This isn’t my usual kind of post. Let me give you some background and you can decide whether you want to read it or go do some laundry.

I’ve been a member of a private interfaith forum for nearly 15 years. Discussions there lean toward debate of a scholarly and academic nature. It’s common to see posts with footnotes and citations. Late last year, one of the members posited a world where Christianity never caught on the way it did in our reality. While many responses to this concept discussed socioeconomic or cultural changes, my brain went immediately to the immense pool of phrases that would be nonexistent because the King James Version of the Bible would never have been created. I started poking around the internet for source material.

That’s how I found this blog. Whaddaya know; Erin Roof already wrote this post for me. (Well, no, not really, but yes, it’s this post. Just that she wrote it. Already. ::coughs:: )
I hope you’ll click through and read her entry, because I honestly can’t say it much better than she. Differently, sure, but not better. I will, however, give you a sampling of what we’d be missing if there were no KJV in our world.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. (Admit it. You thought this came from Abe Lincoln, didn’t you.)
Out of the mouths of babes.
Cast not your pearls before swine.
Walk on water.
Blessed are the peacemakers. (I ask you, where would “The Life of Brian” be without the KJV? “Blessed are the cheesemakers?”)
Beat swords into plowshares.
Good Samaritan (Think of all the hospitals that would have to be renamed!)

Ms. Roof also points out in her blog entry that no less prestigious a periodical than the National Geographic has printed an article about this subject (December 2011). And here I thought I was really onto something unusual. Not. Heh. That’s okay. It was still a very enlightening rabbit hole to explore.

Besides, there are so many related issues to the non-importance of Christianity. Take the printing press, for example . . . well, that’s really another blog type entirely, isn’t it.

To every thing there is a season. (No, the Byrds didn’t write that lyric.)