King James Bible Research Articles

History over the Water: The King James Bible Turns 400

History over the Water: The King James Bible Turns 400 Derek Wilson (bio) The King James Version of the English Bible is 400 years old this year. For a country like Britain that prides itself on being multicultural and secular, the anniversary has been afforded a surprising amount of media attention. Hours of television and radio time have been devoted to it, and the celebrated film director Norman Stone has made a ninety-minute documentary describing its genesis. All this to commemorate the far-from-romantic work of six committees of scholars and senior ecclesiastics spread over seven years from 1604 to 1611. Moreover, the King James Bible was just one episode of a translation process that had been going on for more than a century and has continued to the present day. It was not the last word in faithfulness to the best ancient texts available at the time, and it has been subjected to various revisions throughout its lifetime. Yet until recent times it was firmly established as the English Bible, and there are many users today who will still countenance no other. The reasons for its success do need exploring. For its devotees there is nothing remotely odd about its longevity: the KJV, they will claim, is written in unsurpassably beautiful language, which speaks directly to the soul. It is not just a vehicle for the eternal word of God; it is the word of God. Click for larger view View full resolution Archbishop William Laud, from Thomas Longueville, A Life of Archbishop Laud (London, 1894). Well, pace Marshal McLuhan’s famous dictum, in this instance at least, the medium is not the message. Whatever the historian may believe about the workings of providence in history, he cannot be satisfied with value judgments but is professionally bound to investigate those circumstances on the terrestrial plane that influence major events. This is not always easy for people to understand. As I have delivered talks and lectures on the KJV over the last few months I have sometimes been taken to task for irreverence or, at least, for not making sufficient allowance for the sheer excellence of this particular translation. In response, I have been at pains to point out that the dominance of the KJV can largely be explained in terms of the usual conflicts of interests and socio-political changes that govern all our history. There were, it seems to me, a series historical “accidents” that to a remarkable degree extended the shelf life of the 1611 Bible, making it the authoritative text throughout the English-speaking world. The first was the eradication of the opposition. By the beginning of the 17th century the Geneva Bible had become the translation of choice for most English readers. Shakespeare had read it and heard it read from his schooldays in Stratford-on-Avon onward. At least 1,200 references and allusions to it appear in his plays and poems. By 1604 this version had been in use for a generation or more and had far out-sold its rival, the bland Bishops’ Bible. Its language was vigorous. It was the first to divide the text into chapters and verses for ease of reading and reference. Its various printings included maps, charts, linguistic notes, and, of course, the Calvinistic glosses that rendered it anathema to middle-of-the-road Anglicans. If any version was responsible for making the English “the people of a book and that book . . . the Bible,” as J.H. Green claimed, that version was the one compiled by the Marian exiles in the 1550s.1 If it had continued to be freely printed, we might now be celebrating the anniversaries of the Geneva Bible. The fact that we are not is largely down to one man: Archbishop William Laud. His appointment to Canterbury in 1633 was a deliberate move by Charles I to suppress the Puritan element in the English church. On the scaffold ten years later Laud claimed that he had labored “to keep an uniformity in the external service of God.”2 What this meant in practice was the bolstering of royal absolutism and of episcopal power by enforcing on all congregations the doctrinal and...

The King James Bible: a short history from Tyndale to today

The King James Bible: a short history from Tyndale to today

Writing the History of the English Bible: A Review of Recent Scholarship

AbstractIn honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (KJB), this article reviews recent scholarship in the growing, interdisciplinary field of the history and impact of the English Bible. Beginning with the early versions of the 16th and 17th century, the contributions of literary scholars and early modern historians are explained and assessed. While the rise of the KJB is given ample consideration, emerging work in other areas is also discussed, including Catholic biblical scholarship. In later periods, the global impact of the KJB and its subsequent decline in use is given attention, alongside newer versions both in traditional printed and online formats.

The King James Bible after four hundred years: literary, linguistic, and cultural influences

The King James Bible after four hundred years: literary, linguistic, and cultural influences

Begat: the King James Bible and the English language

Begat: the King James Bible and the English language

The King James Bible and Biblical Scholarship*

As well as a product of statecraft and religious aspirations, the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) was also a product of the biblical scholarship of its day. The company of translators included a number of the best scholars in Hebrew and Greek, and they drew upon then-recent advances in the study of ancient languages, as well as the prior translation efforts of Tyndale and many others. In the centuries after its publication, the KJV both reflected and contributed to the spread of a popular interest in the Bible and in developments in biblical scholarship. These developments, however, also resulted in a critical appraisal of the KJV, especially concerning the Greek text on which the translation of the New Testament depended. So, ironically, the KJV was both a product and then itself, in a manner of speaking, a victim of biblical scholarship.

Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language

Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language

The Emergence of the King James Version of the Bible, 1611

In 2011 we celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication in 1611 of the King James Version of the Bible. It is by far the best-known of all Bible translations, still used worldwide. In 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference, the more puritan wing of the Church of England pressed King James I to reform various ecclesiastical practices which they saw as abuses. He refused but agreed that there should be a new Bible translation. The article discusses this key event and traces the background, from Anglo-Saxon translations to the Reformation scholarship of men such as Tyndale and Coverdale, who used the new technology of printing to make Scripture widely available to those who knew no Latin or Greek. The process culminated in 1611 with the King James Bible, an exceptionally scholarly and readable version, at a time when expanding literacy allowed far more people to read the Scriptures for themselves.

William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the King James Version of the Bible

During 1911 three of the United States’ leading statesmen (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan) delivered lengthy speeches to commemorate the tercentenary of the King James Bible. While all three emphasized this Bible’s important contribution to American democratic ideals, Bryan also stressed the Bible’s role in revealing Jesus Christ as ‘Son of God and Saviour of Mankind’. Shades of difference in how these leaders spoke of the Bible and in how their careers promoted progressive politics suggests the range of meanings to which the King James Version has been put in American history.

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible; Displacing the Divine: The Minister in the Mirror of American Fiction; Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible

Book Review| June 01 2011 Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible; Displacing the Divine: The Minister in the Mirror of American Fiction; Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible. By Robert Alter. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press. 2010. 198 pp. $19.95.Displacing the Divine: The Minister in the Mirror of American Fiction. By Douglas Alan Walrath. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 2010. xvi, 379 pp. $55.00.Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. By Katherine Clay Bassard. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press. 2009. viii, 166 pp. $44.95. Claudia Stokes Claudia Stokes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2011) 83 (2): 443–445. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-1266117 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Claudia Stokes; Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible; Displacing the Divine: The Minister in the Mirror of American Fiction; Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. American Literature 1 June 2011; 83 (2): 443–445. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-1266117 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 by Duke University Press2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible

The King James Version Then and Now

For four hundred years, the King James Bible has been the principal Bible for millions of English-speaking Christians. Vocabulary and spelling have changed so that readers frequently misunderstand this Bible and find it difficult to read. Yet the language still finds its way into our daily speech and public discourse. The translation was a major influence on the standardization of the English language precisely because the translators were not attempting to create significant literature. Their aim was to produce a Bible that a largely illiterate audience could understand when it was read aloud. Its origins are found in the history and politics of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. When the English church broke with Rome, English Bibles were needed to confirm that rupture. However, the struggles first between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and then between the establishment Anglicans and Puritans, led to the situation by 1600 where the Geneva Bible was favored by the Puritans, but the Bible authorized for use in all the churches was the Bishops' Bible. When James I came to the English throne in 1603, the Puritans asked for more reform and authorization of the Geneva Bible. James ordered instead a new translation, and established a process and set of principles to ensure it was free of Calvinist doctrine and would support the monarchy and the established church. The Bible included the Apocrypha, which was normally included in printings until 1826. The Bible was published in 1611 in two versions. It is not known which was first. Different printers introduced numerous misprints and corrections over the years. Even today there are several different versions of the King James Bible published in America. There is no such thing as an original, flawless King James Bible.

Early Bibles in Pictures: Celebrating 400 Years of the King James Bible Timeline, Commentary, Pictures

Early Bibles in Pictures: Celebrating 400 Years of the King James Bible Timeline, Commentary, Pictures

The Way Not Taken in the Road: Notes Towards Some Useful Statements About Writing Great Works from 1611 to 2010

I argue here about language, actual sets of words in a certain order, and the importance of the exact word order, and choice, for portability and persuasion over time. I use Cormac McCarthy's (2006) novel The Road and attempt to show how what I call a creed-text which in the case of Western Civilization is the King James Bible appears in this text only in unidentifiable thoughts or sentiments, rather than, as was previously more common in literature, in recognizable text links, links that say: This is from this text, in these word choices, and can be from no other place.

Blood

Blood

The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences, edited by Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones

The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences, edited by Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones

Which King James Bible Are We Referring To?

Which King James Bible Are We Referring To?

Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, by David Crystal

Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, by David Crystal

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, by Robert Alter

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, by Robert Alter

THE KING JAMES BIBLE AND THE DREAM OF WHOLENESS

THE KING JAMES BIBLE AND THE DREAM OF WHOLENESS