Even atheist Richard Dawkins likes the KJV!

This article was published in a British magazine just before Christmas 2010. The famous atheist understands the cultural, literary, and poetic value of the world's most important Bible.

Deuteronomy 8:3

Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.

Volunteers reading out the entire KJV in March

News update related to the 400th anniversary...

This is so very cool. A group of people in Bath, England, will be doing a public read-aloud of the entire KJV from March 1-5, 2011. Check out this story from yesterday's London Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/23/king-james-bible-reading-bath

It would be marvelous if we could do something similar in other parts of the world, and here in the U.S.

Burying Bibles

I have buried a lot of Bibles in the last decade—Bibles that are leftover after our summer church fair. That’s what you’re supposed to do with no-longer-needed holy books. At the end of the fair, I carry the leftovers home and get the tall shovel out of the shed. Using the heel of my right shoe, I thrust its blade deep into the soil and make a hole large enough for a dead pet. In they go.
In fact, each of the three monotheistic faiths practice some form of this. There are a series of underground tunnels in the Chiltan Hills near Quetta, Pakistan, where nearly 100,000 discarded and partial Qur’ans are carefully packed in bags, buried (which they actually call “storing” in a hopeful sort of way), and then watched over by devout Muslims who feel called to the sacred task. The first of these many tunnels was dug in 1992 and measures 130 feet in length, and is about seven feet in circumference.
On a much less impressive scale, someday someone will buy my old house, dig up the rear part of the garden (look to the area closest to the shed, near the remnants of last year’s tomato plants), and likely scratch their heads at what they find about twenty-two inches down.

A wholesome tongue is a tree of life

A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit. -Proverbs 15:4

One more thought on Dr. King

Still thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr., this week...
Dr. King was a powerful example of how the KJV can shape us. As he knew very well, nearly every time that the word “servant” appears in the Old or New Testaments of the KJV it means “slave.” It’s a confusing blessing. On the one hand, there are numerous slaves spoken of in Scripture in ways that clearly condones the practice of keeping humans in servitude to a master; on the other hand, Jesus speaks of himself as a servant/slave (see Matthew 12:18) and he praises the lowliness of the servant/slave as the prime example of one his followers (Matthew 23:11). What to do with these contradictions?
The prophetic language of the KJV helped spur on the Civil Rights Movement. The words and cadences of the original translation entered American living rooms for two decades in one of the most tumultuous periods of the twentieth century. King James’s old Bible has the power to affect us still today, put to work in the life of someone like Dr. King, but perhaps even more broadly, in the lives of all of us.

Dr. King and the KJV

In Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, on the Mall in Washington, he said: “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The reference is to the King James Bible’s Amos 5:24: “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Dr. King always quoted from the KJV.
He also rang out with “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” He was quoting Isaiah 40:4, which then continues, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.”

Bard vs. Bible -- Believe

BELIEVE

Before my God, I might not this believe
without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.
Hamlet I, 1

Blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of
those things which were told her from the Lord.
Luke 1:45

Bard vs. Bible -- Lies

William Shakespeare--who lived at the time that the KJV was translated and first published--is the next most often quoted source in English literature, after the King James Bible. This is the first in a series of, Which is better, Bard or Bible?

LIES

Doubt the equivocation of the fiend
that lies like truth.
Macbeth, V, 5

Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery.
You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth.
Psalm 52:2-3

Common Misconceptions about the King James Bible

You may have heard that 2011 marks the 400^th anniversary since the original publication of the King James Bible. So what? The KJV (King James Version) is not simply a Bible, it is the Bible that has influenced the English-speaking world more than any other.

There are, however, several, popular, mistaken notions about this book. First of all, it was not the first English translation of the Bible. Several came before it—including a famous one by a guy named Wycliffe, and another by a man who was burnt at the stack for translating the Bible into the vernacular: Tyndale.

Second, King James did none of the work. He appointed someone who then assembled a series of translation committees made up of scholars and poets who did the work.

Third, there is no record of King James ever actually authorizing the KJV for use in the churches of England, once it was completed, making it all the more odd that the KJV is also often referred to as the “Authorized Version.” That’s what my grandfathers called it.

"Let thy words be few"

Surely this is a KJV line that no blogger has ever followed!

It comes from Ecclesiastes 5:2 and was a favorite phrase of George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Quaker movement in England and later, in America. He quoted it often, using it to buttress Quaker ideas of silence, holy listening, and just plain shutting up.

We could all use a bit of "Let thy words be few" today.

Reason #1 to Like the KJV

There is no Bible translation that has a larger impact on the culture, language, and worldview of English-speaking people--than the King James Bible. Read it this year--2011, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its first publication--and you will hear echoes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Join me, here, this year, as we read together and discuss what makes the KJV special.