THE BIBLE FOR THE DUMB

The Princeton Review educational testing service measured one indicator of the historical decline of comprehension by the American public by comparing the vocabulary used by Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in their televised debate of 1960 with the vocabulary used by Bill Clinton and George Bush in their 1992 debate. Their study found that the level of vocabulary in the presidential debates had slipped from a tenth-grade reading level in 1960 to a sixth-grade level in 1992. (Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had debated at an eleventh-grade level in 1858.)  

By the year 2000, things were worse: In the debates of that year, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7); Al Gore spoke at a high seventh-grade level (7.9). (from The Hoover Institution)

The Hoover Institution went on to say, "Our contemporary politicians, who find it necessary to speak to us as sixth and seventh graders, in turn, looked sophomoric when compared to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, whose scores in their debates, respectively, were 11.2 and 12.0 in 1858." 

In my humble opinion, things have sunk so low that our current vice president Kamala Harris speaks at an infuriating condescending level to adults that's too low to measure on the Princeton scale. It's so bad that if I had ever given a speech like she does in my junior high school English classes or my high school speech class, my grade would have been an "F" and rightly so. 

There's no doubt that the American public has been and is being dumbed down year by year. My own personal indicator is a question I often ask people since it's connected with my book, "Truthspeak," a book whose intellectual roots are the novel, "1984" by George Orwell. The answer to my question, "Are you familiar with the book, "1984?" is, much more often than not,"No." It's come to be a classic work few today have read or heard of. 

And this brings us to a Bible called "The Living Bible." It's a paraphrase by Dr. Kenneth N. Taylor. It's important, as you will see, to note that it's a paraphrase.

One reviewer wrote about "The Living Bible,' "The growing popularity of the Living Bible was one of many signs of the dumbing-down of American English that took place during the twentieth century. The trend was noticed by linguists as early as 1931, when Edward Sapir observed that the technology of mass communication has led to 'the insidious cheapening of literary and artistic values due to the foreseen and economically advantageous ‘widening of the appeal.’ All [linguistic] effects which demand a certain intimacy of understanding tend to become difficult and are therefore avoided.”  The rate of decline accelerated during the 1960’s and 70’s.

"Taylor’s method and its 'exciting results' involved the dumbing-down of the biblical text to a grade-school level, and this was in keeping with the linguistic and educational trends of the time." 

 

A "Bible" on the grade school level for adults? When the child becomes a young adult and goes to college, the odds are that he will look upon the Bible as a puerile book, a book meant for children, not adults. He will put it on the level just a bit above "Dick and Jane Go to the Farm." He will never know the depth of the Gospel of John nor the intellectual heft of Paul's epistles.

Besides that, there's an inherent danger in all paraphrases: there is no way that the one doing the paraphrasing can keep his own proclivities, opinions, and doctrines out of his work. It is impossible and there's no way around it. It will invariably happen. Therefore, the Bible will not be allowed to speak for itself. The paraphraser becomes the fallible human filter through which the Word of God must flow.

Avoid the paraphrase. Choose a translation such as "The New American Standard Bible." But no, never a paraphrase.