Bibles and Plowboys

A friend of mine, Pastor Nathan Deatrick, recently published an article calling for major updates to the King James Version of the Bible.[1] Nathan’s arguments are not new, but they have been gaining ground within my own circle of friends over the past few years. Since I’ve had opportunity to study and discuss these arguments on many occasions, I decided to write a response detailing some of the problems I see in Nathan’s position.

1. The Plowboy 

Nathan began his article with an appeal to a famous quotation attributed to William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the first printed English translation of the New Testament, and he was martyred for daring to do so in defiance of the Pope. When John Foxe published his famous Book of Martyrs, he devoted a significant portion to the life of William Tyndale. Foxe tells us Tyndale was once confronted by someone who claimed it would be better to be without God’s Word than to be without the word of the Pope, and Foxe records Tyndale as replying,
 
If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough, shall know more of the scriptures than thou dost.[2]
 
These words have inspired many like Nathan to conclude the Bible should be translated in such a fashion that even an uneducated plowboy can read it and understand it, but is that really what we should conclude from this famous declaration?
 
To begin with, we don’t actually know for sure if Tyndale ever uttered the line about the plowboy that was attributed to him in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. There is much praise for Foxe as a historical writer, but there is much criticism too. He was not above embellishing his stories with fictional anecdotes in his zeal for mocking the Catholic church. Whether that was the case with Tyndale’s famous quip there is no way to tell, but we do have another statement directly from Tyndale himself that can be found in his work “A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture.”
 
In order that you not be deceived by any man, I believed it very necessary to prepare this Pathway into the scripture for you. I do it so that you might . . . well understand what these words mean: the Old Testament, the New Testament, the law, the gospel, Moses, Christ, nature, grace, working, believing, deeds and faith.[3]
 
After translating the New Testament into English, Tyndale found it necessary to publish a short list of definitions to explain crucial terms used in his translation of the Bible. He did not translate the Bible into words that every individual could understand clearly on his own. Tyndale recognized that accuracy of translation would require the use of terminology that was foreign to his intended audience, and he chose to educate the audience rather than to use simpler language in the translation.
 
Tyndale included similar lists of definitions in the prologues to his 1525 and 1534 editions of the New Testament, and in the prologue to the 1526 edition, Tyndale instructed his readers to
 
Mark the plain and manifest places of the Scriptures, and in doubtful places see thou add no interpretation contrary to them; but (as Paul saith) let all be conformable and agreeing to the faith.[4]
 
And a bit further in the same place, Tyndale expressed his desire to eventually
 
[S]eek in certain places more proper English, and with a table to expound the words which are not commonly used and shew how the Scripture useth many words which are otherwise understood of the common people, and to help with a declaration where one tongue taketh not another; and will endeavor ourselves, as it were, to seeth it better, and to make it more apt for the weak stomachs; desiring them that are learned and able, to remember their duty, and to help thereunto, and to bestow unto the edifying of Christ’s body (which is the congregation of them that believe) those gifts which they have received of God for the same purpose.[5]
 
Tyndale recognized that some of his translation choices would need to be improved, but he clearly did not share our modern concept that the Bible should be translated in words every commoner could understand. His translation intentionally included words that were “otherwise understood” by the common people. In other words, he included words that meant something different in the context of the Scriptures than those same words meant in the common speech of England. Tyndale did not suggest we use less accurate but more easily understood English words in these passages. What he said instead is that we should fulfil our duty to edify those who struggle with these words by providing dictionaries and lessons to educate people on the proper sense of the words in the Bible.
 
We can see this explained again in the prologue to Tyndale’s 1534 edition of the New Testament where Tyndale cautioned against running too far from the text in our efforts to make the Bible easier to understand.
 
If I shall perceive either by myself or by the information of other, that ought be escaped me, or might be more plainly translated, I will shortly after, cause it to be mended. Howbeit in many places, me thinketh it better to put a declaration in the margin, than to run too far from the text and in many places, where the text seemeth at the first chop hard to be understood, yet the circumstances before and after, and often reading together, maketh it plain enough etc.[6]
 
Nathan said of Tyndale that “his heart yearned to translate the Bible into such a simple vernacular that the plowboy of England could read and understand the very words of the living God. My plea is that Tyndale’s passion would ignite my generation to such a degree that the plowboy of today can have God’s Word in the English of his day.”
 
It is true that Tyndale yearned to translate the Bible into the English language. That much is indisputable. But the idea that Tyndale wanted the Bible to be translated into a simplistic form of English is not found anywhere in his writings. In fact, we find the contrary to be well established.
 
It should be remembered that the plowboys of Tyndale’s day were most likely illiterate. They couldn’t read an English translation any better than they could read the original Hebrew or Greek. The benefit of Tyndale’s translation was not that the plowboy was immediately able to read it and understand it, but rather that he could be taught to read and understand the Bible without first having to complete the insurmountable task of learning Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. The plowboy needed only to learn how to read English and then increase his knowledge of the vocabulary of his own language to understand the Bible. That was the goal Tyndale had in mind when he set out to translate the Bible into English.
 
The goal of Tyndale’s translation is readily attainable in America today with the KJV. Any English-speaking American can read and understand the KJV without first having to complete the likely insurmountable task of learning Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Any American of our day need only learn how to read English and then increase his knowledge of the vocabulary of his own language to understand the KJV.
 
Tyndale’s decision to educate the reader rather than simplify the translation follows the example we find in Scripture. Every time the Bible mentions or alludes to people failing to understand the words of Scripture, the solution God provides is to send someone with an explanation to teach the people. An excellent example of this can be seen in Philip’s engagement with the Ethiopian eunuch as recorded in Acts 8.

The Ethiopian eunuch was confused because of the ambiguity of the pronouns in Isaiah 53. God could have told Philip to write a new translation with less ambiguity, but that’s not what He did. Instead, He had Philip provide personal instruction for the eunuch, and that instruction was sufficient for the eunuch to understand and accept Christ. This is the pattern found in Scripture. When someone desires to understand the Bible, God sends someone else to provide an explanation (Lev. 10:11, Deut. 33:10, II Chron. 17:9, Neh. 8:7-8, Prov. 4:13, Prov. 8:33, Prov. 13:1, Eccles. 12:9, Dan. 11:33, Mal. 2:7, Rom. 10:14, II Tim. 2:25, Titus 1:3). To put it in biblical terminology, God uses the “foolishness of preaching” to help people understand His Word (I Cor. 1:21).
 
There is no Scriptural support for the claim that a translation must be easily understood. Readability is certainly an important part of translation, but the primary goal of the translator is to be accurate, and he is always to choose accuracy above comprehension. When accuracy of translation makes the text difficult to understand, we can rest in the fact that God has already provided a mechanism for overcoming that difficulty by commanding us to edify one another (I Thess. 5:11).
 
2. The Translators 

A frequent strategy employed by men who share Nathan’s position is to claim that the KJV translators would have approved of periodically simplifying the KJV to ensure it would never be too difficult for the average reader to understand. Those who share this perspective are fond of quoting part of the preface to the KJV where the translators said
 
But how shall men meditate in that, which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? as it is written, “Except I know the power of the voice, I shall be to him that speaketh, a Barbarian, and he that speaketh, shall be a Barbarian to me.” [1 Cor 14][7]
 
There is a growing trend among Christian leaders to quote this part of the preface and then claim like Nathan did in his article that “Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:9–11 argued for words ‘easy to be understood’ so that meaning and ultimately life-changing edification could be experienced.”

The error in this application of I Corinthians 14 is easy to see if we just ask ourselves, “What were the unintelligible words Paul spoke of in I Corinthians 14? Were they Greek words the congregants had difficulty understanding or were they words spoken in a different language altogether?” The answer is simple. The unintelligible words Paul condemned in I Corinthians 14 were words spoken in a foreign language that no one in the church could understand. Paul was not saying that the words spoken in the church must all be on a level everyone present can understand. He was simply saying that there is no point in speaking in a language no one present can comprehend.
 
That is how the translators viewed this passage as well, and we can see this when we consider what they wrote after the section quoted above.
 
The Apostle excepteth no tongue; not Hebrew the ancientest, not Greek the most copious, not Latin the finest. Nature taught a natural man to confess, that all of us in those tongues which we do not understand, are plainly deaf; we may turn the deaf ear unto them. The Scythian counted the Athenian, whom he did not understand, barbarous; so the Roman did the Syrian, and the Jew (even S. Jerome himself called the Hebrew tongue barbarous, belike because it was strange to so many) so the Emperor of Constantinople calleth the Latin tongue, barbarous, though Pope Nicolas do storm at it: so the Jews long before Christ called all other nations, Lognazim, which is little better than barbarous. Therefore as one complaineth, that always in the Senate of Rome, there was one or other that called for an interpreter: so lest the Church be driven to the like exigent, it is necessary to have translations in a readiness.[8]
 
When we read the full context, it is clear the translators did not say the Bible should be translated with words every reader can easily comprehend. They used I Corinthians 14 to argue that the Bible should be available in more languages than just Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. This is a proper application of the principle found in I Corinthians 14. If the Bible were limited to just Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, then the majority of the people on the earth would be incapable of learning from it. The translators argued for the validity of translating the Bible from one language into another, not for the necessity of using simple words.
 
3. The Difficult Words 

To illustrate his claim that the KJV is too difficult for modern readers to comprehend, Nathan provided a few sample definitions for words in the KJV that he views as archaic, but it is obvious he was able to learn what these words mean without any difficulty. I would contend that his definitions could be improved with further study, but there has never been a time in the history of the English language when it was easier for someone to learn the proper definition of a word than it is today. Today’s “plowboy” can just speak into his phone and ask it, “What does [word or phrase] mean in the KJV?”
 
For example, if we were to ask ChatGPT, “What does ‘prevent’ mean in the KJV?” we would get this result back:

ChatGPT even quotes the same verse that those holding Nathan’s view like to quote as an example of how difficult this word is for modern readers to understand.
 
According to Nathan, there are hundreds of archaic words in the KJV that modern readers are incapable of understanding. I’ve heard this claim many times, and I’ve noticed that most of the people making this claim are not widely read enough to know how common a given word may be in modern American literature. As for myself, having read more than ten thousand books, I think I may have a slightly better-than-average grasp of the state of American literature. I have found that most of the words Nathan and others of his persuasion identify as archaic are still used quite often in modern American literature.
 
For example, the word besom that Nathan includes in his list had almost disappeared from American literature by the end of the twentieth century, but it has been brought back into popularity with the rise of paganism in our country. As more and more young Americans flee the lifeless form of Christianity found in many of our churches, they are turning to witchcraft to fill the void in their souls. This has produced a flurry of books, articles, and social media posts discussing the talismans of paganism, and the word besom has been resurrected as the preferred descriptor of a witch’s broom.
 
Another example can be seen in the word spoil that is often criticized as a “false friend,” that is, a word which means something significantly different today than it meant when the KJV was translated. It is claimed that modern readers have difficulty realizing that this word refers to taking plunder instead of to food going bad (which is a derivative of the plunder definition, by the way). However, the use of spoil in the sense of plunder has increased dramatically in American literature over the past forty years, and the phrase spoils of war is printed more frequently today than at any other time in the past two hundred years.

Yet another example can be found in the word compass. This word is used thirty-nine times in the KJV to describe a circle or a circuit, and those calling for a more simplified version claim that modern readers can’t understand these verses because they think the word compass only refers to the navigational tool by that name. Contrary to what these men claim, however, the primary definition of the word compass in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is “boundary, circumference.” This is followed by the second definition of “a curved or roundabout course,” and it is not until the third definition that the dictionary mentions the navigational tool. Those seeking to understand the word compass in the KJV need only search for it on Google to find the Merriam-Webster listing, and when they do, they’ll find that the second definition actually quotes the KJV as an example.

To borrow Nathan’s terminology, “on and on I could go.” The claim that the KJV contains hundreds of archaic words is completely unfounded. These words may sound archaic to many people, and some of them may even be labeled as such by one dictionary or another, but the majority of them are very much alive and well in modern American literature.
 
It should be pointed out that the popularity of any given word will both rise and fall over time. Many times, a word like besom will dwindle into near obscurity only to be revitalized and brought back into use through the influence of a popular book, movie, song, or even movement. This doesn’t just happen with words in the Bible. It is something that happens with all the words in a language. Tolkien, for example, restored many older words to popularity through his books including words like fell, warg, orc, weald, bane, gaffer, and many more. He also restored the older senses of words like barrow and march. As Tolkien’s influence on literature waned, some of these words resumed their drift toward obscurity, but Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings brought them all rushing back to the foreground once again. The popularity of particular words within a culture will always be in flux. There is a constant ebb and flow to a culture’s vocabulary, and full capitulation to Nathan’s position would require us to produce a new translation every few years to conform to the collective idiolect of the culture.
 
4. The Guiding Principle 

Nathan claimed in his article that “consistency with our principles necessitates that we be willing to accept updates to the KJV—such as are already available—and that we admit that the very arguments that are often used to ‘disqualify’ these modern, TR-based updates (such as the NKJV, MEV, KJV21, KJVER and SKJV) could have been leveled against the KJV itself.”
 
For my part, the principle that a translation should prioritize accuracy over readability prevents me from accepting any of the modern versions Nathan listed. To give a practical example, the KJV is the only translation currently in print with a distinction between the singular and plural forms of the second person pronouns e.g., thee, thou, and thy vs. ye, you, and your. This is an important distinction inherent in the original Greek and Hebrew texts but absent in almost all modern translations. The KJV translators recognized the absence of this distinction in the standard English grammar of their day, so they resurrected the term thou and its variants to supply the English language with a means of preserving this aspect of the text.
 
None of the versions in Nathan’s list accurately preserve this important distinction between the singular and plural forms of the second person pronouns. The KJVER comes the closest, and if the KJV were no longer available, that is likely the version I would use. If Nathan were advocating just for the types of updates found in the KJVER, I would have very little to object to.

The KJVER uses the same form of you for both the singular and plural second person pronouns, but they chose to add a superscript p to the plural form. I don’t like the use of superscripts to indicate the plural because the distinction can be lost when the verses are spoken, handwritten, or copied from one app to another. Superscripts have traditionally been viewed as extraneous content, and their use to distinguish the plural forms of you will be easily overlooked by most readers. If the KJVER were to replace the KJV, I doubt that the superscripts would last more than a single generation. It would be far better to keep the unmistakable distinction made in the KJV.
 
Additionally, I think the KJVER is incorrect to use the phrase illegitimate child in place of bastard. When an accurate word-for-word translation is available, it should be used instead of using two words which increases the possibility for error or mistake. Plus, the only justification for this change is that the word bastard is considered offensive, but the term illegitimate child is also becoming offensive now, so the editors would need to change to yet another term before too much longer.
 
Had the KJVER editors limited themselves to just updating things like verb endings, I would not have any objection to it. I would still have bemoaned the loss of the poetic rhythm of the KJV, but that’s just an insignificant literary consideration. I would even be okay if they chose to change “thou art” to “thou are.” I would see such a construction as an ugly and ungainly mess, but I would have no argument against it on the grounds of accuracy.
 
I say all of this to demonstrate that I am not opposed to taking the principles that led me to accept the KJV and using them consistently to evaluate the modern translations of the Textus Receptus. I have actually done what Nathan pleads for us to do, and I have come to the conclusion that the KJV is superior to the other translations in his list. It is far more accurate than any of them while at the same time its construction adheres to a balance and symmetry unsurpassed by any of the modern alternatives.

Further Reading:
Which Bible Did God Write?  The Biblical Case for Inerrancy as a Test of Textual Critcism
Some Thoughts on the Book Authorized by Mark Ward

Notes:
[1] “My Plea for the Plowboy,” Nathan Dietrick, written October 6, 2024, https://pleadingfortheplowboy.com/.

[2] John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes (London: John Day, 1563), 570.

[3] “A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture,” William Tyndale, accessed October 9, 2024, https://newmatthewbible.org/pathway.html.

[4] “Colophon to the Octavo edition of 1527,” Prologues to the New Testament, accessed October 9, 2024,  https://faithofgod.net/TyNT/Prologue.htm#wmoctavo.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “W. T. unto the Reader. (1534),” Prologues to the New Testament, accessed October 9, 2024, https://faithofgod.net/TyNT/Prologue.htm#1534.

[7] “Translation Necessary,” The Translators to the Reader, Bible Research, accessed October 9, 2024, https://www.bible-researcher.com/kjvpref.html.

[8] Ibid.