Sufficient Intelligibility and False Friends
The most prominent recent conversation about the Bible (that I’ve seen) revolves around “sufficient intelligibility” of the King James Version. Some words used by the King James translators have changed in meaning since their translation. Podcaster Mark Ward declares about one hundred words as “false friends.” As an overview of the definitional usage, “false friend” means the following provided by an AI aggregation:
A false friend is a word in one language that sounds or looks similar to a word in another language, but has a different meaning. It is also known as a false cognate or bilingual homophone.
Unlike the new Mark Ward usage of the terminology, false friend does not refer to a word in the same language that over the centuries radically changed in its meaning. Instead, linguists call this a “semantic change.” Mark Ward did not originate the concept of “false friend.” He simply uses the two word phrase in a different, inventive way that alters its original and definitional usage. It does not refer to the changing meaning of the word. The words for that are semantic shift or semantic change.
History of False Friends Versus Semantic Change
At the same time, Ward was not the first to use “false friend” in the novel way that he does. British linguist, David Crystal, began using the term “false friend” to refer to words in William Shakespeare’s writing that have now changed in meaning from their original understanding in Elizabethan English. He accumulated an appendix of these words as long ago as 2010. As far as I know, Crystal and Ward are the only ones using “false friend” like they have and do. In some ways, it’s an either rhetorical or marketing tool. Others are now imitating this new usage, but Crystal coined “false friend” for Shakespeare and then Ward for the King James Version.
Semantic shift or change is real. Ward and his host of assistants have searched for words with semantic changes in meaning in the King James Version. However, they’re a little late to the party, because those using the King James Version already provided these lists of words and their meaning for decades. They all know about this already, so they don’t need a lecture! In 1998 the late D. A. Waite and his Bible For Today at great effort published The Defined King James Bible. Even before Waite’s book, men wrote helps in this way. Thomas Nelson Press published The King James Version Wordbook in 1994.
In 1978 in An Introduction to Language, Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman wrote (p. 314):
In the King James Version of the Bible (1611), God says of the herbs and trees, “to you shall be for meat” (Genesis 1:29). To a speaker of seventeenth-century English, meat meant “food,” and flesh meant “meat.” Since that time, semantic change has narrowed the meaning of meat to what it is in Modern English.
Two Actions
You can see that Fromkin and Rodman referred to this alteration of meaning, as do many others, as a “semantic shift” (not false friend). This occurs in every language over time. Words take on a new meaning and contemporary readers should be informed of this in an older book or translation. Two different actions could alleviate the possible confusion for one hundred or so words most egregiously affected by semantic changes.
One
One, the meaning of these one hundred or so words could be placed in the margin. The Trinitarian Bible Society definitely does that in their classic and Westminster reference Bibles. Why should someone do a total retranslation of the King James Version, when this simple solution exists? It does not even require a giant group of Hebrew and Greek scholars to put in thousands of hours to accomplish this task. That work is done already.
The 1611 King James translators placed into their translation marginal notes. Marginal notes are not new. There were 7,342 of them in the 1611 KJV. The marginal notes were designed to provide readers with additional insights into the text. They often included alternate translations, explanations of obscure passages, and clarifications on specific terms or names found within the biblical text. Some notes defined biblical terms or provided context for certain characters, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the scriptures. When I say scriptures, I mean what God inspired, the original language text.
As some of you reading here might know, providing a definition in the margin is unacceptable to Ward. I’ve never heard him give an answer as to why. He defames and castigates any church leader who opts for public continuation of usage of the King James Version, even with provision of definitions. Ward recently said these leaders are sinning by continuing to have the KJV as their church Bible. The Inquisitor General has spoken. Sin! The only arbitrary option for Ward that would avoid sinning, besides changing to a modern version, is the next one.
Two
Two, someone could update the translation of the King James Version in the spirit of the Blayney edition of 1769, that almost everyone already uses. Some will say, “That’s already been done.” People will mention The New King James Version first. I’ve already written here in many posts how that the underlying text is different for the NKJV, which eliminates it as a possibility. I believe there are over one hundred places where the NKJV translators came from a different word, not identical to the King James Version.
Another new translation that claims the same underlying text is the Modern English Version. This was started in 2005 under the leadership of James Linzey, a Southern Baptist. Many men worked on the MEV from a lot of different denominations with many different doctrinal and gospel positions. It was published in 2014 by Passio, an arm of Charisma Publishing House, a Charismatic organization. I haven’t looked into the MEV like I have the NKJV, so I don’t have much to say about it.
Some have given the Modern English Version a good review and some bad. It seems like originally it was meant to meet a concern of chaplains in the British military and what they should give to their soldiers. The MEV does question the underlying text of the KJV in its footnotes, calling into doubt the text preserved and available to the Lord’s churches. I can’t in good conscience hand to someone or recommend to him a translation that denounces the very text from which it was translated. The MEV does that.
Semantic and Translational Choices Versus Underlying Text
With everything said so far about semantic and translational choices in the English translation of the original languages of the Bible, how does that contrast with a different underlying text? The modern versions don’t translate from the same Hebrew and Greek words. There are thousands of differences in words between the critical text, the underlying text behind the modern versions of the New Testament, and that of the Textus Receptus, the underlying text behind the King James Version. Thousands. Those are different words, not words that could have variation in meaning, a semantic change, so someone could understand them in different ways.
It’s important to translate words right. Translating the original language words into intelligible language is also good. If you can, you want to translate into words that people can understand. You don’t want to translate into words that have a different meaning now than the word in the underlying text. This is called “getting it right.” When someone translates, if possible he should try to get the English word with the same meaning as the original language word. At the same time, having the wrong underlying word is worse.
Having a hundred words with a translation with a changed semantical meaning is not as bad as actual wrong words. Someone can learn the old meaning of the word that has had a semantical change. A totally different or wrong word is still different and wrong, even if it’s translated right and intelligible. No explanation or translation can change the wrong word in the underlying text. That’s worse than a “false friend.”
Important Consideration
100 Versus 5,000
I ask that you also take the next obvious truth into consideration. Someone such as Mark Ward and others, but especially him, will say it is sin to distribute one hundred words he assesses as unintelligible in translation. Yet, he will not consider or call it sin to distribute five thousand wrong words. This comparison should qualify the outrage over intelligibility. I’ll let you judge. Those one hundred misunderstood words look like more of a red herring next to five thousands wrong words.
Ward himself to his credit won’t say that semantic change is an error in translation. It isn’t. However, the wrong word is an error. You can never translate the right word from a wrong word.
The Hodgepodge
What’s lost with the hodgepodge of English translations on the market today? It dismisses the biblical and historical doctrine of preservation of scripture. Among other things, that is what is most unacceptable in an evaluation of this issue. In the late nineteenth century, B. B. Warfield at Princeton Seminary invented a new doctrine of inerrancy to compensate for this very betrayal of the doctrine of preservation.
I see two ironies at least. One, false friends itself is now a semantic change. Mark Ward and David Crystal use “false friend” with a different meaning. Ironic. Two, Warfield changed the meaning of inerrancy to induce acceptability to thousands of changed words in the text of the Bible. In fact, the critical text brings known errors into scripture. What was without error is now error and yet called, inerrant. The irony is not lost on me in either case.
Mark Ward speaks with certainty about a sin of unintelligibility. He isn’t certain about the words of scripture though. He calls it confidence, something less than being certain. According to Ward: confidence good, certainty bad. So that’s fine to Ward and others, to be expected from his and others’ perspective. The only thing wrong to them is questioning him and them on this issue. You must bend the knee to their fallacy or at least join in unity with them as if nothing occurred. Nothing to see, just move along.
1. The MEV almost always follows the NKJV where the NKJV various in underlying text.
2. I don’t want a Blayney update and I’m glad we are not using one. He changed Hebrews 10:12. Otherwise, Blayney or the other publishers of the KJV did not update any word to a more modern word. They changed spelling. That is different than updating words to more modern language. In fact some of the changes made the KJV more archaic, but yet more consistent (the standardizing of thou for example). To try to make the KJV modern is to do accept a premise it didn’t start with. To change the words is to cause division of publishers, confusion in the pew, and less authority to 1611 translation.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for commenting here. It seems tough for some people to come over here for whatever reason I’ve not had expressed directly to me. I’m fine if someone would. Thanks for the MEV point. You’re easily more up on that translation. I obviously am opting for number one above with the marginal notes. Why not? As I argue. Do you agree with the basic argument I’ve made in this piece?
Mark Ward calls you his best opposition. I wasn’t sure who that would be when I saw the title. Thomas Ross has done very good work on this. I’ve hopefully done something in an honest way. Ward doesn’t engage me, but I don’t think it’s because of a good reason. I can only guess and it’s because he wants me to be more chummy than I am. I can’t look at 100 semantic changes in English and 5,000 actual words and then the lack of focus on the historical and biblical doctrine of preservation. Little to no engagement there. You’re good opposition if you do what could be interpreted as an impersonation of a bobble head doll. Ward talks up the way he gives in to his opposition. I don’t see it. When I showed these examples of differing text for the NKJV, he still couldn’t give in. His original point must be made. You never hear him bring it up. It’s like it never happened.
Mark takes constant shots at you. You do good with google books and internet archive, and he wished you did it only for good (like him). Doing it for good means undermining the KJV and elevating the critical text. There still is this spirit that Ward condescends to deal with Sanballat and Tobiah.
I’m a nobody and don’t care to be a somebody, but I love the KJV. God has used it greatly in my life and so I defend its continual use. Ward is friendsy with people he thinks he can convert and he makes examples out of people he thinks he can beat. I’m sure that is why he avoids much of your content.
I enjoyed your article and agree strongly with your point. I agree that marginal notes are the way to go. The Defined is helpful (although it misses some), but unfortunately it is caught up in a lawsuit right now. So it isn’t available.
Thanks for all you are doing!
Thanks for that information. Can you explain what you are aware of with a lawsuit over the Defined KJV? I was wondering why it was not available.
I think we should not be too quick to assume what Ward calls “false friends” are actually such without independent verification ourselves, as he is not accurate and scholarly far too often.
Mark Ward is a “false friend” to the Holy Scripture.
Tom
I went and watched part of the debate between Ward and Haifley that brother Ross has begun to review. Ward read a pre-prepared statement that said something like “if you have a problem with the Critical Text I recommend the NKJV or the MEV.” So I was reading in John today and compared with the NKJV as I went.
It’s completely obvious that the NKJV translators wanted so badly to use the Critical Text. Even in translational choices they wished they could translate along party lines with modern versions. Their footnotes read like they despised being “bound” to follow the KJV and TR. It is clear dishonesty to speak as if the NKJV is neutral or even pro-TR as Mark Ward does. I agree with your assessment and disagree with the premise that Ward uses to make his argument.
Also, his admission that it would be sin to give your children an “unintelligible” Bible is truly an egregious statement of Satanic origin.
Good comment. You’re right about the translators, who didn’t support the text from which they apparently translated, but didn’t actually translate, because they were loosy-goosy.
Thank you for the Crystal quote. I included it, with a little bit of other info on Crystal, as part of what I trust will be a definitive critique of Mark Ward’s arguments which should be available at faithsaves.net/Mark-Ward/ today or tomorrow, in conjunction with my part 2 of 2 video on the Ward/Haifley debate going live.
Thomas,
I had written this whole post and published it before I then found your long treatment of Ward’s work at faithsaves.net. I found it because I googled to see if anyone was reading and using the terminology, “false friend,” yours was one of the results. I went there and voila, we had written on the same thing, yours much more complete.
I just put a more complete version of the Ward refutation up; I think when you wrote your post it was not yet there. Thank you.
Howdy Kent,
I like False Friends as a popular-level term because it’s easy to remember and it helps tie the relatively abstract concept to a more concrete metaphor.
Hi Caleb,
False friend had already established a meaning and with these new usages by Crystal and Ward, it takes on a new meaning. I get the concept of false friend, also something of a scriptural concept in the sense that someone who says he’s a friend, and he isn’t. I don’t think just in reading it like Ward uses it that anyone would know what he’s talking about ironically. And I do mean ironically.
In which other popular contexts would we need a term for exactly what Ward and Crystal describe? What other 17th century (or older) English literature is being consumed by the general public? I think it’s telling that both Ward and Crystal came to use that term independently of each-other to describe a particular kind of semantic drift in the KJV and in Shakespeare.
Also, I’m not sure your implication that Ward doesn’t explain his usage often enough will stick. 🙂
Your implication about his motives is less risible and less tasteful.
Hi Caleb,
Even though I mention it, I don’t think that Mark Ward coining a new use or doing a semantic change of “false friend” is the main thrust of my post. What do you think the main point is? Do you know? I know I left the door open for a discussion. You say I’m judging his motives. How do I do that? I think I’m careful not to do that with Ward. It would be easy to do it in my 100 versus 5,000 comparison and I don’t even go all the way in judging his motives there. I say, ‘look more like a red herring,’ not an actual one, but things that look like it. What’s the alternative of a red herring? He’s incompetent. I’m giving him some benefit of the doubt that he’s not stupid, even though living in a bubble like him can make someone stupid.
Like Thomas Ross says in a comment, and he’s been more thorough in his analysis of all of Ward’s so-called “false friends,” he says that they are not all what he even says they are. He does say that he does more to help people understand the King James than anyone on earth. That’s a pretty lofty statement he made about himself in the debate.
To get to my criticism of the “false friend” terminology. It’s lightweight, but I am saying that Ward makes a semantic change to its original meaning or usage. That’s the irony. I never thought once about the idea that Mark Ward himself is a false friend. I don’t think he presents himself as a friend to me at all. Again, this is a semantic shift on the meaning of false friend, that’s the irony. His coining a new usage of the term. I don’t have a problem with it. Ward, that I have read, and maybe he has done this (he’s written a lot on it), doesn’t indicate that false friend doesn’t mean how he uses it. If you look up “false cognate” on Wikipedia, right underneath the heading, it says, “Not to be confused with False friend.” Ward could answer, “No, to be confused with false friend.” I’m just pointing it out. It’s not a big deal to me. I am writing as informational.
Kent, please see my apology below. I realized I misunderstood you so I made it before you moderated this comment because I couldn’t delete/edit my first reply.
Caleb,
It’s hard to hear tone in comments. I understand that, but I have zero hard feelings. I was just answering the whole point of my motive. I wanted to explain it. Thanks though.
Caleb,
Just a comment about Crystal and Ward coming up with the term false friend independently. Ward did not come up with up, that is, in originating with him. I have heard him say that he heard/read John McWhorter use it, and I found that Mark also gives that in a footnote in Authorized, (p. 145, footnote 9, chapter 3, Words on the Move, by McWhorter). I do not know whether Crystal and McWhorter came up with the term independently.
My opinion of the history is that goes further back with Crystal. I have read McWhorter and never saw his use of it, but he seems to make the same point Crystal makes. When I read Thomas’s article, I saw that he referenced Ward’s credit to McWhorter. McWhorter interviewed Ward a few years ago on his podcast. I still think it was coined for Shakespeare by Crystal and for the KJV by Ward. It is a semantic change from its original meaning.
Re-reading your comment, I may have misunderstood you – I hope I did.
I thought you were saying Ward himself is a false friend. If you’re only seeing it as ironic that his usage of the term may not be understood, then I apologize for misunderstanding you and for jumping to the wrong conclusion.
I just think your first implication is off-base enough to be funny compared with the accusation he usually gets about making too many videos explaining False Friends.
Sure, you missed it Caleb. I don’t think I gave any impression at all that I was calling Mark Ward himself a false friend.
You didn’t; my mistake.
I think your main point is that the text issue should weigh more than translational choices. I won’t discuss criticism of texts in languages I don’t speak. That would be folly for me.
That’s not to say I can’t have confidence in the Bible or make textual choices; but I don’t have direct knowledge in Greek/Hebrew and the Bible doesn’t tell me how to make text-critical evaluations. I have to trust others’ work in that area, and I do.
I have posted what I hope is a significant critique of Mark Ward’s arguments online at:
https://faithsaves.net/Mark-Ward/
that is now live; what I had up earlier was incomplete.
Thanks for the useful information in this post. It is revealing how he is super-concerned about a small number of English words but does not care about a huge number of Greek words.
Brother Ross,
Last night on my drive home, I listened to your Part Two Video Review of the Ward-Haifley KJV Intelligibility Debate (I was not aware of it until someone posted a link to it in a Facebook group, and I have not listened to Part One yet.)
You made some excellent points. I am a bit hard of hearing and may not have caught everything correctly, due to road noise and grandkid noise. It seemed you may be under the impression that Mark Ward still works for Logos. He has made a very recent change and is now some kind of book editor for Crossway. Just thought you might like to know that, if you don’t.
Blessings.
Thanks, Bro Vaughn.
I think I said that it seems that Ward has connections with Logos. Thanks for the information about Crossway. I believe I was aware that he had that new employment of some kind. I’m sure Crossway is very into hiring separatist, strong, fundamental-type Baptists.
In a recent interview in the last couple of days, he said that he was a youtuber and website designer. He said nothing about logos or crossway.
Interesting. I wonder if he was in between jobs at the time? I heard him recently say he is with Crossway (not sure when I heard it). I checked his C. V. on his blog, which shows Mark as being with Logos Bible Software from 2015-2024, and with Crossway beginning in 2024. His YouTube work may not technically be a job, but he does make some money at it, through donations and perhaps other ways (not sure how all that works).
Since I brought this up initially, I want to update the information. In a YouTube video he posted yesterday, Mark Ward said he no longer works for Crossway, that it was not a good fit.. For now he is only a YouTuber and Website designer.
Robert,
Thanks for the info!
I wrote this related post in 2009.
https://kentbrandenburg.com/2009/10/12/king-james-version-elizabethan-english/
I forgot about it.
This is a great discussion. Thomas, I always look forward to your videos, and I have learned from your video on Mark Ward’s criticism of the KJB. Kent, I also have learned from this great post.
I’ve had some “false friends” who led me into the NKJV in the past. But when I read through it, I could sense something was not right. That is what brought me to start researching this translation issue for myself, and I found out what the truth is. When I hear the quote about the plough boy getting the scriptures in his own language, I am reminded that my “false friends” told me that meant we need to have the Bible in the common everyday street language of people. I have learned that the KJ translators meant for the KJB to be the commonly used Bible. In the past, if I would start a verse, someone else could finish it. We both would know and be moved by what God is saying to us. We had a common Bible and there was familiarity between believers. Now, people don’t recognize the verse I am quoting if they are reading modern versions. I was talking to a young man, a believer, a while back and quoted a very familiar verse. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Isn’t that sad, what the modern versions have done? The division they have brought. The modern versions are “false friends.”
And, by the way, strange to me how Bible scholars are having trouble understanding the KJB, yet the mountain country folk where I live can read and understand it just fine.
Thanks, good points!