KJV on "which"

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Tue Jun 30 09:02:24 EDT 1998


At 11:07  6/29/98 -0500, Donald W Price wrote:
>Why does the KJV (in Matt. 6:9) render the phrase "ho en tois ouranois"
>as "our Father WHICH art in heaven" instead of "WHO art in heaven" as the
>ASV put it?    

The reason is an English dialectal difference.  While it is not
appropriate today to refer to persons with the relative pronoun
"which," it was acceptable and quite common to use "which" to
refer to persons in Early Modern English.  One of the largest
difficulties people have in interpeting the KJV is in not
realizing to extent to which the English has changed since 1611.
At least when we study the Greek, we are on guard that we can't
just assume what a word means.

Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson                   : Poetry speaks of aspirations,
scarlson at mindspring.com              : and songs chant the words.
http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/ :               -- Shujing 2.35



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