[sword-devel] KJV2006 Project

[Kristian Due]

Hi!

Just wanted to add two more reasons (in addition to  Chris' good point 
of hyperothodoxy) why you should not capitalize the pronouns in KJV. You 
are probably aware of them anyway, but I think them a little funny, so 
they deserve to be mentioned.

    1) The singular pronouns (e.g. thou/thee) in middle-english are 
always used in non-formal settings, and for formal settings the plural 
forms you (and ye) were used. The funny thing here is the semantic shift 
because the middle english *informal* pronouns have become the modern 
english *formal* pronouns, and vice versa!
    2) If the translators of KJV had wanted to revere God by pronouns, 
they certainly would have used the formal ones. The informal pronouns 
probably reflect a theological consideration - a God we are allowed to 
call abba/daddy certainly does not demand reverence through capitalized 
pronouns.

When the pronouns in KJV are capitalized, it is because of a severe 
semantic misunderstanding (which is a little funny...) and, as I would 
argue, a severe theological misunderstanding.

I am aware that perhaps someone would feel that the second argument here 
is disputable, and I know this is not a theological mailinglist, but I 
hope these points may be of interest! For of course - the main point 
should be to give the KJV text as it was originally printed, no matter 
how the translators use pronouns.

My best wishes for KJV 2006

Kristian Due



Chris Little wrote:

> Please don't change this. Pronouns referring to God in the KJV use 
> lowercase. They did in the 1611. They did in the 1769. Anything that 
> deviates from this is edited.
>
> The whole practice of capitalizing pronouns referring to God is a 
> stupid modern attempt at hyper-orthodoxy. Very simply put: pronouns 
> are never capitalized in modern English unless they come at the start 
> of a sentence or are title-cased. And the irony is that the same 
> people who would WANT to modify a text to capitalize such pronouns are 
> likely often also people who would decry similar modification of a 
> text to be gender neutral where source texts/other translations use 
> masculine.
>
> It's a silly, bad, evil, yucky, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad practice.
>
> --Chris
>
>
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