Why the King James Version remains unsurpassed

    Ward Farnsworth’s magnificent Classical English Rhetoric (Boston: David R. Godine, 2011) introduces the following rhetorical tropes: epizeuxis, epimone, anaphora, epistrophe, symploce, anadiplosis, polyptoton, isocolon, chiasmus, anastrophe, polysyndeton, asyndeton, ellipsis, praeteritio, aposiopesis, metanoia, litotes, erotema, hypophora, and prolepsis. You are familiar with the devices Farnsworth discusses, even if the technical terms he uses are new to you. Farnsworth does not devote attention to other important rhetorical tropes: captatio benevolentiae; euphemisms and dysphemisms; hyperbole; alliteration; the list of rhetorical effects writers use is very long and very wonderful.

    Unfortunately Farnsworth’s introduction to rhetoric has no index – nor is a Kindle or other electronic version available. If an electronic version were available, is there software one could use to generate indices? I digress. I have committed aposiopesis. Should I follow up with metanoia?

    A body of rhetoric is part of what makes a work of literature compelling. All the tropes named above are found in biblical literature; it’s enough to read the Bible in the original languages to notice. Is the body of rhetoric reproduced in translation; if not the body, at least the spirit? Not often enough. In this department, the King James Version (KJV) remains unsurpassed. In the following, I romp through three examples and point out strengths and weaknesses of a number of translations.

    Jeremiah 22:29 reads:

אֶרֶץ אֶרֶץ אָרֶץ         שִׁמְעִי דְּבַר יְהוָה

Land, land, land! / Hear YHWH’s word!

    The translation is my own. KJV goes like this:

O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD.

    Most translations of Jer 22:29 capture the terseness of the Hebrew, and most reproduce the epizeuxis, a threefold consecutive repetition of “land.” One widely used translation does not: CEV - used, I’m told, as the base text for translations into languages which lack a Bible altogether:

Land of Judah, I am the LORD. / Now listen to what I say!

    CEV unpacks, restructures, and “debones” the Hebrew. The epizeuxis is lost in translation. “Functionally equivalent” translations are famous, famous, famous for taking liberties of this kind.

    I will drive a fair distance to go to a Friday night Fish Fry where I can order fish with bones and tail intact. Fish is tastier that way. The flavor, I find, is near the bones and in the tail. I also like to eat slowly and play with my food.

    The world entire may prefer its fish deboned, with skin, head and tail removed, but I want the whole fish and a morsel of bread to go along with it.

    I also don’t want a deboned Bible, like CEV. I want a fish I can hurt myself on, with flavor to savor. Give me a translation that strives to be formally equivalent.

    When Farnsworth turns to the Bible to illustrate English rhetoric, he quotes the King James Version. That’s a no-brainer: KJV is a classic of English literature. KJV tends to be a formally equivalent translation. It preserves therefore a relatively high number of the rhetorical tropes of its source text.

    Farnsworth notes an example of epimone (repetition of entire phrases) in KJV Ezek 33:11.

Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

    The Hebrew of Ezek 33:11 goes like this:

חַי־אָנִי נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה

אִם־אֶחְפֹּץ בְּמוֹת הָרָשָׁע

כִּי אִם־בְּשׁוּב רָשָׁע מִדַּרְכּוֹ וְחָיָה

שׁוּבוּ שׁוּבוּ מִדַּרְכֵיכֶם הָרָעִים

וְלָמָּה תָמוּתוּ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל

On my life – deposition of my Lord YHWH –
I take no pleasure in the death of the guilty,
but in the guilty reversing course, that he may live.
Reverse, reverse your unfortunate ways:
why die, O house of Israel?

My translation is not perfect, but it preserves the epizeuxis of the source text - and more of its repetends, rhythm and structure than NIV Ezek 33:11:

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD,
I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but rather that they turn from their ways and live.
Turn! Turn from your evil ways!
Why will you die, people of Israel?

    The two imperatives, “Turn, turn,” go together according to the received text. The lack of an equivalent in NIV for the second reference to a wicked individual is difficult to explain ("they" in NIV to avoid using a gender-neutral "he": an unnecessary tactic, it seems to me). "House of Israel" is an expression NIV saw fit to eliminate here and elsewhere; it retains "house of David." The family/house metaphor is worth preserving: "house" is very often used in the book of Ezekiel to convey the notion of a mult-generational collectivity. Without "house," NIV Ruth 4:11-12 is particularly unsuccessful. 

    Anaphora is the repetition of the same word(s) at the start of successive syntactic units. It “serves,“ says Farnsworth, “to create a hammering effect, the repeated language is certain to be noticed, likely to be remembered, and readily conveys strong feeling” (p. 16). KJV Exod 15:19 is his first example:

The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.

    Here is the Hebrew and a rough-and-ready translation:

אָמַר אוֹיֵב

אֶרְדֹּף אַשִּׂיג

אֲחַלֵּק שָׁלָל

תִּמְלָאֵמוֹ נַפְשִׁי

אָרִיק חַרְבִּי

תּוֹרִישֵׁמוֹ יָדִי

The enemy said,
I will pursue, I will overtake,
I will divide the spoil.
My throat will fill with them,
my sword will I bare,
my hand will dispossess them.

    The sound orchestration of the Hebrew is rich. Alliteration and morphological parallelisms occur at the front end of the “I will” clauses, and at the back end of the “my” clauses. The hammering effect of which Farnsworth speaks is patent.

    If formal equivalence is a goal set aside, if the goal is to clarify rather than translate the source text, a paraphrase like NLT is the result:

“The enemy boasted, ‘I will chase them
      and catch up with them.
   I will plunder them
      and consume them.
   I will flash my sword;
      my powerful hand will destroy them.’

    NLT fails to reproduce the key morphological and phonological parallelisms of the Hebrew. It is as if the sound and fury and recurrent structures of the original did not contribute to the text’s semantics. But they do. Making matters worse, NLT over-translates here and there: “boasted” for “said”; “powerful hand” for “hand”; through the addition of objects after “chase” and “catch up with.” In these instances, more is less. NLT under-represents other elements in the Vorlage. The immensely physical sequence, “throat / sword / hand,” is lost in translation. The three occurrences of “my” are reduced to two. The stock phrase, “divide spoil,” goes missing.

    I could go on, giving biblical examples of every trope Farnsworth discusses. But you get the point. If you want the read the Bible for all it’s worth, you will want to learn the biblical languages. Failing that, if you are a competent reader of literature, if you know how to savor a carefully constructed text, if you are not afraid to use a dictionary, read one of the classic translations of the Bible – in other tongues, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and Luther’s Bible. In English, for its diction and rhetorical virtue, KJV is unsurpassed.

 

Comments

[Mitchell Powell]

I couldn't agree more. If I have to read the Bible in a (sort of) currently spoken language, the KJV and the Spanish Reina-Valera are the only two that have that kick to them that gets so flattened out in the NIV and its brethren. I mean, siblings.

I need to go learn some German now.

[Brian]

I'm teaching a survey of the Psalms in English (to undergrads) this fall, and your post here has perhaps given me the necessary and remaining confidence needed to do what I had been wanting to do: viz., make them read the Psalms in the KJV (i.e., in a source packet sort of thing).
Part of the reason, admittedly, is that the KJV is in the public domain, so I can just copy/paste it into a document that I can then make into a PDF for everyone as a base text, etc. And I'm planning on changing some of the translations, arranging some lines differently, and replacing some key words in English with Hebrew words in simple transliteration (e.g., torah, sadiq, machseh, etc. etc. etc.).
One of my mentors, the classicist Greg Nagy, does this for undergrads, mutatis mutandis, with the Iliad/Odyssey and other texts, by using the Samuel Butler translation with some things altered and key words in Greek transliteration, etc. I think it works well for him, so what the heck.
So anyway, thanks for your post!

[JohnFH]

Hi Mitchell,

I will take the opportunity to tell you, in order to encourage you, that learning German in a non-German environment is a point of departure, but you will want to follow that up with a year of courses in Germany, Switzerland, or Austria in which you must sink or swim in German.

That was the experience I needed to make German a joy rather than a chore.

[JohnFH]

Hi Brian,

I wish you well on your defense at Harvard in a few days.

Your students at George Fox will benefit from being introduced to KJV English. The structures of KJV poetry have been analyzed by a prosodist from the U of Michigan. I'll dig out the references and send them your way.

[Brian]

Awesome, thanks!

[Mitchell Powell]

Oops. Perhaps I ought to have been more clear. By 'I need to study German now' what I should have said is, 'I suddenly have the urge to go learn some German, as your mention of Luther's Bible, the German volunteers I work with on Saturdays, the German Bibel I have seen a friend of mine reading, the German economists whose work I love, and the constant references I see to German works when reading about biblical issues have all conspired to make me suspect I'm missing out on something.' I did not mean, 'I will stop writing and leave the internet now because I have German work that needs to be done.'

I'm not actually studying German at this point in my life, though I would love to get around to it one day. But thank you for the advice anyhow. It may one day come in handy.

[Lue-Yee Tsang]

»The world entire may prefer its fish deboned, with skin, head and tail removed.«

Not I, Sir, for I am Chinese.

And I’ve been wanting to get Farnsworth. You recommend it, then?

[Lue-Yee Tsang]

»The structures of KJV poetry have been analyzed by a prosodist from the U of Michigan. I’ll dig out the references and send them your way.«

Me too, please!

[JohnFH]

Hi Lue-Yee,

I recommend Farnsworth. It's entertaining.

Richard D. Cureton is the prosodist I have in mind. See his Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse, which contains a wide-ranging overview and application of prosodic theories. A promised synthesis of his life work is eagerly awaited.

Cureton, Richard D. “e.e. Cummings: A Study of the Poetic Use of Deviant Morphology” Poetics Today 1.1-2 (1979) 213-44; The Aesthetic Use of Syntax: Studies on the Syntax of the Poetry of e.e. Cummings (diss.; University of Illinois, 1980); “Poetic Syntax and Aesthetic Form,” Style 14 (1981) 182-215; “e.e. Cummings: A Case Study of Iconic Syntax," Language and Style 14 (1981) 182-215; “Poetry, Grammar, and Epistemology: The Order of Prenominal Modifers in the Poetry of e.e. Cummings,” Language and Style 18 (1985) 64-91; “Rhythm: A Multilevel Analysis,” Style 19 (1985) 64-91; “Traditional Scansion: Myths and Muddles,” Journal of Literary Semantics 15 (1986) 171-208; “Visual Form in e.e. Cummings' No Thanks,” Word & Image 2 (1986) 171-208; “A Definition of Rhythm,” Eidos 3.2 (1986) 7-10; Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse (English Language Series 18; Essex: Longman, 1992); “The Auditory Imagination and the Music of Poetry,” in Literary Stylistic Studies of Modern Poetry (ed. Peter Verdonk; London: Routledge, 1993) 68-86; “Aspects of Verse Study: Linguistic Prosody, Versification, Rhythm, Verse Experience,” Style 4 (1993) 521-29; “Rhythmic Cognition and Linguistic Rhythm,” Journal of Literary Semantics 23 (1994) 220-32; “Rhythm and Verse Study,” Language and Literature 3 (1994) 105-24; “A Response to Derek Attridge: 'Beyond Metrics: Richard Cureton"s Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse',” Poetics Today (1996) 29-50; “Poetry, Language, and Literary Study: The Unfinished Tasks of Stylistics,” Language and Literature 21 (1996) 95-112; “Linguistics, Stylistics, and Poetics,” Language and Literature 22 (1997) 1-43; “A Disciplinary Map for Verse Study,” Versification 1.1 (1997); “Toward a Temporal Theory of Language,” Journal of English Linguistics 25 (1997) 293-303; “Helen Vendler and the Music of Poetry,” Versification 1.1 (1997); “Jakobson Revisited: Poetics, Subjectivity, and Temporality,” Journal of English Linguistics 28 (2000) 354-392; “Schizophrenic Poetics: A Proposed Cure,” Journal of English Linguistics 30 (2002) 91-110; “Temporal Poetics: Rhythmic Process as Truth,” Antioch Review 62 (2004) A Temporal Theory of Poetic Rhythm (forthcoming).

[Gary Simmons]

"In these instances, more is less."

Agreed.

[Theophrastus]

Although I have not seen it yet, I am cautiously optimistic about the new Norton Critical Edition of the English Bible (KJV) forthcoming later this year (ISBN 039397507X and 0393927458). Perhaps you are familiar with the Norton Critical Edition series — it is a standard series of annotated volumes used in literature classes. The editors working on these volumes are top-notch, and the blurbs are impressive at least:

Robert Alter: “The Norton Critical Edition of The English Bible, King James Version, appearing on the four hundredth anniversary of the great translation, is a real gift to the English-reading world, making this classical version freshly accessible. The introductions to the different biblical books are apt and often illuminating; the generous annotation clarifies archaic terms, corrects translation errors, and provides insight into the texts; and the appended critical and historical materials give readers a wealth of relevant contexts for both Old and New Testament.”

Harold Bloom: “Herbert Marks demonstrates in this work that he is now the foremost literary exegete of the King James Bible and of the Hebrew Bible that it translates.”

If the work is up to the standard of the better volumes in the Norton Critical Edition series, I expect this will become the standard secular teaching text on the King James Bible, and because of its explanation of archaic terms and phrases, may prove useful for ordinary readers as well.

(I should mention that additional materials and notes included in the Norton Critical Edition of the Writings of St. Paul [ISBN 0393972801] make it the best secular one-volume guide to the subject, although it uses the TNIV translation of the Epistles and Acts and Elliott’s translations [ISBN 0198261810] of the apocryphal works related to Paul.)

[ZanzibarStreet]

Bullinger's Figures of Speech Used in the Bible: Explained and Illustrated seems to cover the same ground as Farnsworth. In 1014 pages he delivers 200 figures, some with 30 to 40 varieties. For your example of Jer 22:29, Bullinger identifies not only epizeuxis (with a 10 page discussion of AV / KJV, RV, Hebrew, and NT examples,) but also apostrophe to inanimate things, one of four varieties of apostrophe. For Ez 11:33, Bullinger identifies epizeuxis, deasis, or adjuration (an expression of feeling by oath or asseveration), and erotesis, variation 12 - in prohibitions (the asking of questions without waiting for the answer.) And Bullinger has an index, in fact, he has 6 indices, an analytical table of contents, and 5 appendices. Though originally published in 1899, my copy was printed in 1971.

Thanks for the heads-up on Farnsworth.