The way that the Bible reads today, in English, after countless revisions and reformulations, translations and copyings, is so far removed from the original Greek or Aramaic that it's almost inconceivable that the words on the page are even close to what was written two thousand years ago.

The formality of the Bible in English can be in large part attributed to the King James version, and other versions of that time period, where you've got the turmoil of the reformation, with the English King as the head of the Anglican church in opposition to Rome, as well as a relatively tumultuous internal political climate, and so a lot of passages were tweaked around to reinforce royal authority.