Robert, 埃及, 霍金, Baby

沙文

在霍金的 "Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays"這本書，他在其中一篇"Childhood"中憶述他的童年。霍金的家庭教師 Robert Graves 用創世記和出埃及記作為教材，教授優美文雅的英語。
小霍金覺得King James譯本聖經的英語有個奇怪的地方 -- 常常用And作為句子開首。自King James時代之後的英語已改變這種句子結構了。然則，為何我們要用King James聖經來學習優美文雅的英語呀？

"He therefore set us to read a chapter of the Bible each day and write a piece on it. The idea was to teach us the beauty of the English language. We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time."

沙文跟霍金的智慧相差一段距離，霍金在十歲時看出聖經的優美文雅英語有些疑問，我沒能看出來。但長大後，我終於能發現另一處聖經英語奇怪之處：

Jhn 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
12:26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.

為什麼corn和any man的Present-tense不是用3rd-Person Singular的呢？用KJV學優美文雅的英語，究竟行不行的啦？