Mark 8:19 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.
When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.
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.
When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve.
1901 · Public domain · The American revision of the English Revised Version. Deliberately literal, and the base text behind several later translations.
When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many hand-baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say to him, Twelve.
1890 · Public domain · John Nelson Darby's translation, made for close study rather than public reading. Often exposes grammatical detail other versions smooth over.
When the five loaves I did brake to the five thousand, how many hand-baskets full of broken pieces took ye up?' they say to him, `Twelve.'
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.
When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They told him, “Twelve.”
2000s · Public domain · A modern-English update of the ASV. Reads close to contemporary speech while staying in the literal tradition. Includes the Apocrypha.
when I broke up the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets of broken pieces you picked up?” “Twelve,” they said.
in progress · Public domain (CC0) · A modern open-licensed translation, still being completed. Some Old Testament books are not yet available.
when I broke up the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets of broken pieces you picked up?’ ‘Twelve,’ they said.
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.
When I made a division of the five cakes of bread among the five thousand, what number of baskets full of broken bits did you take up? They said to him, Twelve.
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.
When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They told him, Twelve.
Word-for-word swaps
- brake→broke
- ye→broken
- unto→told
The verses either side
King James text. A comparison is easier to judge when you can see the sentence the verse sits inside.