The Translators to the Reader

That's how the preface was titled in the original 1611 KJV. I love this part:

"The Scriptures we are commanded to search (John 5:39, Isa. 8:20). They are commended that searched and studied them (Acts 17:11 and 8:28-9). They are reproved that were unskilful in them, or slow to believe them (Matt. 22:29, Luke 24:25). They can make us wise unto salvation (2 Tim. 3:15). If we be ignorant, they will instruct us; if out of the way, they will bring us home; if out of order, they will reform us; if in heaviness, comfort us; if dull, quicken us; if cold, inflame us."

Fav words in the King James Bible

zeal (n.)—an earnest emotion that can be enlightened (2 Corinthians 7:11) but also misguided or arrogant, driving the will, as when Paul remembers his former life: “Concerning zeal, persecuting the church” (Philippians 3:6), or in Romans 10:2, “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”

First 57 pages

If you haven't already read Verily, Verily and would like a sneak peek, the publisher has generously placed the first 57 pages of the book in PDF form up on its website. You can see it here.

Excellent book

I am reading and reviewing The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today, by David Norton (Cambridge University Press, just published in paperback March 2011) for a piece to come soon in the Christian Century. I highly recommend Norton's book. It covers much of the same material as my Verily, Verily, but adds to the historical story I tell with details on the reception of the KJV up through the eighteenth century, and textual variants that occurred throughout that century, as well.

William Tyndale and Cold War Bible Smugglers

Tyndale was by far the most important precursor to the King James Bible. In the 1520s he first began openly breaking English law by publishing his own translations of the Bible. I think the most apt comparison that illuminates what Tyndale was doing, then, were the Christians of the twentieth century who risked their lives smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Like them, Tyndale saw his as a holy work, and civil disobedience that obeyed the law of God.
Tyndale often worked in the middle of the night, in vacated buildings, away from the watchful eye of the king’s men, ready to flee when the authorities got close. He was willing to die but, like the apostle Paul, wanted to keep living while there was work to be done. On one occasion, just a year before his first complete New Testament was published, Tyndale and a helper even escaped by night in a covered boat on the Rhine River.

Psalm 23 according to John Wycliffe

The Lord gouerneth me, and no thing schal faile to me; in the place of pasture there he hath set me. He nurschide me on the watir of refreischyng; he conuertide my soule. He ledde me forth on the pathis of righfulnesse; for his name. For whi thoug Y schal go in the myddis of schadewe of deeth; Y schal not drede yuels, for thou art with me. Thi gerde and thi staf; tho han coumfortid me. Thou hast maad redi a boord in my sigt; agens hem that troblen me. Thou hast maad fat myn heed with oyle; and my cuppe, fillinge greetli, is ful cleer. And thi merci schal sue me; in alle the daies of my lijf. And that Y dwelle in the hows of the Lord; in to the lengthe of daies.

(According to the Wycliffite version made by Nicholas de Hereford about A.D. 1381, and revised by John Purvey about A.D. 1388)

Favorite words in the King James Bible

thee (pron.)—singular accusative of thou. We often confuse thee, thou, thy, and thine with formal forms of address—but they were not. Throughout the KJV these are simply the singular forms of the 2nd person pronoun. Memorably, Jesus says to the devil in Luke 4:8, “Get thee behind me, Satan”!

Favorite words in the King James Bible

unstopped (prep.)—occurs only once, I like how this word is used to mean more than “opened”; it means no longer closed: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped” (Isaiah 35:5)

Was Shakespeare involved in the KJV?

There are some theories about the Bard sitting on the Psalms translation committee. Don’t believe it. There are hundreds of allusions to Scripture in Shakespeare; he lived in the golden age of English discovery of the Bible; but he knew other translations.
For example, in his historical play, Henry VI, Shakespeare has King Henry VI of England say:

God shall be my hope, My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.

Psalm 119:105 reads this way in the KJV: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Shakespeare wrote Henry VI in the early 1590s, nearly twenty years before the KJV was first published, and probably about seventeen years before the Psalms committee turned in their work. The truth is that Shakespeare was inspired by the Geneva Bible translation:

Thy worde is a lanterne unto my feete, and a light unto my path.

1 Samuel 3:9-11 in the original 1611 KJV

Therefore Eli said vnto Samuel, Go, lie downe, & it shal be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speake Lord, for thy seruant heareth. So Samuel went, and lay downe in his place.

And the Lord came, and stood and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speake, for thy seruant heareth.

And the Lord sayd to Samuel, Behold, I will doe a thing in Israel, at which, both the eares of euery one that heareth it, shall tingle.

-1 Samuel 3:9-11, in the original 1611 King James Bible

What should you do with old Bibles?

What to do with old Bibles? If you can’t give them away, repurpose them, you are supposed to bury them.
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.

King James Bible verb forms -- are not that difficult

The verb forms of the KJV – which are often the first thing that makes us feel distant from this beautiful translation – are actually quite easy to grasp. They follow a simple, consistent pattern.
• The –st endings are only used for the 2nd person singular (“thou”) for most verbs. For instance, “Thou lovest righteousness” (Psalm 45:7).
• The –th endings are only used for the 3rd person singular (“he,” “she,” or “it”). For instance, “For he that loveth his life shall lose it” (John 12:25).
• The 1st person singular (“I”), and all of the plural pronouns (“we,” “ye” [since the KJV never uses “you”], and “they”) are exactly the same as our modern English forms:
“The world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31)—1st person singular.
“We know that we love God” (1 John 5:2)—1st person plural.
“If ye love them which loves you” (Matthew 5:46)—2nd person plural.
“They love to pray standing in the synagogues” (Matthew 6:5)—3rd person plural.

Other than a few additional wrinkles, it’s not much more complicated than that.

What a marvelous, thoughtful review!

Joshunda Sanders of the Austin (TX) American-Standard wrote this review of Verily, Verily today. With lots of information about what is happening around the world for the 400th anniversary, I also appreciate how thoughtfully she has read my book and appreciated what I was attempting to communicate. Thanks, Joshunda.

How Lincoln talked like the King James Bible in the Gettysburg address

Why would Abraham Lincoln begin the Gettysburg Address with “Fourscore and seven years ago …” with language that was archaic for its time? Didn’t he wish to speak directly to the people in words that they would understand? Yes, of course; but Lincoln was talking to a people deeply divided by war and yet united by a respect for the Bible. He was echoing the language of the KING JAMES BIBLE. He was, in fact, using the language of the KJV because it would be heard by his listeners as the language of God. Fourscore appears a total of forty-six times in the KJV, first in Genesis 16:16: “And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-2 in the 1611 King James Bible

Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing.

Christians--more than any other people--have presumed to translate holy scripture.

Every culture since time began has been deadly serious about the idea of translation—not only the English and not only Christians. The privilege of faithfully repeating, copying, and rendering sacred words is always of the utmost importance. The Vedas have always had a privileged place of honor in India. Throughout Indian history, traditionalist Hindus have proclaimed their perfection, arguing that all knowledge is to be found in them, and that the way in which they are rendered in their original Sanskrit is infallible. Similarly, the Bhagavad Gita is most holy in Sanskrit—a language that hardly anyone but scholars can read. So it is with the words of Allah in the Qur’an. The original Arabic is believed to be directly revealed by God and not of human origin. The youngest of all of the world’s major scriptures, the Qur’an existed only in Arabic until the early seventeenth century. Most Muslims today still believe that the Qur’an is the final revelation of God—but only in the original language.
Since the books of the Hebrew Bible were translated into Koine Greek in the second and third centuries BCE, Jews have stuck to the original Hebrew. In synagogues around the world, from the most liberal Reform to the most ultra-Orthodox, Jews even today only read the Torah in Hebrew. Torah scrolls are always handwritten—it can take a team of people a year or longer to complete one—and only in Hebrew.
The ancient Greeks, prideful of their schools of philosophy and skills in rhetoric, coined the word barbaroi, from which comes our word barbarians, to describe those people who speak languages other than Greek. More than any other people, it became the Christians who presumed to do the most vernacular translations of holy scripture.

Before the KJV, translating was against the law, punishable by death. Why?!

William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. How could an activity so seemingly innocent be so threatening? It’s not as if a theft or a murder or some other serious crime had been committed. This was simply translating Hebrew and Greek words and sentences into English equivalents. Where’s the threat to national security? Why would this sort of activity be regarded as a way of undermining king and kingdom?
Simply put: The established order and status quo were in danger. By about 1380, translating Scripture into the vernacular became criminal, and attempting to translate the Bible became dangerous and clandestine work, like smuggling Bibles into Saudi Arabia today. There was a lot at stake in such work—quite literally!
Speech has always been dangerous. Language carries ideas that can be infectious. Historically, words have demonstrated more power than swords to stir hearts and speak to souls. Some philosophers have even remarked that without speech and words human beings would be without souls.
In the Middle Ages, the words of God were believed to have been set in stone—complete and forever finished. They were not to be changed in any way. Never mind the issues that are now familiar to us about the reliability (or unreliability) of ancient or original texts, and the methods of transmission of those texts, and so on; for most people in the centuries before the KJV, messing with the particular words of God that they knew in the Latin Bible was like deciding to take a chisel and hammer to the Venus de Milo. Imagine a man who walks into the Louvre in Paris saying to himself, “I think I could take that unseemly angle off her nose with just a tap or two right about … there!”

How popular is the KJV, still today?

Just how popular is the King James Bible, still today?
Until very recently, the KJV was the world’s bestselling Bible in English. But sometime in the 1980s it was supplanted by the New International Version, which remains tops, today. Still, there are more than one billion English-speakers in the world today, and there are at least two KJV Bibles in existence for each one of them.
Interestingly—and mind-bogglingly—The Gideons International alone has printed and distributed more than 1.5 billion Scriptures—both New Testaments and complete Bibles—since 1908. They gave away nearly 76 million last year alone! For their first eighty years, the Gideons distributed the KJV exclusively, but they have tended to favor the New King James Translation over the last two decades and make both translations available to their 280,000 members, in more than 10,000 local groups spread across the globe. (When I asked the Gideons at their headquarters in Nashville for some firmer numbers I was told that they don’t keep them, nor do they attempt to publicize them.)

The very first English translators of the Bible

By the seventh century, the first spark of the idea to translate the Bible into English began to flare. According to the Venerable Bede (673-735), Caedmon, a monastery herdsman and the first English poet, paraphrased portions of the Old and New Testaments. None of the originals of Caedmon’s work are extant, but there seems to be little reason to doubt the copies that we possess of his work on Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel. Bede himself then translated portions of John’s Gospel.
Two centuries later, King Alfred the Great (871–99), the most important medieval ruler of England, became a champion of vernacular (English-language) learning. Alfred was noted above all for his courageous and creative defeats of the invading hordes of Vikings. Detailed engravings and paintings, popular in every British elementary school textbook, show him as a harp-playing minstrel in costume, spying in the camps of the Danes. But there are also legends that he translated the Latin Bible into Old English. While that isn’t exactly true—it was Alfred’s scholars who did any such work—he did translate several Latin texts, such as Pope Gregory I’s Pastoral Care, into English. Much later, King Henry VIII (reign 1509–47) probably took his own inspiration to be a scholar-king from the legends of Alfred the Great. (More on that to come in future posts. Alfred found his way into the Catholic canon of saints. Henry VIII wasn’t so fortunate!)