Suffering and why it happens
Job asks the question directly and does not get a tidy answer.
- Why is this happening to me?
- How do I keep faith when things fall apart?
- Is there any meaning in what I'm going through?
Spirituality & Mindfulness
Talk to the Bible (King James Version)
The Bible (King James Version) by Various
- 1611 (translation)
- Hebrew, Aramaic, Koine Greek
- Public domain
The most printed book in human history, and for four centuries the one that shaped English prose more than any other. Much of what sounds proverbial in the language came from here first.
It is also not one book. It is a library assembled over roughly a millennium — law, chronicle, poetry, prophecy, letters, gospel — by many hands, in three languages, disagreeing with itself in places, which is part of why it has sustained so much reading.
Bring it a real question. It has been consulted by the frightened, the bereaved and the uncertain for longer than any other text in the West, and it does not respond well to being treated as a quotation machine.
Start here
What you can ask it
Forgiveness and being forgiven
Central to the Gospels, and rarely as simple as it sounds.
- Someone hurt me badly and I can't forgive them.
- How do I forgive myself for something I did?
- Do I have to reconcile with someone who hasn't changed?
Doubt and wrestling with faith
The Psalms complain to God more often than they praise him.
- I'm losing my faith and it frightens me.
- Is it wrong to be angry at God?
- How do I pray when I'm not sure anyone is listening?
Guidance and how to live
Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, and a great deal of practical instruction.
- I have a decision to make and no clarity.
- How do I know what the right thing to do is?
- What am I supposed to do with worry?
Talk to this book
Message the consciousness of The Bible (King James Version)
Ask Various's The Bible (King James Version) a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
- Why is this happening to me?
- Someone hurt me badly and I can't forgive them.
- I'm losing my faith and it frightens me.
What The Bible (King James Version) actually is
The King James Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible, commissioned by James I and completed in 1611 by forty-seven scholars working from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek sources.
It contains the Old Testament, shared in substance with the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament — the Gospels, Acts, the epistles and Revelation. Different traditions include different books; the KJV as originally printed also contained the Apocrypha, which most modern editions omit.
Its influence on English is difficult to overstate. Its cadences run through Lincoln, Melville, Dickens, the American civil rights movement and ordinary speech. It is not the most accurate translation available today — later scholarship had access to older manuscripts — but it remains the most beautiful, and for many readers the most familiar.
In its words
Passages
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and there is no new thing under the sun.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.
Frequently asked
Questions readers ask
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Message the consciousness of The Bible (King James Version)
Ask Various's The Bible (King James Version) a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
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