Studying, really studying the scriptures – not reading, not scripture chasing – has become a passion of mine in the last few years, largely because scholars online ((Julie Smith, Ben Spackman, Kevin Barney, some of the pseudonymous writers at “Faith Promoting Rumor,” David Bokovoy, and a host of more recent scholarly friends on Facebook … and I shouldn’t have started listing names, because certainly I’m overlooking some important ones.)) have taught me a new way of looking at scripture. They look beyond the proof-texting that has so unfortunately been the default during my seminary and Sunday School experience, and point to critical methods that have made the scriptures come alive to me. I devour commentaries and search for dictionaries and other aids, and right now I’m in the midst of a Yale Open Course Introduction to the New Testament.
Without the proper language skills (not just Greek and Hebrew, but also the scholarly English that is often employed in the commentaries), and with no more background than any of us got from seminary, it’s not easy for me. One thing that is easy for me, though, is typing. Boy howdy, can I type. So years ago I began creating my own digital edition of the scriptures, which I described here. I have continued to develop those scriptures (all four books) – this has proven a terrific way to keep track of ideas and facts picked up through study, and my own reflections on the scriptures. It’s a nice record of the growing importance of the scriptures in my life, it helps me study, and it helps me teach.
Now along comes Nate Oman with Thoughts on a Modern English Translation of the Scriptures. I still don’t think we’ll see anything like that in my lifetime, but he makes it seem more plausible than I’ve ever thought before. In a post earlier this year, The Scriptures I Want, I wrote that I would keep the King James Version with all its problems for one reason: “I want my four scriptural books to sound alike – I don’t want a modern English Bible alongside a thee-thou-thy Book of Mormon.” Nate’s post explains why I need my scriptures to work together linguistically, and although I still don’t think there is any possibility of a modern-English translation of the latter-day scriptures in the foreseeable future, Nate gives a clear explanation of how modern English scriptures (all books) could theoretically work in tandem with the archaic KJV and English originals of our latter-day scripture.
But what really excited me was this statement from Julie M. Smith’s comment (no. 3 in the thread):
I am more optimistic about solving this problem than I used to be: when everyone has a smartphone, there is little cost or complication to having an app with one column with the KJV and the other with a modern translation.
Hmmmm … Okay. I like that idea. So, tap-tap-tap (I said I could type, right?), I’ve begun adapting my digital Bible, reformatting it so that the King James Version is in the left column and the New Revised Standard Version is in the right. My notes on each scriptural section still go margin to margin. Here’s a model of how that will look when I have completely incorporated the NRSV into my personal study scriptures (I’ve truncated the notes to be able to illustrate more of the scriptures in double columns, showing how clean the formatting is when you’ve already combined verses into logical paragraphs). This is from John 5:
.
.
It will take me a week or two to get the text fully plugged in, but I’m excited by the possibilities for better understanding the scripture through use of a modern English translation, while still having immediate access to the familiar and shared language of the KJV.
Fascinating! I’m getting back into scripture studying, and right now using paper for reading and taking notes, but this makes digital much, much more appealing.
I’m impressed.
I think you’re right that it’d be hard to update the Bible without modifying the Book of Mormon and D&C. Admittedly minor editing (thee → you) wouldn’t affect meaning but I suspect the brethren are more loath to do that. That difficulty with modifying the Book of Mormon text probably is what’s holding us to the KJV.
That said, I think that moving to the NKJV and then modifying a few words in the D&C/BoM/PoGP with the originals in the footnotes would be fine. Eventually that’ll happen but that might be decades out.
In the meantime, like you, I’d just wish for formatting improvement. Since it’s all electronic on lds.org or the various Android and iOS apps it’d be easy to switch between verse mode, poetry mode and paragraph mode. I hope it happens one day but I’m not holding my breath.
I wish I could expand your screenshot so I could actually read what you’ve got there.
This does sound terrific, and a big step up from what I’m doing these days. My wife and I have been reading the New Testament to try to be prepared for Sunday School, and I’ve got the KJV and another translation (sometimes NRSV, other times the NIV) in parallel columns from biblegateway.com.
I think we’re relatively well-educated, and my study of the law has prepared me for reading complicated texts in archaic language, but it’s remarkable what a difference a modern translation makes. Hebrews actually can begin to make sense on a first reading, instead of a fifth or sixth.
Ardis,
I listened to that Yale Open Course last year and really enjoyed it. I don’t think I immersed myself in it the way you are though. I just listened to it during my commute to and from the office every day.
I just started listening to one of “The Great Courses” available on Audible called “How Jesus Became God” by Bart Ehrman and it is fantastic.
As for the discussion of the format of scriptures, you’re probably aware of Grant Hardy’s “Reader’s Edition” of the Book of Mormon. Ever since I started reading that version I haven’t been able to go back to the standard version.
Oh, yeah! Grant Hardy’s edition is what I used as the basis for “my” Book of Mormon, so far as paragraphing and headings go.
(This is also why I can’t share my edition beyond a few illustrative pages: Grant Hardy and HarperCollins and the Church hold copyrights to all that apparatus.)
There’s no going back.
Ardis, I must confess that I took your advice from several months ago and finally invested in a study Bible. It has certainly helped me get a lot more out of my scripture study (especially Paul; the KJV’s sentence construction in the epistles leaves me baffled). I may now break out my Amazon account and get Grant Hardy’s edition of the Book of Mormon in readiness for next year’s Gospel Doctrine classes.
Nice! There is indeed, no going back.
Nice. I’m way behind on that level of scripture scholarship.
But I have a new variation and challenge for my scripture/language study. I am marking my Welsh Book of Mormon by highlighting favorite passages – when I can find them. My audit of Welsh 101/102 hasn’t gotten me that far and the challenge is increased by the 1852 edition – still the official LDS version – which is written in archaic Elizabethan Biblical Welsh and with no verses. There are chapters but they don’t match the modern English edition chapters. But I am finding a few things to mark such as our 2 Nephi 2:25-
“Syrthiodd Adda fel y boddolai dynion; a bodola dynion fel y gallont gael gorfoledd.”
“fel” has nothing to do with English “to fall.” The only words I knew in there beyond the “y” and “a” were “gael,” a mutated “to have” and the odd, presumably conditional subjunctive forms of “bod” i.e., “to be.”
It gives me much to ponder.
Very cool.
For years I’ve had the dream of producing a Book of Mormon with four columns, with each of the three Japanese translations in the three and English in the other. Recently I’ve thought that a digital format would be a better way of publishing such a beast in this day and age.
Not like I have time to take on such a project… maybe someday.