Castor and Pollux

...another “NKJV why?”

• Acts 28:11 (AKJV): And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux.
• Acts 28:11 (NKJV): After three months we sailed in an Alexandrian ship whose figurehead was the Twin Brothers, which had wintered at the island.

The New King James Version editors claimed they were creating a Bible which one could easily hear and read alongside the King James Bible (“there is remarkable ease in listening to the reading of either edition while following with the other.”). I don’t find remarkable ease of reading when I am jarred with “the Twin Brothers” in place of “Castor and Pollux” (both of which are the same thing, so why change it). [In fact, it reads in this place better side-by-side with some modern versions than with the KJV.]

Literally Διοσκουροις in Acts 28:11 is “sons of Zeus” or “Zeus’s boys” – not Twin Brothers. (Διοσ is the genitive singular of Ζεύς, Zeus; see Acts 14:13, for example.) However, in English Twin Brothers, Twin Gods, Castor and Pollux, Dioscuri (and maybe others) are all the same and accurately convey the meaning of Διοσκουροις. The somewhat transliterated Dioscuri is an available English word (Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com give Castor and Pollux as the definition of Dioscuri). As to the Latin, Castorum is plural and for Latin speakers it stood for the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux, the twins of Zeus). The Douay-Rheims translation, translating from the Latin, has “the Castors” (plural), showing those translators understood it that way.

John Calvin explains some of the history of  the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, the twin boys of Zeus: “The old poets did feign that Castor and Pollux came of Jupiter and Leda; for which cause they are called in Greek διοσκουροι; which word Luke useth in this place, as if you should say, Jupiter’s sons.”

John Gill writes: “whose sign was Castor and Pollux; or Dioscuri, that is, the sons of Jupiter; for Castor and Pollux were his sons, by Leda: these are placed among the constellations in the Zodiac, and go by the name of Gemini, or the twins; and these were supposed to have a power of saving men in danger at sea…”

So, the twins are Castor and Pollux in Latin, Dioskouroi in Greek. The Greek word for twins is δίδυμα. The Latin word for twins is gemini, which is also the name of the constellation in which the two brightest stars are known as Castor and Pollux.

Why, NKJV translators, did you find it necessary to change Castor and Pollux to the twin brothers? In doing so, you violated your claim to make it easy to follow the KJV and NKJV together. This is not a question of text, but of translation. Your reading matches the ASV, EHV, HCSB, ISV, LSB, NASB, NLV, NRSV, RSV, TLB, and others – but not the KJV, the Bible you claim to follow. “Twin Brothers” is no more readily understood than “Castor and Pollux.” If you don’t know Greek and Roman mythology you won’t know who they are either way. I can see no claim of improved understanding for changing the reading here. So, NKJV, why?