The 21st Century King James Version is a minor update of the King James Version. However, unlike the New King James Version, it does not alter the language significantly from the 1611 version, retaining Jacobean grammar (including "thee" and "thou"), but it does attempt to replace some of the vocabulary which no longer would make sense to a modern reader.
An example from Ezra 9:3
|
King James Version |
...and sat down astonied. |
|
21st Century King James Version |
....and sat down stunned. |
Another example from the Gospel of Luke 11:27
|
King James Version |
...the paps which thou hast sucked". |
|
21st Century King James Version |
....the breasts which thou hast sucked". |
The 21st Century King James Version is also known for its formatting. Passages considered "more familiar" are in bold print, while "less familiar" passages are placed in a sans-serif print. Passages from the Revised Common Lectionary are marked with diamonds, and the translations of names are sometimes included with brackets.
The 21st Century King James Version has also been released in an edition with the Apocrypha and without the unusual formatting; this is known as the Third Millennium Bible.
Famous quotes containing the words century, king and/or version:
“Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them.”
—17th century English proverb, collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)
“But the lightning which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him. On one side elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotised by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for creative change.”
—Robert Hewison (b. 1943)