[sword-devel] KJV2006 Project

[Darald Bantel]

As this has become a personal opinion piece I will weigh in!


On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 18:44 +0100, Kristian Due wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Just wanted to add two more reasons (in addition to  Chris' good point 
> of hyperothodoxy) why you should not capitalize the pronouns in KJV. You 
> are probably aware of them anyway, but I think them a little funny, so 
> they deserve to be mentioned.
> 
>     1) The singular pronouns (e.g. thou/thee) in middle-english are 
> always used in non-formal settings, and for formal settings the plural 
> forms you (and ye) were used. The funny thing here is the semantic shift 
> because the middle english *informal* pronouns have become the modern 
> english *formal* pronouns, and vice versa!
>     2) If the translators of KJV had wanted to revere God by pronouns, 
> they certainly would have used the formal ones. The informal pronouns 
> probably reflect a theological consideration - a God we are allowed to 
> call abba/daddy certainly does not demand reverence through capitalized 
> pronouns.

Right in one - God does not demand reverence and He does encourage me to
think of Him as a beloved Father but (a very important but) albeit
though He (in His Son) walks beside me He is still also pure holiness
and as such I offer Him reverence. If I wish to do such that does not
detract from what you do - rather it is my decision - as such would it
not be nice to give the user the option rather than ranting in one's own
opinion?

Darald

Post scriptum  If you found the foregoing hard to read - sorry but this
is the way I prefer to write about my God.
D

> 
> When the pronouns in KJV are capitalized, it is because of a severe 
> semantic misunderstanding (which is a little funny...) and, as I would 
> argue, a severe theological misunderstanding.
> 
> I am aware that perhaps someone would feel that the second argument here 
> is disputable, and I know this is not a theological mailinglist, but I 
> hope these points may be of interest! For of course - the main point 
> should be to give the KJV text as it was originally printed, no matter 
> how the translators use pronouns.
> 
> My best wishes for KJV 2006
> 
> Kristian Due
> 
> 
> 
> Chris Little wrote:
> 
> > Please don't change this. Pronouns referring to God in the KJV use 
> > lowercase. They did in the 1611. They did in the 1769. Anything that 
> > deviates from this is edited.
> >
> > The whole practice of capitalizing pronouns referring to God is a 
> > stupid modern attempt at hyper-orthodoxy. Very simply put: pronouns 
> > are never capitalized in modern English unless they come at the start 
> > of a sentence or are title-cased. And the irony is that the same 
> > people who would WANT to modify a text to capitalize such pronouns are 
> > likely often also people who would decry similar modification of a 
> > text to be gender neutral where source texts/other translations use 
> > masculine.
> >
> > It's a silly, bad, evil, yucky, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad practice.
> >
> > --Chris
> >
> >
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