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Friday, November 22, 2024

A Pastor’s Response to Mark Ward’s KJV Readability Survey

A Pastor’s Response to Mark Ward’s KJV Readability Survey -- “I was randomly called to participate in a King James Bible readability survey by Mark Ward. This is my experience, results, and reaction to this, ‘gotcha’ survey.”

“If people are struggling to determine singular and plural with a consistent rule that allows you to precisely know if the words are singular or plural, how does it help to go to a version that does away with the precision?” -- David Townsley

Mark Ward loves to hammer on the word “halt” in I King 18:21. That anti-KJV quiz (at least the early one that I saw) offers four choices for its meaning: pause, limp, stop, and vacillate. Those who answer “vacillate” rather than “limp” get it wrong. Of course that is Mark’s goal, for he will not allow that the other answer is actually contextually correct, certainly within the range of understanding of even most modern translation users who are reading that verse in its context.

The NIV translates this question as “How long will you waver between two opinions?” (According to Merriam-Webster, the meaning of waver is to vacillate irresolutely between choices!) The NET Bible has “How long are you going to be paralyzed by indecision?” It has in the footnote “In context this idiomatic expression refers to indecision rather than physical disability.”

This is just one example of how Mark Ward’s KJV Readability Survey is not a genuine survey to test a theory or for discovery of information, but rather that it is designed in such a way as to prove his previously-reached conclusion. It is the same kind of thing done with political polls to skew results in a certain direction.

“A little bit on unbelief does not ever lead to true belief; it only leads to more unbelief.” -- David Townsley

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