Characters and prayer.

[Homer Potvin]

"... For thine is the kingdom..."

There were two Catholic Churches in the town where I grew up in the 80s. One added the "for thine is the kingdom" addendum while the other did not. They were maybe two miles away in with the same people going to both churches.

 

[Mogador]

There were two Catholic Churches in the town where I grew up in the 80s. One added the "for thine is the kingdom" addendum while the other did not. They were maybe two miles away in with the same people going to both churches.

You've had two millenia lads, sort it out.

 

[JLT]

For what its worth:

Every time I've been to a CofE church in recent years the Bibles and the distributed prayers have been decidedly modern. But there are those of us/them for whom it just doesn't go in.

I'm in agreement with Robert Clairborne that, while the King James version of the Bible uses archaic grammar and syntax that appear unfamiliar to the modern ear, its value as poetry cannot be slighted. He quotes the passage in Ruth where she is replying to Naomi's request that she return to her own people:

Entreat me not to leave thee
Or to return from following after the,
For whither thou goest,I will go
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
Thy people shall be my people,
And thy God, my God;
Where thou diest, will I die
And there I will be buried.

Here's the NIV version:

Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God;Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.

The words are there, but the poetry is gone. The parallel structure of the original Hebrew is discarded, and its diversion from that structure in the last line "And there will I be buried" serves as a sort of coda, abruptly switching from the active voice to the passive voice.

 

[Pyroglyphian]

I don't have a problem with it, Rath. At least, I don't think, on its own, it would detract from my enjoyment of the book.

I think you’ve hit on an interesting point, though – interpreting feedback is a bit of a skill in itself.

For example:

one beta reader commented that it sounds tiresome.

It could be that this aspect of your work is universally tiresome, but it could also just mean that this one individual found it so, and there could be many reasons why. Perhaps they had endured a stressful day at work and just wanted to unwind with something completely un-taxing. Perhaps they were hungry. Perhaps they live in an apartment block and were distracted by next-door neighbours putting up new shelves, drilling and hammering on the wall, and so on.

If a few thees and thines can derail the experience, how would they fare with Paradise Lost? Perhaps it's not the right book for them – at least at this point. It took me three attempts to read Naked Lunch, and on the third, it became (and remains) one of my favourite books. In hindsight, the first two attempts were warm-ups.