The KJV Study Blog

As I've been playing around with this blog during the last few weeks, I've been faced with the choice of writing entries that are timely versus entries that are timeless. Timely entries focus on the cutting edge of life as it unfolds right now. The payoff: It's generally more interesting for the reader. The problem: It becomes quickly outdated. Take my "Death of a modern caveman" entry, for example, in which I referenced FedEx and Geico commercials involving cavemen.

The alternative is to write in a style that has a timeless quality. An example of this could be my entry on "The day my dog flew." Your offspring could read this entry in 100 years and still get the essence of what I was saying. It was sufficiently vague in its references to my current situation and it also touched on general themes of the human experience (e.g., We know how it feels to be powerless in embarrassing situations.). Writing in this timeless fashion makes me more readable to future generations, but it also loses a sense of "life-as-it-is-happening-now." I want to capture that too. What can be done to resolve this tension? How can blog entries be made timely and timeless?

Infomercial Announcer (in blue): Do your blog readers fall asleep when you write about general themes without reference to current events? [Footage: Man falling asleep in front of computer.]

Do your friends struggle to interpret your pop culture references when they read your blog entries from last year? [Footage: Woman pulling her hair out in frustration while looking at computer monitor.]

Struggle no more. Introducing (strategic pause) the all new Study Blog! [Footage: An attractive, smiling woman seated in an oversized chair. She is reading from a laptop computer.] This revolutionary development will forever change the way your blogs are read. This patented and innovative design features annotated study notes on the bottom of each entry to help readers make perfect sense of even your most obscure references!

Testimonial: [Footage: A grandfather-type who removes his bifocals before addressing the camera with his slow, smoker's voice.] "Well, I'm 72 years old, and I read blogs better now than when I was 70. I didn't know what my grandson meant by DDR, but now I do, and I can tell you, the Study Blog really works."

Okay, I won't beat the commercial thing to death (anymore than I just did). But, it did get me thinking about parallels between my study blog idea and many of the Study Bibles sold today. In turn, this got me thinking about how some people might feel more comfortable reading my blog if it were written in the language of the King James Version. In other words, I might be able to combine the best of some Study Bibles by including both annotated study helps and the majesty of the 1611 tongue. Let's see how this might play out. My post on "The day my dog flew" might start something like this:

If thou werest to goest unto mine past sleepy neighborhood in Bartow, Florida, thou wouldst hath seen little evidence with thine own eyes that I had livest there. Thou mightest, I say unto you, hath foundeth a baseball rotting atop a neighbor's patio roof, and if thou werest to hath diggeth deeply enough--thou sick fiend--thou mightest hath foundeth a dead dog that hath been verily buriethed in the backyardeth of my former houseth. But it cameth to passeth in the summer of 1987 that my doggeth wuth very mucheth aliveth and thateth it...

Okay, now for the study notes. This one could go a number of different directions, but I'll limit my discussion to only two possibilities.

First, a sample study note in the tradition of the NIV or KJV Study Bible published by Zondervan: "The word livest in the first line is taken from the Greek term, zoe, which means life. When Raul writes about living, it is usually done in reference to a specific geographical location. Such living is stated in contrast to death, or thanatos, in the Greek. For more on this notion of death, see the reference to 'kill' found in the 3rd line of the 'being square' blog entry and also the entry on the 'death' of a modern caveman." This would be a bit dry, but it would also be the best approach for explaining obscure cultural references, such as to the Avacor commercial alluded to in the above testimonial. Oh, you didn't catch that the first time through? Ah, now you see the need for annotated comments.

A second direction these notes could head would to be in the tradition of the Life Application Study Bible, also published by Zondervan. "A central theme in this passage is that of finding. We should try more than ever to find what is most important in life. We can do this most effectively by asking ourselves these two questions: (1) What is it that I'm looking for in life?, and (2) Am I finding what I'm looking for? If you struggle to answer these questions, then consider asking someone to help you find yourself."

This may all seem like a lot of work right now, but perhaps there will be a payoff when future generations make better sense of what thou and I didst meaneth when we bloggethed.