THE KING JAMES BIBLE
Sermon for St. Peter’s Addingham: 400th anniversary of the King James Bible
This year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (KJB) – often referred to as the Authorized Version. I want to tell you a very brief history of how it came to be but I’ll start with two myths about it.
When I was a teacher I belonged to an ecumenical Bible study group. All of us came along with different translations of the Bible and in one verse they differed so much that the Salvation Army officer, in whose house we met, said, ‘OK let’s consult the original.’ I assumed he was going to fetch a Greek New Testament but he came back with the King James Bible. He truly believed that this was the very first Bible!
Recently I received an e-mail about a deanery event, referring to the King James Bible as the first English translation of the Bible. Wrong! The gospels had been translated into Anglo-Saxon, some seven hundred years earlier. The first complete Bible in English was by (or inspired by) Wycliff in 1380 – though this was hand-written. And there were at least seven printed Bibles in English during the 80 years before the KJB was published.
There are three major factors which led to this flurry of activity to produce an English Bible: the invention of the printing press, the rise to prominence of the English language, and the Reformation.
In the early Middle Ages very few people could read or write. Literacy was often limited to priests who were called up by the court to do the clerical tasks – hence the name ‘clergy’. During the Renaissance it became fashionable for the middle classes to read and the demand for books, especially the Bible, increased greatly.
Hand-written Bibles were immensely expensive and very slow to make. So Gutenberg saw a commercial opportunity and invented the printing press primarily in order to print the Bible. He tried out his new invention with six short works including a Latin grammar then in 1456 produced the first printed Bible, running to 1,768 pages. There were 185 copies printed. The total cost of making the printing press would have been the equivalent of well over a million pounds. But this paved the way for mass production of much cheaper Bibles. It is estimated that over 6 billion Bibles have been produced since then – by far the best selling book of all time.
From the time of the Norman Conquest the English language had been regarded as the language of peasants. The language spoken by nobles was French and the language used by academics and the church was Latin. But around the time of Henry V there grew a new sense of nationalism and a new pride in the English language with a turning away from French. By the time Shakespeare wrote Henry VI a character could say, ‘He can speak French; and therefore he is a traitor’. However, the church still hung on to Latin as a trans-European language and resisted attempts to translate the Bible or the liturgy into English. The church argued that English was too crude to convey the great themes of Christianity. And they considered allowing laity direct access to the Bible as a dangerous thing.
That leads us to the Reformation. On the continent there arose a tide of protesters, led by Luther, wishing to reform the abuses of the church. At the heart of this was a desire to give the Bible a central place in our faith. The great motto was ‘sola scriptura’ – only by the Bible. Doctrine and church practice should be tested against scripture and unscriptural practices should be removed – hence Zwingli’s famous protest of eating sausages during Lent because the Bible nowhere forbids eating meat during Lent. It became very important that the Bible should be made available to everyone in their own language so that even ploughmen could read it for themselves. For centuries a Latin translation of the Bible had been used by the Church. But in order to make the most accurate translation Reformers turned to the oldest manuscripts in the original languages: Hebrew and Greek.
The first German translation of the Bible appeared in 1466. But England was a long way behind. It was still illegal to translate the Bible into English when Tyndale started on his Bible in the 1520s. As a result he had to go to Germany to print his New Testament in 1526. As soon as it started appearing in England, the Bishop of London declared it an ‘untrue translation’ intended ‘for the advancement … of Luther’s abominable heresies’ and ordered all copies to be burned. Tyndale also managed to translate a few books of the Old Testament before he was betrayed and executed by strangling and burning at the stake. To make an English Bible was a matter of life and death: the authorities considered it seditious enough and the reformers considered it worthy enough to take or risk a life for it.
Although Tyndale never completed the whole Bible what he did translate was hugely influential and formed the basis for all the English Bibles that followed: Coverdale’s Bible in 1535; Matthew’s Bible in 1537; the Great Bible in 1539 – the first Bible to be authorised for use in church in England by Henry VIII following the English reformation.
Then came Mary Tudor’s reign when England became Catholic again and the Protestant reformers took exile in Europe. Many went to Geneva where there was a protestant republican state heavily influenced by Calvin. Here a new English Bible was produced, known as the Geneva Bible. It was based on Tyndale again but its innovation was to accompany the text with explanatory notes – inevitably with a highly Protestant theological flavour. After Mary’s death and during Elizabeth’s reign this Bible became immensely popular in England. Whenever Shakespeare quotes the Bible it is from this version. But the Church authorities hated it. The Church of English under Elizabeth held a delicate balance between the new Protestant and older Catholic traditions. It was never as radical a Reformation as in Europe. The highly Protestant notes in the Geneva Bible were considered divisive. So a new authorised version was commissioned in 1568 called the Bishops’ Bible – Elizabeth decreed that there should be a copy of it in every church. This was the official Bible in the churches until James I came to the throne, though it never rivalled the popularity of the Geneva Bible which people preferred to read at home.
The more extreme Protestants, known as Puritans, wanted to take reforms further but during Elizabeth’s reign they were held in check. When James I came to the throne, from Scotland where Puritanism was much stronger, the English Puritans believed their fortunes were about to change. They immediately petitioned the new King and he called a conference at Hampton Court in 1604. But James was not sympathetic to their demands and the only thing he agreed to was the commissioning of a new English Bible. He himself was suspicious of the Geneva Bible. Coming from a republic some of its notes called into question the divine right of Kings (hardly surprising that he should want to suppress this!) and so he was keen to displace the Geneva Bible’s popularity.
Six companies of translators were assembled (over 50 scholars in all) each with a different section of the Bible to translate. Their task was not to make a completely fresh translation but to compare the existing translations (especially the Bishops’ Bible) with the original Greek and Hebrew texts and amend and improve where necessary. It is estimated that about 60% of the KJB derives directly from previous versions, and over a third of the New Testament comes word for word from Tyndale’s version from some 85 years before. For me Tyndale is the real hero of this story – a martyr who lost his life in his desire to make the Bible accessible to the English people and a literary master whose words have made more of an impact, perhaps, than any other English writer. It is to Tyndale we owe such phrases as ‘the powers that be’, ‘my brother’s keeper’, ‘a law unto themselves’, ‘the salt of the earth’, and from today’s gospel, ‘Consider the lilies of the field’. It was Tyndale who coined the English words Passover, scapegoat and atonement.
As a humorous interlude it is worth noting that the early editions had various printing problems – for instance ‘Smite the Midianites for they vex you with their wiles’ was misprinted as ‘For the vex you with their wives’. In one edition the parable of the vineyard became the parable of the vinegar. And an edition in 1631 managed to miss out the word ‘not’ from one of the ten commandments, so read’ Thou shalt commit adultery’!
The English language had changed in the 85 years between Tyndale’s work and 1611 and so even when the KJB was produced its language had a slightly archaic ring to it. It was not an immediate success. The Geneva Bible continued to be more popular with many people, especially Puritans. However when the Puritans gained power during the commonwealth they became deeply unpopular and the Geneva Bible, which was closely associated with Puritanism, fell out of favour leaving the field open for the KJB. Under Charles II the Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1662, for the first time incorporated readings from the KJB.
For two and a half centuries the KJB held its place as the English Bible. It was never intended as a literary masterpiece – on the contrary it aimed to be a straightforward literal translation, word for word from the original. Where you see words in italics that does not mean an emphasis – these are words which do not appear in the original Greek or Hebrew but were inserted to make sense in English. The translators avoided Latinate words and preferred simple words deriving from the Anglo-Saxon. Their intention was to make the meaning of the Bible as clear as possible. The result is prose of rare beauty in its simplicity. It incorporated the work of different translations over a period of nearly a century during which the English language was evolving and reached a peak with the likes of Shakespeare. It is has had an unparalleled influence over the way the English language has been used and developed during the centuries since. As the British Empire spread so the KJB became known across the world. It became the Bible of the Americans where it is loved and revered today, perhaps more highly than in England. It has its flaws – there are better Greek and Hebrew manuscripts now and the language is no longer the language of the ordinary woman and man as it was intended to be. I do not for a moment suggest we should use it in worship regularly today – it is right for us to worship using the language of our own time. But no English Bible before or since has equalled the KJB for its beauty and power to convey the great mystery of our faith – I doubt if we will ever see its equal again.
After that long history lesson my sermon is simple: Lives were lost in order that we should have a Bible in English. Treasure it. READ IT – whichever translation you prefer. Mark, learn and inwardly digest it
