Posted on 07/08/2011 8:20:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If every committee did such impressive work, committees wouldn’t have a bad name.
Four hundred years ago, King James of England commissioned several dozen scholars to update and improve on prior translations of the Bible into English. Their handiwork — known as the King James Version — put an indelible stamp on the English language and on the Anglo-American mind.
The prodigious task took roughly six years. Just printing it was an undertaking. Initially, a typo appeared on average once every ten pages of text. One edition was called the “Wicked Bible” when the word “not” was accidentally left out of the admonition, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
Typographical struggles aside, the translation was inspired and came to seem almost unimprovable. It culled from prior English translations, forging a synthesis that rose at times to the level of poetry. As Benson Bobrick notes in his history of the Bible in English, Wide as the Waters, the King James Version stayed true to Hebraic turns of expression and kept language that was already archaic in the 17th century.
All of this gave it a majestic lift that swept away all competition in both England and America. One historian has written that “its victory was so complete that its text acquired a sanctity properly ascribable only to the unmediated voice of God; to multitudes of English-speaking Christians it has seemed little less than blasphemy to tamper with its words.”
An archbishop of Dublin scandalized a conference of clergy in the 19th century when he said of the King James Version, “Never forget, gentlemen, that this is not the Bible.” They needed reminding it was only a translation of the Bible.
The ascendant King James Version had a profound influence on the language. As Alister McGrath writes in his book In the Beginning, “It did not follow literary trends; it established them.” It made commonplaces of phrases that we have forgotten are biblical in origin: “to fall flat on his face,” “to pour out one’s heart,” “under the sun,” “sour grapes,” “pride goes before a fall,” “the salt of the earth,” and on and on. Without it, McGrath reckons, “there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim’s Progress, no Handel’s Messiah, no Negro Spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address.”
The mere act of translating the Bible from Latin into the vernacular was a victory for freedom. According to Bobrick, “The first question ever asked by an Inquisitor of a ‘heretic’ was whether he knew any part of the Bible in his own tongue.”
Visionaries like John Wycliffe championed an English version of the Bible in the 14th century when even the clergy didn’t read it much. A proto-Reformation figure, Wycliffe was posthumously declared a heretic, his remains dug up and burned. William Tyndale, whose translation would become the basis of much of the King James Version, had to flee England and was eventually arrested by the authorities, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.
The availability of the Bible in English, Bobrick notes, fostered commercial printing and a culture of reading. It created space for people — ordinary people, needing no official sanction or filter — to read and think about their faith and life’s profoundest questions. Ultimately, that undermined the authority of, to take another phrase from the King James Version (Romans 13:1), “the powers that be.”
“Free discussions about the authority of Church and state,” Bobrick argues, “fostered concepts of constitutional government in England, which in turn were the indispensable prerequisites for the American colonial revolt. Without the vernacular Bible — and the English Bible in particular, through its impact on the reformation of English politics — there could not have been democracy as we know it.”
The translators of the King James Version stated their “desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood of the very vulgar.” In a cultural triumph difficult to imagine 400 years later, it not only found a wide audience, but elevated it.
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.
Cool post, but the Geneva Bible changed the world. That was the one William Bradford was strangled and burned by the Catholic Church for translating. It was also the one that the Pilgrims brought to the New World. King James saw the writing on the wall so to speak. The Gospel could no longer be hid.
Haha Bradford! Tyndale! Although Bradford had one!
I recognize that there is a place for the newer translations. But the phrases that have become part of the American culture and lexicon are from the KJV.
I do not believe that a modern American can consider themselves literate unless they have read the KJV, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.
Commisioned Translators eh? Don’t you mean imprisoned Jews? Because that is what happened. Strange how history rewrites itself.
RE: Don’t you mean imprisoned Jews?
What did the translators have to do with imprisoned Jews again?
(1) The translators of the Geneva Bible were William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.
(2) William Bradford probably owned several, but that's about as much as he had to do with the translation.He also died of natural causes.
(3) Myles Coverdale also died of natural causes. William Tyndale was executed, not by the Catholic Church, but by the city fathers of Antwerp at the behest of the Protestant King of England, Henry VIII.
Tyndale was living in Belgium in the first place to avoid him.
Okay, one modification to that statement:
At a bare minimum, they have to have read the Pentateuch, Psalms, the Gospels, and Revelations. Hundreds of common phrases and words are found there, and without at least that much background, I don't think a person can call themselves literate.
Yeah, they can skim the "begats". :)
I feel just as you do. There may be some slight difficulty in understanding the language of King James, but it is very slight. Unless one is pitifully uneducated, there should never be any difficulty in understanding the beautiful language of that day. If any scripture is read at my passing, my only wish is that it be presented in the language of King James.
I believe he said Bradford was executed by the Catholic church and not Tyndale.
He changed his mind in his subsequent post and said he meant Tyndale.
I like the KJV. I find its archaic English more dignified, somehow. Even though it was supposed to be for the ‘vulgar’ in its time.
the only problem is that Early Modern English like Shakespeare or the KJV is increasingly different from the English spoken today — and exceptionally different from modern American.
Actually, they are found in other translations as well
The AV certainly was a monumental work and over the years as the translators said it has been revisited and many errors corrected, hence later additions and new translations.
The message from the translators in the front of many editions makes interesting reading.
“Peace on Earth, Good will to men” has now been so obliterated in the new translations that it is unmemorable. I prefer King James still.
“William Tyndale was executed, not by the Catholic Church, but by the city fathers of Antwerp at the behest of the Protestant King of England, Henry VIII.”
False. Tyndale was found guilty of heresy by the Catholic Church, which was convenient because the penalty for heresy was death. The civil authorities killed Tyndale by strangling, then burning, by the decision of the Catholic Church.
Tyndale fled England because it was more dangerous to translate there than in Europe, since in 1408, the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury had made it illegal to translate into the vernacular without permission. And until Thomas More fell from favor, it was deadly to be a Protestant in England - “Saint” Thomas More pursued ‘heretics’ and had them tortured and killed at an unprecedented rate.
However, with his fall from favor, King Henry VIII was not inclined to kill Tyndale. In fact, in August of 1535, Cromwell was given permission to write letters asking for clemency for Tyndale by the King’s authority. The appeal was turned down.
Sorry, but the responsibility for Tyndale’s death lies as the feet of the Catholic Church.
“As an American English speaker, and raised during the 50’s and 60’s, the King James Version has always been, and will always remain, “The Bible” to me and my family.”
Zondervan has published a 400th aniversary edition of the ORIGINAL KJV complete with OLD ENGLISH lettering, a beautiful bible. No wonder the Geneva Bible remained popular for quite a few years.
You can get one at Walmart for $5.00.
Well, generally, the modern-English translations have been scrubbed of the archaic usage ("thee", "Thou", "shalt"), older vocabulary, and often the phrase structure is rearranged. While this enhances the "readability" by most people, it not only removes the poetic sound and feel of the KJV, but it no longer reflects the idiomatic or cultural reference use, so a lot of common references go whizzing over the heads of the modern folks because they don't recognize them. I think that is a profound loss to the language and culture.
***Commisioned Translators eh? Don’t you mean imprisoned Jews? ***
Please feel free to point out those imprisoned Jews!
THE KING JAMES VERSION TRANSLATORS
I. The First Westminister Company—translated the historical books, beginning with Genesis and ending with the Second Book of Kings.
Dr. Lancelot Andrews
Dr. John Overall
Dr. Hadrian Saravia
Dr. Richard Clarke, Dr. John Laifield, Dr. Robert Tighe, Francis Burleigh, Geoffry King, Richard Thompson
Dr. William Bedwell
II. The Cambridge Company—translated Chronicles to the end of the Song of Songs.
Edward Lively, Dr. John Richardson, Dr. Lawrence Chaderton
Francis Dillingham, Dr. Roger Andrews, Thomas Harrison, Dr. Robert Spaulding, Dr. Andrew Bing
III. The Oxford Company—translated beginning of Isaiah to the end of the Old Testament.
Dr. John Harding, Dr. John Reynolds
Dr. Thomas Holland, Dr. Richard Kilby
Dr. Miles Smith, Dr. Richard Brett, Daniel Fairclough
IV. The Second Oxford Company—translated the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
Dr. Thomas Ravis, Dr. George Abbot
Dr. Richard Eedes, Dr. Giles Tomson, Sir Henry Savile
Dr. John Peryn, Dr. Ralph Ravens, Dr. John Harmar
V. The Fifth Company of Translators at Westminster—translated all of the Epistles of the New Testament
The fifth company of translators at Westminster are all found at this link
Dr. William Barlow
Dr. John Spencer
Dr. Roger Fenton
Dr. Ralph Hutchinson
William Dakins
Michael Rabbet
[Thomas(?)] Sanderson
VI. The Sixth Company of Translators at Cambridge translated the apocryphal books. The King James translators did not consider the Apocrypha to be scripture and neither did King James—see, Alexander McClure on the Apocryphal committee and Why the Apocrypha is not is the Bible.
Dr. John Duport, Dr. William Brainthwaite, Dr. Jeremiah Radcliffe
Dr. Samuel Ward
Dr. Andrew Downes, John Bois
Dr. John Ward, Dr. John Aglionby, Dr. Leonard Hutten
Dr. Thomas Bilson, Dr. Richard Bancroft
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