Is the KJV Elizabethan English?

By Edward F. Hills

An excerpt from “Text & Time” (pg. 362)

The English of the King James Version is not the English of the early 17th century. To be exact, it is not a type of English that was ever spoken anywhere. It is biblical English, which was not used on ordinary occasions even by the translators who produced the King James Version.

As H. Wheeler Robinson (1940) pointed out, one need only compare the preface written by the translators with the text of their translation to feel the difference in style. [1]  And the observations of W.A. Irwin (1952) are to the same purport. The King James Version, he reminds us, owes its merit, not to 17th century English—which was very different—but to its faithful translation of the original. Its style is that of the Hebrew and of the New Testament Greek. [2]

Even in their use of “thee” and “thou” the translators were not following 17th century English usage but biblical usage, for at the time these translators were doing their work these singular forms had already been replaced by the plural you in polite conversation. [3]

Footnotes:

1. H.W. Robinson, op. cit., p. 37.

2. Introduction to the RSV Old Testament, quoted in Revised Version or Revised

 3. Which Bible?, by O.T. Allis, Philadelphia: Pres. & Rfd. Pub. Co., 1953, p. 51.