KJV and language

[Sojourner]

Would there be anything wrong with, when reading Scripture to a group, to use "you and your" in place of "thee and thou" , or by pronouncing words that end with "eth" without the "eth"? Basically, keeping the wording of the KJB, but using 21st century pronounciations.
Just curious about the response...

bobbyd

[Brother Ben]

I am far from a scholar in Greek, Hebrew, and ancient languages, but I think the thee thou issue has something to do with different tenses. I believe the Greek language, for example, has a more complex system to tenses, i.e., past, present, etc. In like manner the issue of pronouns is deeper than our Americanized version of English. There are times when the you's and your's of our modern English does not properly portray the emphasis of the thee's, thou's and thine's. I have included an article by Henry Morris on this topic, I hope it sheds better light than I tried to do.

Ben

Those Thee's and Thou's
by Henry M. Morris

"And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth; and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do." Exodus 4:15

These words of God, spoken to Moses concerning the mission he and his brother Aaron were to undertake at Pharaoh's palace are one of numerous examples in Scripture where the King James translation uses several different forms of the second-person pronoun. In this one verse, we see the words "thou," "thy," "you," and "ye," all fulfilling this function. Most modern translations would translate this sentence. "You shall speak to him . . . and I will be with your mouth . . . and will teach you what you shall do." Why would the King James translators use four different forms of the pronoun when only "you" and "your" are used in modern versions?

The fact is that the Elizabethan-age English was able to make much finer distinctions than modern English. That is, "thou," "thee," "thy," and "thine," were used for the second person singular, whereas "ye," "you," "your," and "yours" were the corresponding words for the plural. Different words also were used for subject, object and possessive modifiers, as is still true for first and third-person pronouns.

In our text, God was telling Moses that He (Moses) was to speak to Aaron, and that He (God) would teach both of them, not just Moses, what they were to do. This distinction is clear in the King James English, but not in modern English. This is one of the numerous examples where such fine points in the King James language are lost in modern translations.

In the Lord's Prayer, for example, "Yours is the kingdom" could suggest that many will possess the kingdom, where "thine is the kingdom" clearly recognizes one God alone. Clear words are important for clear meanings, and Jesus said, "My words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35).

Another good article
www.crossspot.net/ldprophet/Nasty-Thees-Thous.htm

[Sojourner]

In Greek the grammer is far more structured and at times a lot more complex than English or Hebrew. As for the use of pronouns, in Greek there are 2 versions: Relative and Personal, 1st and 2nd declensions and singular or plural. Personal are the "I, you" types, and Relative are "this, that" variety. Both are based on the rules for noun endings. So you have nomintive (I, you, we), genitive (my, your), dative (to me, to you) and accusative (me, you, us).

Hebrew is a lot less structured with masculine or feminine, plural or feminine.

Here are some examples and how they would be translated in the KJB:

The Hebrew Pronouns:
Thee: levath-ak (with thee)
Used 1 time in the Hebrew scriptures.
Never used to address deity

ayin (in thine eyes)
Used 17 times in the Hebrew scriptures.
Used to refer to God once and the other 16 times to men.

panim (thy face)
Used 6 times in the Hebrew scriptures.
Never used to address deity

Thou: ant (thou, thyself)
Occurs 14 times in the Hebrew scriptures
(translated 13 times as thou and once as thee)
Never used to address deity

att (thou, thyself)
Occurs 13 times in the Hebrew scriptures
Never used to address deity

attah (thou, thyself)
Occurs 13 times in the Hebrew scriptures
Never used to address deity

The Greek Pronouns:
Thee: se
Occurs in the New Testament well over 100 times
Generally translated as thee but sometimes as thou
Used freqently to refer to deity (about one third of the time in the gospels*)

soi
Occurs in the New Testament well over 100 times
Generally translated as thee but sometimes as thou
Used freqently to refer to deity (about one third of the time in the gospels*)

sou
Occurs in the New Testament about 50 times
Generally translated as thee but sometimes as thou
Used frequently to refer to deity (almost one third of the time, (14 times))*

Thou: su (su) Thou, thyself
Occurs in the New Testament about 150 times
Used freqently to refer to deity (about half of the time in the gospels*)

2 Observations From This: There are no clear pronouns used to exclusively address God in either Hebrew or Greek. And in both languages the pronouns are formed from the same roots, and are consistently used to address both God and man.

You are correct in that the use of words like "Thee" and "Thou" or "Thine" in the translation of the KJB do help focus who is speaking or being spoken to, but if translating it from the original languages, it would simply and correctly be translated as "you" and "me" or "us".

This ends our lesson in Biblical language grammer, you may wake up now! Please wipe the drool from your cheeks before going to your next class.

Thanks for the article, lots of good points in it, it's a keeper.

in HIS grip
bobbyd

[robertcolumbia]

I have studied early Modern English to some extent (at least more than the average person on the street), and, basically, -est is an older second person singular verb conjugation, and -eth is the third person singular conjugation. I believe that there are cognates in German (which is closely related to English) for these extensions.

I feel OK in reading "doth" as "does", "unto" as "to", and otherwise update the language when reading to such an extent that the meaning doesn't change, as the change seems to be to be basically formal rather than substantial. When it comes to thou/thee, my general practice is that it is ok to say as "you". I do know that this does gloss over the singular/plural distinction, but I'm uncertain if there are any passages where a singular you versus a plural you has a doctrinal implication and would be interested in y'all's wisdom.

[rachel]

I find a lot of these verb conjugations from older English are very similar to the modern German; for example, 'est' or 'eth' is used where the Germans would use 'est' or 'et' and we would just use 's'. It's actually quite interesting to think about.

As for what bro. Ben said about 'thee' 'thou' et cetera being used for second person singular and 'ye' 'you' et cetera being used for second person plural, I think that's right. Just think about the German 'du' and the French 'tu' for second person singular and the German 'Sie' and French 'vous' for second person plural. I'm using these languages as examples since English comes from both of them (and also I speak both so that makes it easier for me). If I have questions about how to use language correctly that no English resources seem to answer, I cross-check them with both French and German... hence I arrived at the conclusion that English is one of the only (European) languages which does not differentiate between second person singlar/informal and plural/formal, and the English also has a strange form of not-quite-conjugation.

So, to answer Sojourner's question, my opionion is that it would be all right to conjugate the verbs the modern way (ie, 'says' instead of 'saith', 'redeems' rather than 'redeemeth') if you want to when you're reading, but not to change the 'thee' and 'thou' into 'you' as the way we speak is actually incorrect English!

On that note, it's interesting to point out that the reason Quakers use 'thee' is because the original Quakers were mostly scholars who realised that the way language was going back that was to use 'you' incorrectly and they persisted in using it in the correct manner.

That said, if you know this, it's very difficult to switch to doing it the 'right' way, if you've been doing it the 'wrong' way for your entire life and everyone around you speaks the 'wrong' way.

I do think that for Biblical purposes, one should keep the difference between second person singular/plural in the 'thee/thou/you' area simply because it can help clarify the meaning of a passage - for example, if it's addressing a single person or a group.