The King James Bible dating from the early 1600s is even mostly
comprehensible today.


Comprehensible, maybe. Believable, no.


You have to go back to the time of Chaucer for
language drift to pose serious problems to an average person.


The English of the early 1600s is indeed not comprehensible to kids
today. I train young products of America's public school system and by
turn of the century standards most are at roughly a fourth or fifth
grade reading level. Catholic school kids actually do better-they are
at roughly the seventh grade. "Honors" English classes in some of
these public schools offer challenges such as Miller, Mailer, and the
incomprehensible Bukowski and Burroughs. Fundie and Mormon education,
sad to confess, is actually better at teaching reading comprehension
and the Mormons at least teach excellent math skills.