(Originally posted on August 24, 2011.)
So, there’s bridge construction going on a few miles from my house and on my regular lunchtime commute home today, I found myself stuck. If it weren’t bad enough that they are taking out two bridges at once less than a mile apart, as I waited I found myself staring into what I would wish to be the great abyss, but turned out to be an odd little bumper sticker on the back of the van in front of me. The sticker read, “If it ain’t King James, it ain’t Bible.”
I have more than one problem with this. Actually the first thing that came to mind was, “Welcome to the Bible Belt, AIN’T it swell!?!??!” Is nothing sacred? Come on people! I am very passionate about my cheesecake but I don’t have pro-cheesecake slogans on the back of my car and you’ll certainly never find me downing the strawberry cheesecake as opposed to the cherry cheesecake!
Also, doesn’t the whole point surrounding this have to do with language? Yes, we are in the south but that doesn’t mean we should go completely slack on the vocabulary. If you are going to speak out, do it with dignity…or maybe the idea was to target rednecks…
Now, on to the King James Controversy. Yes, I understand that the King James version was translated from Hebrew, Greek and other languages by tons of scholars in an attempt to keep it as accurate as possible….but I would like to believe that the other versions of the Bible were translated to a more modern version of English by scholars as well. I feel that the use of the King James version is nothing more than tradition and there’s nothing wrong with that. So, please stop feeding people the lines about God specifically leading the translators of the original texts to translate them perfectly. If he could lead those guys, he could lead the guy who translated “The Message.”
I have no problem with what Bible you prefer to read or even if you prefer not to read one at all….I just found it annoying that while stuck in traffic, I had to translate redneck slang to understand that you like your religion translated the early modern English way.
Do you have any meaningful bumper stickers? Share them with us!
Kathy L Craig 