Why the KJV?

[MidnightSoul]

Could you all explain to me why Paramahansa Yogananda used the King James Version of the Bible? It's a difficult translation for me to read, but I know it is the basis for The Second Coming. In my visit to a particular SRF temple, I saw several KJV's lying about. I'm just wondering why this version was used by PY and is used by SRF today. Thanks!

[MidnightSoul]

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[Jon of the Mist]

He liked the poetic cadence of older English and knew that version was widely used in the United States and the west during that time period. There was enough information in it to relate to Yogic teachings. Also Sri Yukteswar used it as the basis of comparing Vedic precepts to common Christian theology which have hidden metaphysical meanings, unknown to the average Christian.

[Draupadi]

On page xxxi (footnote) of "The Second Coming” you find further explanation:

For his commentaries on the Gospels, Paramahansa Yogananda used the King James translation (the “Authorized Version” of 1611). Reynolds Price, Professor of English at Duke University, has compared the King James Bible with later English translations of the original Greek text of the Gospels. In Three Gospels (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997) he writes: “We now have in English several popular versions of the gospels that constitute what are well–intended but almost certainly major distortions of their originals…King James’s translators proceeded under a single guiding principle (one word of the original in the fewest equivalent words of English, with the preservation when possible of at least some suggestion of the Greek word order)…
“Five minutes spent even today in the Bible section of an ordinary bookstore will show that no later version has equalled the King James in popularity; and in many concourses on ‘The Bible as Literature.’ And while it is customary to say that such enduring popularity derives from the King Jame’s sonorous diction and stately syntax – the diction of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson – a close comparison of its language to that of the originals will very often show that the power and memorability of the King James is an almost automatic result of its loyal adherence to principles of literalness and the avoidance of paraphrase. Nearly four centuries of Greekless readers have sensed, unconsciously perhaps but with considerable accuracy, that…the language of the King James is truer to its strange originals than any of its successors.” (Publisher’s Note)

[rasa]

For those who struggle with the KJV, there is now an illustrated version.

[Draupadi]

If you just look to Mattew 6,22.

King James Bible reads: "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

This sentence is widely used by Yogananda to stress the importance of the single, the third eye.

He would not be able to do that, had he used a newer edition of the bible. Today through all languages "single" is replaced by "clear", "healthy" "good", which is already a crude interpretation.

In the Latin original, Vulgata, you find "simplex" which means "single".

[lightseekingyak]

According to Strong's bible concordance the greek word was "haplous" which properly means "folded together, i.e. single."

"Folded together" is a significant definition as Master says that our eyes should be lifted when we concentrate on the spiritual eye to bring the energies that are flowing out of them together thus interiorizing them in the [single] spiritual eye.

Other translations have come up with other words for lack of understanding what is truly meant. They take it as figurative so they try clarifying by using words such as "clear", "healthy", or "good". But when we translate the original Greek, Yogananda shows a clear understanding that this is more literal than figurative.

Personally I use a the New International Version the most and have found little conflict between it and the KJV, but I do always keep a KJV along with Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance to aid in my study when questions such as this arise.