King James Bible History
Why King James I Wanted a New Bible
Marilyn Stewart
Guest Writer
Every baby born in Great Britain in 1953 – the year of Elizabeth II’s coronation – was presented a King James Version Bible, by order of the Queen. British writer Hugh Williams counted the King James Version among the top 50 things every person should know about British history. Literature, movies, and politicians have quoted from it.
Scholars agree, the KJV has left an indelible mark on history.
But when James I, son of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, authorized the translation in his first year of reign, other English translations were readily available. One translation, the groundbreaking Geneva Bible, was widely popular for its illustrations, marginal notes, and comments.
So why did James I call for a new Bible? Why did the new king, whose hands were full keeping peace between the Anglicans and the Puritans, commission yet another translation?
Searching for Middle Ground
After Elizabeth I died in 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I, a sovereign uniting England and Scotland. The religious factions within his realm, however, remained divided.
Trouble began when James I was stopped en route to his London coronation by a Puritan delegation. Buoyed by the status enjoyed by the like-minded Scottish Presbyterians, the Puritans hoped their king would give an ear to their petition for change.
The Anglicans – the Church of England – panicked when James I granted one of the Puritans’ requests, not realizing he acted to avoid the same problems he had experienced with his Presbyterian countrymen. The new king didn’t want trouble.
James I quickly convened the Hampton Court Conference to reconcile the opposing sides. Puritan objections centered on the Book of Common Prayer and practices they considered unbiblical.
It was soon apparent the King sided with the Anglicans. James I rejected the Puritan demands, but it was their loyalty to the Geneva Bible that bothered him most.
Marginal notes in the Geneva Bible challenged the “divine right of kings to rule.” The note to Daniel 6 and the account of Daniel in the lion’s den made it clear that kings should be disobeyed when their commandments don’t conflict with God’s will.
The conference seemed doomed to failure when Puritan leader John Reynolds asked the king to commission a new translation. While Reynolds’ motivation remains unclear, his suggestion broke the impasse.
Renowned British theologian Alister McGrath notes how much was riding on the new translation in his book, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture.
With serious religious tensions growing in England at the time of his accession to the throne, the image of the king giving the Bible to his people was more than a piece of religious theater; it was the essential means by which national unity might be secured at a time of potential fragmentation.
King James I hoped the new translation would unify his kingdom and build a national identity in which he, the Bible, and church stood together.
The Work
Close to 50 scholars were selected from England’s two universities, Cambridge and Oxford, and from the highly educated clergy. Nearly all were from the south of England. The new Bible would have no marginal notes and the team was instructed to consult previous scholarship and translations.
William Tyndale, the master of language whose monumental Greek-to-English translation stoked a fire begun a century earlier by John Wycliffe, was one to whom they turned.
Tyndale’s gifts are evident in the English words he coined, such as “atonement” and “scapegoat,” to translate the biblical Greek. His work was an important step in bringing scripture to the common person. In Fifty Things You Need to Know about British History, Williams states, “For the first time they understood the Christian message in a language that touched their deepest senses.”
Other works used by the commission included Matthew’s Bible of 1537, the Great Bible of 1539, and the Geneva Bible of 1560.
McGrath points out that the King James Version scholars stood “on the shoulders of giants,” followed a trail blazed by others, and passed on a greater work for the generations that followed.
The King James Bible, is therefore, not to be dismissed as a mere tinkering with earlier versions… It is to be seen in the light of the Renaissance approach to human wisdom, in which one generation is nourished and sustained by the intellectual achievements of its predecessors.
The scholars divided into six groups with each assigned a section of scripture. The sections were: Genesis to II Kings; I Chronicles to the Song of Songs; Isaiah to Malachi; the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation; the New Testament letters; and the Apocryphal books.
The work was privately funded due to a depleted royal coffer and the task was completed in seven years. Printing was a highly regulated trade, and the patent was awarded to Robert Barker, the “King’s Printer”.
The King Dethroned?
In a culture grown cold to Christianity, it is sometimes “fashionable” to view the King James Bible as simply beautiful literature, says Williams.
In The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version, C. S. Lewis observed, “A sacred book rejected is like a king dethroned,” and reducing the Bible to literature is to assign it to the “ghost-life of a museum” alongside other classics.
You can read it as literature only by a tour de force. You are cutting the wood against the grain, using the tool for a purpose it was not intended to serve. It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms…
Few people read the Bible for literary reasons, Williams writes. It is, and always will be, a work of Christian worship.” Lewis agreed. Some may claim to read the Bible as “a treasure of English prose,” but “I never happen to meet them… I cannot help suspecting… those who read the Bible as literature do not read the Bible.”
While the Bible cannot be reduced to mere literature, its impact on prose and language through the centuries has been profound, Lewis said.
If English writers… tend to speak of corn and wine rather than of beef and beer and butter… of sheep more often than cows and of the sword more often than either the pike or the gun, if bread rather than mutton or potatoes is their lofty synonym for food, if stone is more poetical than brick, trumpets than bugles, and purple and fine linen loftier than satin and velvet, I suspect that this is due to the Bible…”
The King James translators left for generations of believers a legacy of a well-done translation wrapped in a literary masterpiece. McGrath writes, “… the King James translation is seen to possess a dignity and authority that modern translations somehow fail to convey… Other translations will doubtless jostle for place in the nation’s bookstores in the twenty-first century. Yet the King James Bible retains its place as a literary and religious classic, by which all others continue to be judged.”
Log in or create an account to post a comment.
CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
|