HANNIBAL HAMLIN and NORMAN W. JONES (eds), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences.

Abstract

IN The King James Bible after 400 Years, editors Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones have brought together an eclectic assortment of essays assessing the cultural impact of the Authorised Version since its publication in 1611. In their introduction, Hamlin and Jones argue for their volume’s diversity on the basis that the King James Bible (KJB) was itself the product of multiple voices, and ever since its inception it has been appropriated for a seemingly endless range of social, political, and economic agendas. Thus, as the single most popular Bible translation in the English-speaking world during the last four hundred years, the editors legitimately conclude the story of the KJB is ‘a story so complex that it is best told not by one voice but by many’ (1). To lend what follows a certain necessary coherence, the book is divided into three parts, each devoted in turn to the language, the history, and the literary influence of the KJB. The first section is the strongest, with fine essays by Stephen Prickett and Robert Alter. Prickett explores the emergence of what he terms ‘Church English’, that distinctive cadence and texture of KJB prose, which established itself as ‘a new and enduring idiolect within English’ (33). Contrary to what one might expect, this highly stylized ecclesiastical language was left not to languish outside the bounds of colloquial usage but rather came to exert ‘a steady gravitational pull’ on the evolution of ordinary English speech (38). No stranger himself to the challenges of translation, Robert Alter follows with a sympathetic analysis of the KJB translators’ treatment of the original Hebrew, showing the ways it was by turns ingenious and wrong-headed. Together, these two essays provide an accessible but erudite account of the KJB’s linguistic origins and its subsequent impact upon English linguistic sensibilities.