Bible KJV Poetry: John

This is the book of John

About Bible Versions

This new translation-arrangement of the Bible is for the purpose of making the KJV easier to understand and more attractive on the page. It is also designed to make it easier to read for young readers.

By setting the beautiful and profound poetry of the KJV Bible into its own natural lines and verses the meaning and understanding is hopefully enhanced at least for some.

Thus it is an alternative to such wholesale remakes as NIV and other attempts to render the ideas of the Bible into modern English that is more comprehensible and enjoyable.

By breaking the KJV words, phrases and sentences out of their customary prose "verse" format, and placing them into their own poetic lines and stanzas, the KJV is given a new lease on life with added relevance for modern readers.

This reformatting also includes the elimination of verse numbering, and the de-italicization of words added by the translators. In this process some of the italicized words have been eliminated.

Necessarily, this work is a subjective process, but at all times care has been taken to preserve as wholly as possible the entire text of the KJV as translated, such that very very little has been changed in terms of words, but a great deal is changed in terms of formating.

Basically, the prose text has been spread out and broken into smaller sound and meaning bites.

We need to understand that when the Bible was first printed paper was very expensive and so crowding the words into a tight prose format made sense, but we no long have that constriction and can use as much space as we think practicable, especially in this new world of digital publishing.

By using "white space" to slow down the reading pace, greater time can be devoted to understanding and meditating on the content being read, along with encouraging greater appreciation by the reader of the beauty of this natural poetry of the King James Bible, now 400 years old.

This new work is not intended to be a substitute or replacement for the KJV, or any other English translation of which there are now more than 25, praise God.

All of these translations are efforts to glorify the word of God. Of course, some are seen by some as better than others, and we have our own views. In our case, we clearly prefer the KJV, but are aware that it, like all translation, is not perfect.

In the end this is yet another tribute to God’s precious, true and inerrant word, and a salute to all the Godly inspired translators that have come before us, and will come afterwards.

Enjoy!

Commentary on the Bible

The KJV is the best translation available in English. All translations have their shortcomings, but the it has the fewest. There are over 25 translations of the Bible into English, and all have some value and are recommended for study and enlightenment.

Various parts of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew, Ordinary Greek and Aramaic, which was a variation of Hebrew.

Every educated person in Jesus' time used all three languages, plus Latin, in order to fully function in the areas of religion, culture, business, and ordinary family life.

Hebrew was the language of the Old Testament Scriptures. Greek was the language of culture, and commerce that the New Testament was written in, and Latin was the language of government.

Aramaic was a familiar form of Hebrew used among family and friends. Thus, Jesus commonly spoke in Aramaic, which was then translated into Greek when the Apostles set down his teachings in the books of the New Testament.

Later the Roman Catholic Church translated both the Old and New Testaments into Latin [while the Greek Orthodox Church, the Eastern wing of the Church, created their own entirely Greek Bible which they use to this day] and it was standard text for several hundred years in the West until the Reformation which allowed the Bible to be translated into many languages starting with the German of the Lutheran Bible, and the English of the series of Bible that culminated in the majestic King James Version.

Since that time many more English translations, including a Roman Catholic one, have been made in addition to the hundreds of other languages that the Bible is now translated into.

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John