Wednesday, March 16, 2011

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.

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