Truth
Is the Bible Ungrammatical
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Friday, 14 August 2009
Is God Grammatically Challenged?
Was the Holy Ghost being slack again when it supervised the Authorised Version of the Bible? Was it right to allow the makers of the bible to attach a singular verb to two nouns or to several nouns as in:
And now abideth [abides] faith, hope, charity, these three.
Where moth and dust doth [does] corrupt
Though the grammar books give rules like, “a verb agrees with its subject in number and person”, some will also list instances in which this rule has been violated by distinguished writers:
Wherein doth [does] sit the dread and fear of kings.Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, 4:1
Hostility and civil tumult reigns.Shakespeare, King John, 4:2
They may excuse these saying the verb is often written in the singular when two nouns connected by “and” are so nearly synonymous as to suggest just one idea, but they do not set up definitive grammatical exceptions to the rule when they are not at all synonymous:
Both death and I am found eternal.J Milton
To rive what God and Turk and Time hath [has] spared.Lord Byron
So the Authorised Version is in worthy company, but is it right? Even great writers make their slips! But the Holy Ghost? John o'London (Jol) tells us Mr G Washington Moon (The Revisers’ English, 1882) attacked “the violations of the laws of the language” committed by the makers of the Revised Version of the Bible, one of his stoutest protests being against these passages, though they are found too in the Authorised Version of 1604-1610. He declares:
No English scholar who has any respect for his reputation as such would contend that it is grammatically correct to say, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory”, for that is saying, “They is thine”.
Mr Moon takes his stand on the grammatical rule and against the slackness of the Holy Ghost, even though his protests, if obeyed, would require the alteration of the inerrant bible. Similarly he condemns the following expressions in the Authorised Version:
Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.
To comprehend what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.
Out of the same mouth proceedeth [proceeds] blessing and cursing.
Mr Moon’s rejection of great writers as authorities for breaches of rule is quite understandable:
Dr Sanday quotes similar errors from Shakespeare, and seems to hold the opinion that because a certain form of speech has occasionally been used by a great writer it must be correct. But with respect to examples of departure from rule, I quite agree with the Rev Matthew Harrison that “it signifies nothing that this or that expression has been used by Johnson, or Addison, or Swift, or Pope, or any other writer whatever… It is not a question of genius, but simply a question of syntax”.
The modern fundamentalist US pastor would take the opposite line to the Rev Harrison. Because the bible is inerrant, it must be correct and so the Authorised Version and the Revised Version are incapable of making grammatical errors, and presumably therefore Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, and many more writers, ancient and modern, who make the same mistakes too—like Wordsworth:
Now was there bustle in the Vicar’s house And earnest expectation.Wordsworth
The singular verb with a plural nominative cannot be a grammatical error if the Holy Ghost allowed it. The Holy Ghost is one of the three aspects of God that together are called The Trinity, and if God makes this mistake, then it is not a mistake. While we all might make slips or be ignorant of the precise rules of grammar, God cannot, can He?
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
looks to be grossly bad grammar, and put inversely, the verb would have to be plural:
The glory, the power, and the kingdom are thine
“Is thine” just will not do. God or no God, for the reasonable man and woman, there might be occasions when a subtle effect, at variance with grammar, suits some aspect of meaning or feeling that the author is trying to convey better than correct syntax. Wordsworth’s bustle and expectation, though governed by just one verb, are not grouped together. There was a bustle, and there was also an expectation, but this formulation would not scan. And in,
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three,
the authors perhaps considered “these three” to be a unity, and did not want them put into the plural to reduce each separately to a third of the whole. Like The Trinity, each member was as important as all three. So the grammar has the effect of combining:
And now abideth [these three—faith, hope, charity],
and:
And now abideth faith, and abideth hope, and abideth charity, these three.
The result is much more crisp and succinct, and reads better than the ideas intended expressed grammatically. Jol suggests that when the singular verb would be more intense, significant, or comprehensive than the plural verb, because of certain subleties of thought or expectation, it may be used. In general, when the rhythm of the verse or assonance of the sentence requires the grammar to be broken, and the effect is pleasing, the rule may be broken.
Well, it is doubtless true, but it still looks as though the authors were ignorant of grammar—which is hard to accept—or they made a slip, which is possible for us all (except God, of course). The author of the “faith, hope, charity” trinity originally just wrote “faith”, then he or someone else, while the Holy Ghost was off watch, added the other two without changing the number of the verb. Now that we use computers, it is much more common. We decide to make a word into a list and forget the verb.
So let us accept there is no need to defend either fundamentalism or the Holy Ghost to realize that language is not bound by artificial rules, though rules help to stop language decaying into unintelligibility, and, despite them, all of us are prone to simple human error!
