Semantic drift (was Re: English now and then (Re. Pulpit language))

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>>>>> "AIS07" == AIS07  <AIS07@aol.com> writes:

    AIS07> In a message dated 96-09-08 23:55:52 EDT, rj@eli.wariat.org
    AIS07> (Robert J. Brown) writes:

    AIS07> << It doesn't matter one hoot what it means on the street
    AIS07> toady, and it matters to the extent that our very salvation
    AIS07> depends on it what it meant in 1611 if we are reading it in
    AIS07> the KJV and want to obey God! >>

    AIS07> I am dumbfounded here.  This statement simply amazes me.
    AIS07> To think that our Apostolic preachers, upon whom people's
    AIS07> very salvation depends, think that we should never try to
    AIS07> figure out what archaic words mean today--that we should
    AIS07> simply accept the archaic words--is shocking, to say the
    AIS07> least.  So to the writer above, a "church" is not the Body
    AIS07> of believers--it's the literal building, because that's
    AIS07> what it meant in good old King James' time.  It matters not
    AIS07> how it SHOULD be translated today.  And to the writer
    AIS07> above, the passage that talks about the Church "letting"
    AIS07> the Antichrist should mean that as long as we're here, we
    AIS07> let him do what he wants.  Never mind that the actual
    AIS07> MEANING here is that the church "restrains" the Antichrist.
    AIS07> The fact is, to Bro. Brown above, it's the good old KJV
    AIS07> WORD that matters--who cares about actual MEANING?  As I
    AIS07> said, simply amazing.

    AIS07> --Rich Brown

I guess I was misunderstood here.  What I meant was that a person
reading the KJV needs to know what the word meant then in order to
properly interpret what he is reading.  When he is explaining it to
someone (including himself!), he needs to use the modern jargon, but
if he reads it verbatim, then he needs to explain what the words meant
then as well, or else the passage would likely be misunderstood, as
would other passages where that word also occurred.

My point is that when reading the KJV (and lets face it, that is the
version we usually read, at least over the pulpit, because people
recognize it as scripture; it is the most qoutable, and the most
remembered version in our ranks) one needs to understand what the
words meant when they were written.  

A good Bible teacher will read the text as it is, then explain what it
means, using modern language.  In the course of that explanation, he
should also point out the archaic meaning of any unusual words in the
text, and explain, if possible, what that word meant then, what it
means now, and how it occurred that the meaning changed.

This last part -- how and why the meaning changed -- is quite
interesting, and it frequently sheds light on the social and political
happenings in the intervening period.

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
Robert Jay Brown III  rj@eli.wariat.org  http://eli.wariat.org  1 847 705-0424
Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
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