The King James Bible as a ‘Treasure House of English Prose’

Since the individual writings of the Bible were first compiled, it has remained a major source of spiritual inspiration and nourishment for Christians all around the world. It would be a colossal understatement to suggest that the Bible has proven integral for countless people down the centuries. But it seems that the Bible has largely been neglected as a literary text. Yet, the literary beauty of Scripture only reflects and reinforces its divine nature, and its literary and linguistic influence on English is remarkable.

Modern English owes much of its verbiage and idiomatic foundations to the works of Shakespeare and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. Beyond many considering the KJV to be a sacred text, it is also true that the work has introduced a significant amount of cultural influence over the past four centuries.

However, the realization of the brilliance of the KJV Bible has not been limited only to Christians. Atheist Richard Dawkins has suggested that it is important for everyone in the English-speaking world to maintain familiarity with the KJV Bible, as he notes that the work can give the reader a glimpse into our cultural past. A few such phrases that we get from the KJV Bible are “At their wit’s end”; “A thorn in the flesh”; “Eye for an eye”; “Fight the good fight”; “[The love of] money is the root of all evil”; “Turned the world upside down”; “Woe is me”; “Vengeance is mine”; and “White as snow.”

But the KJV Bible has fallen out of favor with younger generations who have resorted to more readable translations, such as the English Standard Version (ESV) and the New International Version (NIV). What these young readers gain in readability, they almost certainly lose in aesthetic beauty and literary brilliance.

As a result, we should strike a balance in the way we approach the KJV. Just as I do not believe that it is the most productive to exclusively read the Bible for the aesthetic elements, it is equally unproductive to read exclusively through a scholarly lens.

But beyond how we approach the Bible and the KJV, there’s the question of whether people are even reading the Bible in the first place. According to Pew Research, just 35 percent of Americans read their Bible at least once a week, whereas 45 percent of Americans seldom read their Bible, if ever.

Unfortunately, this may be part of a larger trend. The prevalence of reading continues to drop across the U.S., and as a result, we should expect appreciation for literature to continue to sink, which won’t be without its consequences.

As I previously wrote...“The best books are reminders that we’re not the only one to have felt the way we do—that we are not alone in the world—and that the questions we have about the world have been asked many times before.

"It’s through reading difficult books that we come away with something far more meaningful and long-lasting than a viral video on social media, namely, the expansion of our solitary existence.”

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2023/05/king-james-bible-treasure-prose/

[TBC: There is a simple shortcut to truth: start with the Bible first and investigate it thoroughly. Why start there? Not just because the Bible claims to be the only inspired Word of the one true God who created us. It also claims that all of the world's religions and their scriptures are false and actually in the service of Satan. The Bible calls Satan "the god of this world" (2 Corinthians:4:4In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
See All...) and thus the author of its religions. So if the Bible is true, we have saved ourselves a lifetime of vain searching through false systems.]

—Dave Hunt [Excerpt taken from Seeking and Finding God (Bend, OR: TBC, 2007) pp 66-67).]