Posted on 11/27/2010 7:12:53 AM PST by re_tail20
A new poll taken for the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible reveals that a majority of those under 35 in the United Kingdom don't even know about the work, which has been described as a significant part of the estimated 100 million Bible sales annually, making it the best best-seller, ever.
"Yet this is a work which was far more influential than Shakespeare in the development and spread of English," a spokesman for the King James Bible Trust told the Christian Institute in a recent report.
The Christian Institute's report said the translation, which will celebrate its 400th anniversary next year, was the subject of a poll commissioned by the Bible Trust, and a spokesman said it was clear "there has been a dramatic drop in knowledge in a generation."
The results revealed that 51 percent of those under 35 never have heard of the King James Bible, compared to 28 percent of those over the age of 35.
The institute reported that Labour Member of Parliament Frank Field said, "It is not possible to comprehend fully Britain's historical, linguistic or religious development without an understanding of this great translation."
According to officials who are working on a series of events marking the 400th year of the King James Bible, work on the translation into English of God's Word started in 1604 at the request of King James I. Work continued on the project until 1611, when the team of 47 of the top Bible scholars of the time finished their work.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
That's not true. I was a child more than 40 years ago, and my parents had Catholic friends and to the best of my recollection they did in fact have a DVR that I personally saw. So there. :)
DRV, that is.
Tyndale was persecuted by the Catholic English monarchy prior to the break with Rome and he was persecuted by the English monarchy that still beleived itself to be Catholic after the break with Rome.
Despite dark, partisan fantasy about some near-total wipeout of Catholics and Catholicism in England as a result of this break, we find at the dawn of the English Civil War, an English King with a Catholic Queen who was quite friendly with the Catholics, you know, those you beleive not to have existed because they were subject to some war intended to wipe them all out ... projection on your part, because this indeed did happen on the Continent, in numerous places.
Cromwell himself was driven to tears of outrage and a desire to extract revenge by the English poet John Milton, who wrote his then-famous sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont in response to reports of excesses perpetrated by papal armies raised to go against another, actual Protestant church in Italy, the Waldenses:
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
Perhaps might be that I have a better and more innate understanding of the historic, religious conflicts of England because so many of my own people lived through it, and it's obviously alien to you, to the point that you have no other recourse than to accept on faith a prettied up account designed to favor your own church?
I also note that you have not responded to my question as to just why the Douay-Rheims was out of print and not selling at all as recently as 1970. Care to address this or is it a "fluke" as well? It almost sounds as if Catholics weren't encouraged to read the Bible as so many have claimed and you've strenuously denied.
Surely that wasn't the case. Elaborate.
Two problems with the King James version:
1. It’s a bad translation.
2. It’s redacted.
Other than that, every Christian should have at least heard of it.
“I acknowledge what’s true.”
lol....you only acknowledge what’s convenient, rarely the whole truth. In a way, that’s the lesson of Rome.
You wrote:
“That’s not true. I was a child more than 40 years ago, and my parents had Catholic friends and to the best of my recollection they did in fact have a DVR that I personally saw. So there.”
I think you need to learn to read English. No Catholic publisher was publishing the DRV in 1970 and only Catholics published the DRV. In 1970 Catholic publishers were publishing the NAB. Most DRVs went out of print in the 40s because of the Confraternity Bible which was published starting in 1941. You might be confusing the fact that the Confraternity used a large chunk of the DRVs OT with the idea that the whole DRV was being published and freely available. It was not.
You wrote:
“lol....you only acknowledge what’s convenient, rarely the whole truth. In a way, that’s the lesson of Rome.”
No, I acknowledge what is true. And you keep failing in post after post.
I’m just reporting what I saw. In my mind’s eye I can even see the DRV designation. I was just a kid. I flipped through it. Big, thick book. Maybe it was a long-held copy from the earlier period of publishing you mentioned. But it was definitely DRV. Sorry.
You wrote:
“... and I’ll walk you back to your ignorance in believing Anglicans to be Protestant. The Church of England never believed itself to be Protestant”
Actually it did and made no bones about it in the 16th century. Also, in America, the Anglican Church became the “Protestant Episcopal Church” after the American Revolution. That names was used I think until the 1970s. Thus, they knew what their roots were. Today some Anglicans try to have it both ways: http://www.christchurchanglican.org/ang_topix/protestant.html
And, if you knew anything about history, you would know that the name “Protestant” is used in the Coronation Service when the King promises to maintain “the Protestant religion as by law established”. “Protetsant” was from the beginning popularly applied to the Anglican beliefs and services. In the Act of Union the Churches of England and Ireland are called “the Protestant Episcopal Church”. Thus, the Anglicans admitted that they were Protestant. Why is it that Protestants don’t know their own history?
Most of the rest of your post is irrelevant.
“I also note that you have not responded to my question as to just why the Douay-Rheims was out of print and not selling at all as recently as 1970.”
False. I did answer it. Look at post 77.
“Care to address this or is it a “fluke” as well?”
No. I already did so.
“It almost sounds as if Catholics weren’t encouraged to read the Bible as so many have claimed and you’ve strenuously denied.”
False. We were encouraged to read the Bible and nothing I said says otherwise.
“Surely that wasn’t the case. Elaborate.”
No. If you can’t read plain English, then no amount of elaboration will matter. If you’re going to claim - falsely - that I never answered questions I did, then no amount of writing on my part will help the tendency of yours.
You wrote:
“I’m just reporting what I saw. In my mind’s eye I can even see the DRV designation. I was just a kid. I flipped through it. Big, thick book. Maybe it was a long-held copy from the earlier period of publishing you mentioned. But it was definitely DRV. Sorry.”
I can believe it was a DRV, but then it was most likely not new.
Odd, isn't it, that the Catholic Church failed where Luther and Tyndale succeeded? The Catholic Church WANTED the common man to know scripture, but just couldn't quite make it happen, while Luther and Tyndale did. Amazing what a good heretic can do, isn't it?
Oh, you done insulted the King’s Bible! All hell gonna’ break out in here now!
***And of course the missing/ abbreviated books.***
No the arn’t. They are right there in my 1599 Geneva.
I'm hoping for a 1911 with tritium sights.
Well, then, I suppose their detesting Martin Luther was rather inexplicable, then.
You don't define your own beliefs very well. Work on that before you start shufflling history around to suit your partisan wants.
Speaking of defining, the State Church of so many colonies redefining itself after a genuinely Protestant revolution that resulted in the disestablishment of same is unsurprising.
Ask a member of the Church of England, in England, if they're Protestant. Have you ever met one? I don't think you have.
Tyndale was already accused of heresy BEFORE he even began his translation so he would not be given permission had he ever asked for it.
And, actually, the common man knew scripture - long before Tyndale or Luther. They when illiterate they knew the stories and their meanings because the Church had taught them and the culture was soaked with scripture: stain glass windows, pauper’s Bibles, Everyman Plays, readings at Mass, the litugical season, etc.
Well, I guess it belongs in the dustbin of history right along with Chaucer and Shakespeare then, lol.
I enjoy reading the KJV above any other because of the sheer beauty and poetry of the language. Archaic? Yes, but then so is the language of our Constitution.
Actually, I do too. But that just stop me from trying to get on people's nerves. ;-D
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