Philip Hensher in The Spectator

I have a good friend in London who saves his copies of The Spectator and mails them to me in the States. So every six weeks or so I receive a bundle of recent issues. I especially love their book review section. One of the best around.

Well, as is sometimes the case, the book reviewer is more interesting than the book being reviewed. That is so with Philip Hensher in his review from April 9, 2011 of The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011. Check it out, here; the whole review is now online.

I especially appreciated these three bits:

1) "Sometimes [the KJV is] frankly a bit vulgar, with a sort of anti-talent for metaphor, as in the Song of Solomon: ‘Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing.’"

2) "The dialogue can be sharp and snappy — ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’"

3) "Or the very opposite, as in Satan’s camp response when God asks him, in Job, what he’s been up to: ‘Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it’ (my absolute favourite line in the entire Bible)."