Proclaimer Blog
The King James Bible (1)
Part of an occasional series about how the King James Bible came to be (there are plenty of other people writing about the legacy of the King James Bible – for example, see Glen Scrivener's dedicated blog here).
If you want to know anything at all about the Bible in English the place to go is to one of my favourite books. It is David Daniell's enormous "The Bible in English" – a enormously thorough look at English translation. It's surprisingly readable and not at all "academic" (I mean that as a compliment rather than a slur). Published by Yale University Press, it runs to almost a thousand pages so it is not for the faint hearted nor those on a limited budget. (Although since writing that line I see that there is a paperback version on amazon for £13 which is remarkable value!)
Daniell writes fairly and helpfully about English translation. He is not unduly exuberant about the KJV, praising it rightly where it is due and pointing out its shortcomings (chief of which, in his eye, is that it is too 'high' – it robs the Hebrew text, in particular, of pace and 'roughness' which colour stories; rather ironic seeing as the non-Christian world exhorts the KJV as a piece of high literature – this it its greatest failing, says Daniell).
He also bemoans the fact that since early on its life, the KJV has been published with the dedication to King James bound in (a rather over-the-top piece of royalist propaganda) rather than 'Miles Smith's fine eleven page preface' entitled 'The Translators to the Reader.' It is an important document in the whole story of the KJV and, wonder of wonders, in the world of the Interweb, you can read it online here.
Interestingly, it sets out some of the translators principles which are not all in vogue today (though many are). One of these is that the translators did not pedantically insist on verbal consistency. If a word was translated in one way in one place, the translators did not feel bound to translate it in the same way in another. This is still a point of disagreement. Preachers are sometimes thankful for translations that show consistency in the way words are translated.
Perhaps most interestingly for us, though, as preachers, is the manner in which the translators went about things. In small groups (one at Westminster, one at Cambridge and one at Oxford) a linguistic expert would read his translation out while the members of the groups sat around and followed along in the translations available at the time – both English (Tyndale, Bishops Bible, Geneva Bible) and Latin and other languages (Spanish, French, German). The co-readers would interrupt the translator where they thought the translation they had in front of them differed and a discussion on various merits would follow. So, the KJV often became an amalgamation rather than a translation. Here for example is 2 Corinthians 1.11, reported by Daniell:
You also helping (Bishops Bible) together (Geneva 1560) by (Bishops) prayer for us (Tyndale) that for the (Tyndale words, Geneva 1557 syntax) benefits (Bishops) bestowed upon us (Geneva 1557) by the means of many (Tyndale) persons (Great Bible) thanks may be given of many on our behalf (Tyndale).
Preachers can still learn today from this technique. Reading a passage in multiple translations is still a really good tool for thinking about a passage and what it means. It can supplement (of if you don't have original languages) replace [I say that cautiously] Hebrew and Greek analysis. Try it! Open up Sunday's passage in Bible Gateway with three or four translations you don't normally use and see what light is shed. It can be remarkably rewarding.