Authorized

The King James Version has shaped the church, our worship, and our mother tongue for over 400 years. But what should we do with it today?

The KJV beautifully rendered the Scriptures into the language of turn-of-the-seventeenth-century England. Even today the King James is the most widely read Bible in the United States. The rich cadence of its Elizabethan English is recognized even by non-Christians. But English has changed a great deal over the last 400 years, and in subtle ways that very few modern readers will recognize. In Authorized Mark L. Ward, Jr. shows what exclusive readers of the KJV are missing as they read God's word.

In their introduction to the King James Bible, the translators tell us that Christians must "heare CHRIST speaking unto them in their mother tongue." In Authorized Mark Ward builds a case for the KJV translators' view that English Bible translations should be readable by what they called "the very vulgar," and what we would call "the man on the street."

1. Opening Credits
2. Epigraphs
3. Dedication
4. Introduction
5. Chapter 1: What We Lose as the Church Stops Using the KJV
6. Chapter 2: The Man in the Hotel and the Emperor of English Bibles
7. Chapter 3: Dead Words and "False Friends"
8. Chapter 4: What is the Reading Level of the KJV?
9. Chapter 5: The Value of the Vernacular
10. Chapter 6: Ten Objections to Reading Vernacular Bible Translations
11. Chapter 7: Which Bible Translation is Best?
12. Epilogue
13. Appendix
14. Acknowledgments
15. Closing Credits