Mark 1:6 in 8 translations
8 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 John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;
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 John was clothed with camel`s hair, and [had] a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
And John was clothed in camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins, and ate locusts and wild honey.
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 John was clothed with camel's hair, and a girdle of skin around his loins, and eating locusts and honey of the field,
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.
John was clothed with camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
John wore clothes made of camels’ hair, with a leather strap around his waist, and lived on locusts and wild honey;
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
John wore clothes made of camels’ hair, with a leather strap round his waist, and lived on locusts and wild honey;
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · The Commonwealth spelling edition of the Open English Bible. Identical wording to the US edition apart from spelling.
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 John was clothed in camel's hair, with a leather band about him; and his food was locusts and honey.
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.
John was clothed with camel’s hair, and a leather belt around his waist. he ate locusts and wild honey;
Word-for-word swaps
- about→leather
- and→waist
- eat→ate
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.