Mark 1:10 in 8 translations
7 distinct wordings, grouped by what each translation is trying to do. Differences from the King James text are marked below.
Early modern English
Seventeenth-century wording and sentence shape. Familiar, rhythmic, and the version most quotations you have heard are taken from.
And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:
1611 / 1769 · Public domain · The Authorised Version, revised to the 1769 Blayney text. Includes the Apocrypha as printed in 1611.
Literal, word-for-word
Follows Hebrew and Greek word order and grammar closely, even where the English becomes stiff. Useful for seeing what the underlying sentence is doing.
And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon him:
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And straightway going up from the water, he saw the heavens parting asunder, and the Spirit, as a dove, descending upon him.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
and immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens dividing, and the Spirit as a dove coming down upon him;
1898 · Public domain · The most extreme word-for-word rendering here, keeping Hebrew and Greek tense and word order at the cost of natural English.
Modern English
Contemporary vocabulary and punctuation, aiming for the sentence a present-day reader would write while staying close to the source.
Immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
These 2 editions word this verse identically.
Just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and the Spirit coming down to him like a dove,
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
Simplified English
Built from a deliberately small vocabulary so the sense stays reachable for new readers and non-native speakers. Trades nuance for clarity.
And straight away, coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens broken open and the Spirit coming down on him as a dove:
1949 · Public domain · Written with roughly a thousand basic English words plus a small Bible vocabulary. The plainest reading available here.
What changes between the King James and modern wording
The modern rendering is printed below with every word that differs from the King James text marked, so the actual divergence is visible rather than left for you to spot.
Immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove
Word-for-word swaps
- straightway→Immediately
- of→from
- opened→parting
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.