some earlier editions of the KJV just for their historical value. While we don’t find reading the 1611 text to be particularly edifying, we do find it interesting. For example:

“And as Moses lifted vp the serpent in the wildernesse : euen so must the Sonne of man be lifted vp : That whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue eternall life. For God so loued yͤ world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne : that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.”

I’m particularly intrigued by the shorthand rendition of the word “the” in “God so loued yͤ world”. This comes from the Early Middle English spelling of “the”, which was þe (the archaic letter thorn followed by e). When printed in the common black letter or gothic font, thorn looked very similar to y, and printers (especially in France where thorn did not exist in their alphabet) would substitute the letter y. When needed to make the words better fit on a line, the e would be placed above the y as you see here. (Another example is the word thou which was often shortened to yͧ.) It’s easy to imagine how yͤ became “ye” in “Ye Olde Book Shoppe”, and why “Ye” in this context should be pronounced with a “th” sound like “the”.

Anyway, I digress….

You can simply download the KJV from within PocketBible if you’re running PocketBible on a platform that supports that feature, or, if you have PocketBible for Windows Desktop, go to your download account at our site to download a new installation program for the KJV or KJVEC (KJV with Strong’s Numbers).

The Trail of Blood: Following the Christians Down Through the Centuries

Back when I was at Parsons Technology in the late 80’s and 90’s I was attending a Baptist church. Somewhere along the way I picked up a copy of this little booklet — probably at a Jack Hyles or Curtis Hudson revival meeting. The Trail of Blood is a history of the church starting with the church in Jerusalem through the present day (well, through the early 1930’s, which is when it was written). What’s interesting about it is that it lays out ten or twelve distinctive doctrines that the author identifies as characteristic of Bible-believing Christianity and follows those doctrines — not the dominant churches of the day.

Whether you attend a Baptist church, consider yourself basically “baptistic” in doctrine, or are just interested in church history, this is an interesting book. I happened to think of it the other day, contacted the copyright owner, and discovered that it has recently passed into the public domain. So I quickly tagged it for PocketBible.

The Trail of Blood suggests that it was the Catholic church that split from the “true church” and points out that Protestant churches didn’t so much rise out of traditional Christian doctrine but rather Catholic doctrine, and that Catholics and Protestants together persecuted those who held to the doctrines that the author believes Paul and the early church would be most comfortable with.

Admittedly, this is a controversial title. (That’s why we didn’t make it free — so it wouldn’t show up automatically in everyone’s download account.) Obviously by suggesting that Catholics and Protestants are branches of the same, doctrinally flawed stock, he will offend most of Christendom. And contemporary scholars with access to more recent archaeological discoveries and historical documents would challenge his characterizations of some early groups of Christians. But the concept is an interesting one to consider and certainly worth dropping a dollar on to learn more. The historical chart it includes, showing the “trail of blood” through the centuries, is worth at least that much.

If it bothers you, skip it. But I think many of you would find it fascinating. In my case, while I no longer fellowship with a Baptist church, it was very formative of my understanding of the transmission of truth through the centuries.