Rivals to the King James Throne

By Richard N. Ostling

A blooming new Bible market offers a confusion of choices

Every day the trucks pull up to the loading docks at Riverside Book and Bible Co., tucked into the cornfields of Iowa Falls, Iowa, and haul away 40 tons of Bibles. Riverside, the nation's biggest Bible wholesaler, enjoyed a 34% jump in sales last year, to $25 million.

It has always been a salesman's maxim that Bibles are a recession-proof product, and, with America's new turn to old-time religion, business is in full boom. Sales run to more than $150 million a year in the U.S. The industry is not only growing but evolving, from a steady but unglamorous trade to a high-pressure one. Verily, the Bible is in the process of becoming the greatest story ever sold.

Today there is a Bible for every taste--or lack thereof. For the Christian who has everything, Oxford Press offers the Washburn College Bible, a dressed-up King James Version with 66 full-color reproductions of masterpieces from Giotto to Rouault and three screen prints by Josef Albers: $3,500 for a red leather-bound three-volume "limited edition" in a cloth-covered redwood case. A scaled-down one-volume slipcased trade version costs a mere $65. (Oxford's cheapest King James is $12.50.) At the opposite end of the cultural scale. Scarf Press and David C. Cook have issued Bibles in comic-strip form. There are also vulgar paraphrases of the New Testament aimed at young "Jesus people," as well as curious "chronological Bibles," which purport to rearrange events in exact "historical" order. Reader 's Digest is at work on a condensed Bible. By 1982 it will cut the Old and New Testaments nearly in half, by trimming out repetitions and wordiness rather than by chopping chapter and verse.

Even apart from such oddities, there is an unprecedented confusion of choices in standard full-length Bibles. Never have so many major new translations been on the market. An era of intense activity will be completed next year with the projected release of the Jewish Publication Society's Holy Scriptures (the Christian's Old Testament). Roman Catholics for the first time have excellent English translations from the original Greek and Hebrew languages: the official New American Bible (1970) and Britain's Jerusalem Bible (1966).

But Protestants buy 80% of the Bibles sold in the U.S., and they are confronted with a series of noisily promoted new translations, each competing in a Bible market dominated for three centuries by the King James Version.

According to a 1978 survey, the average American home has four Bibles, and virtually every home in the nation has oneBible--usually King James. Its continuing popularity is due to familiarity, as well as richness of language. Also, many special study editions of the King James offer useful cross references, indexes, explanatory articles and other "helps." The four most popular: the Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford; cheapest edition $14.95), the Thompson Chain Reference (Kirkbride; $21.95), the Open Bible (Thomas Nelson; $21.95) and the Ryrie Study Bible (Moody; $21.95).

The King James is no longer the single predominant American Bible, though, for a number of reasons. First, it is often confusing, especially for the young. The problem goes well beyond thee and thou or verb forms like loveth. Numerous words have changed meaning over the centuries. In current terms feeble-minded in 1 Thessalonians 5: 14 ("Comfort the feebleminded, support the weak ...") actually means fainthearted. Today King James syntax is hard going for a general public better attuned to thrillers than Shakespeare.

More important, biblical scholars insist the King James is no longer accurate enough. It was translated from relatively late medieval manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek, the best available then, but 20th century research has turned up texts that are as many as 1,000 years closer to the originals. The ending to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6: 13, for instance, beginning with "for thine is the kingdom." is not in the earliest manuscripts.

One way to deal with such criticism is to edit the King James, clipping some oddities of language and correcting notable errors. Several Protestant editions attempt just that:

Revised Standard Version (1952, 50 million sold to date, cheapest hardcover edition $4.50). This translation is sold by many Bible publishers. It keeps close to King James phrasing with modest updating; for example, Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie [instead of "maketh me to lie"] down in green pastures . . . " It has made use of the latest research into sources, and so is highly regarded by scholars. The R.S. V. is a useful text for many purposes and most denominations. But Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, who buy the King James Version in the hundreds of thousands each year, are suspicious of the R.S. V. because many translators with relatively liberal theologies were involved. It was sponsored by the National Council of Churches, also disliked by conservatives. Fundamentalists are at odds with some specific translations, most notably Isaiah 7:14, where "a young woman shall conceive" is used instead of "a virgin shall conceive." Such language, Fundamentalists assert, undermines belief in the virgin birth. A revised Revised, due in the 1980s may prove even less acceptable, not only to Fundamentalists but to other groups because it will eliminate "masculine-biased" language where the text permits. (The forthcoming Psalm 8:4: "What is a human being [not "man"] that you are mindful of him?")

New King James Bible (New Testament only, 1979, Thomas Nelson, $7.95). This version stays close to King James phrasing and drops archaic words. Sales figures are secret, but over 500,000 are in print. To help in promotion, Nelson, the biggest Bible publisher in the U.S. ($40 million in annual sales), signed up conservative stalwarts, including Jerry Falwell, as editors. There will be considerable commercial fanfare when the full Bible comes out next year. But like the old King, the New King is hobbled by its dependence on what even conservative experts agree are outdated manuscript sources.

New American Standard Bible (1971, 14 million sold, $13.95). This update of the King James rigidly follows the original Hebrew and Greek syntax (". . . Then entered in therefore the other disciple also"), and because of this became a surprise bestseller among studious conservatives. But as literature, it is strictly beaverboard, and so does not justify its title as a "standard Bible."

The flaws of the King James and its revisions have inspired a new wave of modern Protestant Bibles that go back to original sources, creating an entirely new translation. Trying to strike a delicate balance between beauty and accuracy, the editors have produced spotty, often controversial results:

New English Bible (1970, Oxford and Cambridge Presses, 12 million sold, $8.95). Originally notable because it was the first British Bible to break completely with the King James tradition, the N.E.B. made some radical changes in an attempt to produce a clear, contemporary-sounding text with literary quality. The editors even shuffled some of the verses. More important, when the meaning of the Hebrew words was obscure, the N.E.B. construed new interpretations based on cognate words in other ancient Semitic languages, which are considered unacceptable by many experts. The results can be bewildering. In the opening of the Song of Solomon, the bride wishes to find her love so that "I may not be left picking lice." In the King James she asks, "Why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?" American audiences sometimes quibble at word choices (felloe, stook, distrain) and find the Englishness of the text disconcerting. For example, St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 16: 8, "I shall remain at Ephesus until Whitsuntide."

The Living Bible (1971, Tyndale House, 25 million sold, $7.95). Kenneth Taylor, former editor of Chicago's Moody Press, began this biblical rewrite because the King James perplexed his children. Taylor knows neither Greek nor Hebrew, but checked his work with experts. The result is a vastly popular, very interpretative, always readable paraphrase. The Living Bible is sometimes pretty breezy ("It was Herod's birthday and he gave a stag party"--Mark 6:21) or shocking ("You son of a bitch!"--Saul to Jonathan in 1 Samuel 20: 30--changed to "You fool!" in recent printings). Scholars, including some of Taylor's fellow Evangelicals, uncharitably accuse the book of "excess," "blatant mistranslation," "deliberate distortion" and "theological bias."

Although it is not exactly the word of God, the Living Bible is useful in helping to convert young people and nonchurchgoing adults to Bible reading.

The Good News Bible, a.k.a. Today's English Version (1976, American Bible Society, 12 million sold, $4). Even the experts do not agree on whether the Good News is a "real" translation or a paraphrase, but generally scholars defend its faithfulness to the original. This Bible's really notable achievements are its simple vocabulary and an attempt at everyday idiom (I Corinthians 13: "I may be able to speak the languages of men and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell"). A better choice than the Living Bible for people who have trouble reading a more traditional version.

New International Version (1978, Zondervan, 3 million sold, $10.95). Last year the N.I.V. rivaled the King James in sales, and it may be the Bible that finally breaks the King James' hold on Evangelical and Fundamentalist Bible buyers. This edition came about as a direct result of right-wing dissatisfaction with the Revised Standard Version. One hundred conservative scholars were assembled for the job; naturally they quickly restored the "virgin" to Isaiah 7:14 and followed other orthodox readings. But this is no biased Bible and is respected for its accuracy. For instance, it clearly indicates that the last verses of the Gospel of Mark, which report Jesus' appearances to various disciples after the Resurrection, are later additions. These verses are not found in the two most reliable early manuscripts. The N.I. V. and the rival R.S. V. are the two best all-purpose successors to the King James for American Protestants.

The proliferation of new Bibles is a mixed blessing. The English-speaking world has lost a resounding common text that shored up faith and lived hi the memory of millions. The new texts, however, represent attempts to live with change and challenge readers to ponder anew the spirit and the message of Scripture. --By Richard N. Ostling.

Reported by Steven Holmes/Chicago and other domestic bureaus

With reporting by Steven Holmes/Chicago

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