With a new Texas law in effect allowing time for prayer and reading religious texts in public schools, Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday encouraged students to practice the Lord’s Prayer as relayed in the King James Version of the Bible, marking the latest instance of a Texas public official endorsing Christianity over other faiths.Why the KJV? Because it appeals to old people (👋) who memorized the prayer in that version.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits states from promoting one religion over another, but in a news release asking Texas schools to comply with Senate Bill 11, Paxton called on schoolchildren to consider utilizing prayer time to engage with the Lord’s Prayer “as taught by Jesus Christ.”
I call it idolatry because, as I’ve said before, the KJV is written in another language. Linguists divide English into four languages: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. I defy you to read a transliteration of Beowulf (forget the original runic version. Tolkien could read that, but the rest of us can’t.) It’s English, but not the one you know. Early Modern English is English, but do you know what “zounds” means? How about the “begats” in the KJV, found in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Who says “begat” anymore? Or, for that matter, “covet”?
Honestly, without training in this stuff, it’s gibberish.
“Art” has a meaning in modern English it didn’t in EME. There it was a form of the “to be” verb. It isn’t any more. And “hallowed”? Change that first vowel to an “O,” we might recognize it. “Thy”? “Thigh,” maybe.
It’s the wrong language for us. We might as well recite in the original koine Greek.
Not that Paxton cares. He’s just dangling it like a shiny object for GOP primary voters to peck at. To them it’s a worship object; what the Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly condemn as an “idol.”
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