A Defense of Thee and You in the King James Bible
Recently, I heard a very well-put-together and intriguing argument against the King James Bible. This argument had to do with the thees and thous. Typically, when a King James onlyist hears an argument regarding thees and thous, it comes from the standpoint that says, “The King James is too hard to understand; it is too outdated.” However, this attack I heard had nothing to do with readability, but instead with formality/familiarity.
In 16-17th century England, the word “thee” was used for people you were close to or were of a lower class than you. Similarly, “you” was used for those whom you were not close with or someone of a higher status. Around this time, and much like today, “you” could be either singular or plural.
This argument was about the King James Bible and its use of thee and thou as second-person pronouns. The argument hinged on this idea: If the KJV uses words with a sense of formality/familiarity, then they would be adding to the Bible by adding “formality” and “familiarity” to the text. This is a logical way to look at this, I believe. However, we must make sure this is true. In this paper, I want to give just a couple of reasons why I do not believe this argument disproves the King James only position.
First, the King James Bible continued in the style of previous English Bibles. The Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew’s, Taverner's, Great, Geneva, Bishops’, and Douay-Rheims Bibles all use the same form of English that the King James Bible used. If you were to say that the King James Bible is wrong for using thee, thou, ye, etc., then you would have to say that Tyndale, John Rogers (Matthew's Bible), and the translators of the Geneva Bible were all wrong in choosing to “use formal and familiar language.”
The Bishops’ Bible also used thees and thous. Here is John 3:7 from both the Bishops’ and the King James.
“Maruayle not thou that I sayde to thee, ye must be borne agayne.” (John 3:7, Bishops’ Bible)
“Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7, KJV)
This is important to our understanding of why the King James Bible uses the language it does. It’s important because the King James translators were revising the Bishops’ Bible to create the King James Bible. The first instruction in the 15 Instructions to the Translators was that the Bishops’ Bible was to be followed.
“The ordinary Bible read in the Church, commonly called the Bishops' Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the original will permit.”¹
On top of this, we have one of the 40 Bishops’ Bibles used by the translators. This is called the Bodleian Bishops’ Bible. As the name suggests, it is found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. So we know that the translators followed this rule. The King James Bible was a revision of the Bishops’ Bible and thus uses the same language (thee, thou, ye, you, etc.) as it.
The Tyndale translation, which contained the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, agrees with the King James ~84% for the New Testament, and ~76% for the Old Testament where Tyndale had translated.² So the King James, while being a new translation, gets many of its words from—and uses the same form of English as—the Tyndale.
Now, some of the earlier translations, such as the Tyndale, were created during a time when this formality system was still in common use, you would think that for being such learned men, they would think of using “you” only, thus eliminating the whole concept of formality and familiarity, yet they don’t. They continue using “thee” and “thou” along with “you.” So why would they (as well as the King James Bible translators) use those familiar/formal second-person pronouns?
This leads us to our next point. The King James used “thee” and “you” not because they were trying to add formality/familiarity to the Bible, but because they wanted to accurately translate the underlying Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. “How?” you might ask. Like those before them, the King James Bible translators used this language very interestingly. Instead of following the typical formality system, they used the language to differentiate singular and plural second-person pronouns. It is easy to remember: If you see a second-person pronoun, and it starts with a T, it is singular, but if it starts with a Y, it is plural.
The argument that the KJV added formality to the Bible rests upon the presupposition that the King James Bible followed the formality/familiar system rather than making a singular/plural distinction. This is what we will be focusing on next. How do we know—or do we know—that the King James Bible used different words for plural and singular?
Many biblical scholars accept the idea that the King James Bible creates a distinction between singular and plural—no one hardly says otherwise. While this cannot be taken as the end-all factor—as it would be an ad populum—I think it’s worthy of mention. Mark Ward's King James Bible Study Project website states:
"Countless defenders of the King James have pointed out—correctly—that the second-person pronouns in it are more accurate than contemporary English pronouns. The KJV distinguishes singular (thee, thy, thine) from plural (ye, you, your) whereas contemporary English has only one pronoun (you, your) that must do double duty; context must indicate if a given instance is singular or plural.”³
Mark Ward is not a KJV advocate (he prefers the Critical Text over the Textus Receptus), yet he even admits through his website that the King James used Elizabethan pronouns to make a distinction. He even goes as far as to say that KJV defenders “correctly” state this.
Another such scholar is Windell Gann. Gann states this about the King James Bible’s use of the various second-person pronouns:
“In English one cannot tell if "you" is singular or plural (a weakness of many modern translations, one of which puts a footnote on nearly every "you" to tell if it is singular or plural). But the KJV makes the distinction by the use of "thou - ye." Again, many people think of it as archaic style and fail to note the reason and the superiority of such usage. But in the KJV "thou and thee" are second person singular, while "ye and you" are reserved for the plural.”⁴
We have heard what scholars have said, but we should look at the biblical texts themselves and see how the King James Bible translates the different words.
While these are the most popular, they are not the only words the King James translated with second-person pronouns. For example, the Gospel according to Matthew says:
The Greek word underlying the phrase “thou hast hid” is απέκρυψας (apekrupsas). This word is an aorist active indicative second-person singular, thus the King James Bible puts “thou hast hid” instead of “you have hid” or similar. When we look at the Greek and Hebrew, we see that the King James translators translated the Bible in such a way that there was a plural and singular distinction.
It is also worth noting that the word “ye” was used as “both [an] informal second-person plural and formal honorific”.⁵ Because אַתֶּם (attem) and ὑμᾶς (hymas) both are translated as “ye,” as well as “you,” but never “thou” or “thee,” I believe this would solidify the idea that the King James Bible translators used “you” exclusively to maintain the singular/plural distinction—not to add to the Bible. John S. Kenyon states the following:
Why did the translators do this when “thee” already had a familiarity system behind it? Well, because they cared more about an accurate translation than about “following the rules.” Especially when those rules were from previous generations. The King James translators were not being anachronistic. They were following the tradition of English Bibles while utilizing pronouns familiar to the people and using them to distinguish between plural and singular second-person pronouns—all in a pursuit to make “one more exact Translation.”
“¶ At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (Matthew 11:25)
The Greek word underlying the phrase “thou hast hid” is απέκρυψας (apekrupsas). This word is an aorist active indicative second-person singular, thus the King James Bible puts “thou hast hid” instead of “you have hid” or similar. When we look at the Greek and Hebrew, we see that the King James translators translated the Bible in such a way that there was a plural and singular distinction.
It is also worth noting that the word “ye” was used as “both [an] informal second-person plural and formal honorific”.⁵ Because אַתֶּם (attem) and ὑμᾶς (hymas) both are translated as “ye,” as well as “you,” but never “thou” or “thee,” I believe this would solidify the idea that the King James Bible translators used “you” exclusively to maintain the singular/plural distinction—not to add to the Bible. John S. Kenyon states the following:
“Such instances abound, but so far as English is concerned ye and you are always plural; for the pronouns invariably correspond in number with the original.”⁶
Why did the translators do this when “thee” already had a familiarity system behind it? Well, because they cared more about an accurate translation than about “following the rules.” Especially when those rules were from previous generations. The King James translators were not being anachronistic. They were following the tradition of English Bibles while utilizing pronouns familiar to the people and using them to distinguish between plural and singular second-person pronouns—all in a pursuit to make “one more exact Translation.”
Sources:
1. "Instructions to the Translators." The Kings Bible, thekingsbible.com/Library/InstructionsToTranslators. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.2. Nielson, Jon, and Royal Skousen. “How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale’s?” Reformation, vol. 3, no. 1, Informa UK Limited, Jan. 1998, pp. 49–74, https://doi.org10.1179/ref_1998_3_1_004.
3. King James Bible Study Project, kjbstudyproject.com/. Accessed 18 Apr. 2024.
4. Gann, Windell H. "The King James Version: A Study of A Scholarly Translation." Internet Archive, web.archive.org/web/20060213145744/http://www.rogersvillecoc.org/sermons/kjv_translation.pdf. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
5. "Ye (Pronoun)." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Jan. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun). Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.
6. Kenyon, John S. “Ye and You in the King James Version:” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 29.3 (1914): 453–471. Web.
Comments
Post a Comment