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Hi Cottons, just a thought. You said:
"The words are translated literally, and they are translated word for word (the King James Version that is)."
The Bible is far from being translated literally and never has been. For one thing, subsequent copies of the same bible texts in the same language contain differences, those that are translated to another language are even worse.
In the KJ bible, the translators chose (actually decided) to translate the bible into the kind of english used in britain a hundred+ years before the translation began. The idea behind this was to try to give it weight and an 'old feeling'. All the thee's, thou's and all the rest of it were additions that weren't in the original texts and changed them substantially - not just in structure but in some places meaning too, as the grammar is completly different. This is one reason there's so much inter-faith debate about particular phrases and events in the Bible, as if you read the original texts it says one thing, the bible another.
Also, as in some cases the translators were working with idioms they truly didn't understand they simply made up what seemed appropriate to fill in the gaps. There are a lot of translator errors, the most famous being that 666 is the 'number of the beast'. In fact in the original text(s) it was (I seem to remember) 617 in one and 672 in another.
We've also got different testimonies from the Apostles about the same events too. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are notoriously hard to align as they all describe events in Jesus' with different facts, so it's hard to know which one is right.
If you get a chance, get the direct translation texts from the DSScrolls library, you'll see the originals were written in a far more modern sounding way than what you see in the bible now. It's never been a word for word translation.
MelT
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