To my great regret, I have been able to follow this interesting thread only by reading for much of this week and even now must reply shortly. Please over look any curtness that arises from brevity.
A great deal of old rhetorical style in English derived from Greek theories of good speaking, or oratory:
Vir bonus dicendi peritus est. "The good man is skilled in speech", Quintilian.
Many of our habits still reflect some of those values, even without the influence of school teachers. Churchill used the 'rule of three' in many of his stirring wartime speeches. John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address is a model of Greek rhetoric. The first chapter of one of Hemingway's novels can be thoroughly analysed for its structure using the old pattern for organising a speech.--Yes, Hemingway, father of allegedly of pity modern style in American novels.
The Renaissance come about in part with the rediscovery of Greek. And so the men who translated the King James Bible were also men highly schooled in the latest ideas about language. The melifluous style and tone of the King James derives from this common sense among the translators of what was beautiful lanaguage. (And is why some modern translations, which are techically correct as translations, seem to lack "poetry.")
Language, as
Rimbaud has said, is all about pattern and structure. It is the very repetition of patterns--and then their variations and deviations--that makes meaning, as
Fordim has argued here. I think it is very perceptive of Fordim to make this argument about the archaic language, for usually it is related to the heroic narratives Tolkien harkened to.
But, alas, I must fly. I hope no one calls me a fool for it!
