Reasons for the KJV's Durability

The following excerpts are taken from Barton Swain's article, "God's English: The Making and Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611-2011," in the May/June issue of Touchstone:

First, they [the translators of the KJV] understood, far better than modern translators have, the importance of rhythm in language. This is partly because learned men of the seventeenth century were steeped in written languages - English and Latin, but also Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish - to a degree that even the best educated cannot match now. They understood the dynamics of poetry: Andrewes was himself a brilliant poet, but the others, too, would have been deeply familiar with ancient and modern meters.

Equally important is the fact that the King James translators knew that their renderings would be heard even more than they would be read. The great preponderance of parishioners in early seventeenth-century England were partly or wholly illiterate, and for that reason the translators were careful to make their sentences easy to read aloud. Time and again the KJV's language falls into a snappy iambic cadence that rolls off the tongue....

One of the principal reasons the King James Bible has achieved such astonishing durability is that its diction captures the gravity and splendor one feels God's words deserve....