When I sit down early in the morning for my devotional time I read Sarah Young’s “Jesus Calling,” the writings of The Upper Room Disciplines, and a third little guide, “The Year of the Bible.” This third guide lays out Bible readings for every day of the year which, if followed faithfully, will enable one to read the entire Bible — in chronological order — in a year. (The chronological order feature is what differentiates this guide from all others.)
This is my fourth year of using “Year of the Bible.” I’ve used a different translation each year. This year I pulled my King James Bible from the shelf, the Bible I got when I was in third grade. I was quickly reminded that people who lived 400 years ago talked significantly differently from the way we do today. Not only is the phrasing quite odd, but the words themselves are sometimes ones we don’t even use today. Conversely, a familiar word that we do still use sometimes shows up, but it has a different meaning in the KJV from how we use it today.
To that end, I started tracking some of the more out-of-the-ordinary words. Since this is only February, I’m sure I’ll be running across many more. But here is a sampling of what I’ve run across so far:
1. bason (for “basin”)
2. drave (past tense of “drive”)
3. “For I was an hungred” (no “e” between the “g” and “r”)
4. athirst
5. to day (two words instead of “today”)
6. knops
7. selyedge
8. taches
9. tenons
10. spunge (for “sponge”)
11. brason (made of brass)
12. ouches (as in “set ouches of gold”)
13. habergeon
14. laver (a place to wash)
15. wist not
16. vail (“veil”)
17. “It was noised that he was in the house.”
18. chapiters
19. baken (“baked”)
20. unwashen
21. strakes
22. meteyard
23. spue (“spew”)
24. crookbackt
25. beeves (plural of “beef”)
I’ve read only into Leviticus in the Old Testament and Mark in the New, so I imagine there are many more treasures to be gleaned. It definitely keeps my attention!