July 11, 2006

This Post is Old!

The post you are reading is years old and may not represent my current views. I started blogging around the time I first began to study philosophy, age 17. In my view, the point of philosophy is to expose our beliefs to rational scrutiny so we can revise them and get better beliefs that are more likely to be true. That's what I've been up to all these years, and this blog has been part of that process. For my latest thoughts, please see the front page.

The Wall Street Journal on the Influence of the KJV

The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial on the cultural and linguistic influence of the King James Version. It's a very interesting read and a topic I've been writing about for some time now. In addition to the transliterated words that I've looked at on this blog, the author points out some more commonplace words and phrases which have entered the English language through the Tyndale-KJV tradition of Bible translation. His examples include 'clear as crystal,' 'powers that be,' 'root of the matter,' 'arguments,' 'city,' 'conflict,' 'humanity,' 'legacy,' and 'network.' (Yes, I did just say that the word 'network' originates from the KJV - I had to look that one up. It occurs no less than seven times in the KJV Old Testament, and seems to be used to mean something like a lattice.) The article is brief, well-written, and highly recommended.

(HT: Reformation 21)

Posted by Kenny at July 11, 2006 12:05 PM
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Comments

It's fascinating that for such a long period of time, the Anglosphere was philologically dominated by one text. How nice it would be if we were so unified in narrative as we were a century ago by the KJV. Joseph Campbell wrote something along these lines once.

Posted by: John at July 11, 2006 7:24 PM

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