[vixen99]

Didn't Orwell have a point when he contrasted a verse from the KJ version (antiquated!) bible with his own modern (' a parody but not a very gross one') version.

"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

Doubtless someone can provide a much better modern version but why bother?

Amazing that the original was the product of fifty people.

[yati]

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

[vinceguidry]

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept.

Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

[blotter_paper]

I agree that this is what's being expressed, but I think I'd have an easier time revising KJV than Shakespeare. The pieces of translated bible that I have read didn't come anywhere near the complexities of Shakespeare. I don't think anyone would read/accept my revision, but I think it would be more beautiful in the eyes of most English professors.

"I returned. Under the sun I saw that the race was not for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, nor the riches for the wise men; time and chance affected all."

Not a major departure, and it could certainly be improved upon, but it's more to the point while still showing the reader rather than just stating the point, and the repetitious bit in the middle has been paired down to three parts with a slight variation on the last repetion upending expectations while not going so off the rails that there is no particular expectation.

[vinceguidry]

There is a lot of crufty old stuff in Shakespeare, the stories are re-written pretty much yearly pretty much all omitting this stuff. I'm not a part of that world, but I'd be pretty surprised if theater companies that regularly run Shakespeare plays weren't revising the plays in that regard.

[blotter_paper]

I believe that Shakespeare had more rhyme and meter than the bible. I also believe that text with more rhyme and meter is more difficult to edit without damaging these qualities, while text with less rhyme and meter has less to damage by these metrics and is therefore easier to edit. Do you agree with both of these statements? If so, do you think the bible has other complexities Shakespeare lacks which outweigh the complexity added by Shakespeare's rhyme and meter? If so, what are those qualities?

[vinceguidry]

Oh dear I'm certainly not prepared to dive that deep into the topic. I was more referring to the content rather than the specific qualities of the verse. The Bible is surprisingly hard to compress. Shakespeare, well you can make two hour long movies that hit all the story beats.

[yati]

I see, thanks for the clarification.

[dooglius]

As a counterpoint, I'm a native English speaker, and I found the second much easier to understand, whereas the first seemed like a maze.

[mikestew]

As a former hard-core Bible reader, but never a fan of the KJV, I found the first easier. But I think that could be because it follows closely to the patterns of the Zen Buddhist literature I'm reading lately. 'cuz it does read kind of like a Zen koan.