King James Bible Research Paper
My Name | History of the King James Bible Week Two | June 18th, 2013 Written over 400 years ago, the King James Bible (KJB) has molded the English language. There is a miracle when its words are read. It’s not an original text, but is a translation of ancient Greek and Hebrew manuscripts from centuries ago and thousands of miles away. You don’t have to be a Christian to hear the power of the words of the Scriptures—they are: simple in vocabulary, cosmic in size, stately in rhythms, and deeply emotional in impact (Nicolson, 43). Some might think that a 400-year old document’s words would be forgotten by now. This is not so. In fact, some phrases are woven into the fabric of our language: a child as the apple of her parents’ eyes; an idea that
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seems as old as the hills; being at death’s door or wit’s end; or going through a baptism of fire. Whether we know it or not, the KJB is speaking through all of us.
The beginnings of the KJB were in March 1603, when the Queen of England – Queen Elizabeth – died. The heir was her cousin, a Scot, James the VI (in Scotland). This was the moment he’d been waiting for—to become King James I of England. In the course of the 16th-century, England had had a “yo-yo” reformation, from Protestant to anti-Protestant regimes – yet never settling in either. This resulted in two competing Bibles (or versions) of the Holy Scriptures: the Geneva Bible and the Bishops’ Bible. The Geneva Bible was written in 1560, by a small team of Scots and English Calvinists, in Geneva. The Puritans loved the Geneva Bible with the many anti-royal marginal notes “repeatedly suggesting that whenever a king dared to rule, he was behaving like a tyrant” (Nicolson, 44). King James loved and hated the Geneva Bible. He loved the scholarship of it but hated the antiroyal sentiments. The Bishops’ Bible was drawn up in …show more content…
1568. It was very pro-royal, but no one ever used it! This was the “divided inheritance King James wanted to mend” (Nicolson, 44), and he felt a new Bible would do just that. “The KJB was… [thus] conceived as a unifying production” (Aitken, 1).
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My Name| History of the King James Bible Rules for establishing this new Bible were in place by 1604: (1) no contentious notes in the
margins; (2) no language inaccessible to the common people; and (3) a true and accurate text “driven by an unforgivingly exact level of scholarship” (Nicolson, 44).
To bring this about, King James gathered over 54 members from established High Church bishops to moderate political Puritans. He broke them into six subcommittees that were chosen for their expertise in ancient languages. Each subcommittee went to work in a precise way. Members of each subcommittee translated their entire section of the Bible on their own. This translation was then brought to the meeting of his subcommittee and different versions from each translator were compared, with one of the six translations being chosen. This version was then submitted to the general revising committee. The suggested versions were then read aloud to the revising scholars, as they wanted the ear and mind to be the only editorial tool: they wanted the Bible to sound right. If it didn’t, there would be a “spirited” discussion – often in Latin, but partially in Greek. Once a version was decided upon, the revising committee presented the final version to two bishops: the Archbishop of Canterbury and notionally to King James. The KJB wasn’t a huge success right after being printed. The English preferred the Geneva Bible they knew and loved. And later editions were filled with errors. In the famous Wicked Bible of 1631, a phrase meant to celebrate God’s “goodnesse,” instead said to celebrate God’s “asse”. Another edition left out
the “not” in Exodus 20:14, so that it said: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” But by the mid-1600s, the KJB had “effectively replaced all its predecessors” (Nicolson, 45) and “had come to be the Bible of the English-speaking world” (Nicolson, 54).
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My Name| History of the King James Bible References
Aitken, J. (2011, March). The Greatest Book in the English Language. American Spectator, 44(2), 64-65. Nicolson, A. (2011, December). The Bible of King James. National Geographic, 220(6), 36+.
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seems as old as the hills; being at death’s door or wit’s end; or going through a baptism of fire. Whether we know it or not, the KJB is speaking through all of us.
The beginnings of the KJB were in March 1603, when the Queen of England – Queen Elizabeth – died. The heir was her cousin, a Scot, James the VI (in Scotland). This was the moment he’d been waiting for—to become King James I of England. In the course of the 16th-century, England had had a “yo-yo” reformation, from Protestant to anti-Protestant regimes – yet never settling in either. This resulted in two competing Bibles (or versions) of the Holy Scriptures: the Geneva Bible and the Bishops’ Bible. The Geneva Bible was written in 1560, by a small team of Scots and English Calvinists, in Geneva. The Puritans loved the Geneva Bible with the many anti-royal marginal notes “repeatedly suggesting that whenever a king dared to rule, he was behaving like a tyrant” (Nicolson, 44). King James loved and hated the Geneva Bible. He loved the scholarship of it but hated the antiroyal sentiments. The Bishops’ Bible was drawn up in …show more content…
1568. It was very pro-royal, but no one ever used it! This was the “divided inheritance King James wanted to mend” (Nicolson, 44), and he felt a new Bible would do just that. “The KJB was… [thus] conceived as a unifying production” (Aitken, 1).
1
My Name| History of the King James Bible Rules for establishing this new Bible were in place by 1604: (1) no contentious notes in the
margins; (2) no language inaccessible to the common people; and (3) a true and accurate text “driven by an unforgivingly exact level of scholarship” (Nicolson, 44).
To bring this about, King James gathered over 54 members from established High Church bishops to moderate political Puritans. He broke them into six subcommittees that were chosen for their expertise in ancient languages. Each subcommittee went to work in a precise way. Members of each subcommittee translated their entire section of the Bible on their own. This translation was then brought to the meeting of his subcommittee and different versions from each translator were compared, with one of the six translations being chosen. This version was then submitted to the general revising committee. The suggested versions were then read aloud to the revising scholars, as they wanted the ear and mind to be the only editorial tool: they wanted the Bible to sound right. If it didn’t, there would be a “spirited” discussion – often in Latin, but partially in Greek. Once a version was decided upon, the revising committee presented the final version to two bishops: the Archbishop of Canterbury and notionally to King James. The KJB wasn’t a huge success right after being printed. The English preferred the Geneva Bible they knew and loved. And later editions were filled with errors. In the famous Wicked Bible of 1631, a phrase meant to celebrate God’s “goodnesse,” instead said to celebrate God’s “asse”. Another edition left out
the “not” in Exodus 20:14, so that it said: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” But by the mid-1600s, the KJB had “effectively replaced all its predecessors” (Nicolson, 45) and “had come to be the Bible of the English-speaking world” (Nicolson, 54).
2
My Name| History of the King James Bible References
Aitken, J. (2011, March). The Greatest Book in the English Language. American Spectator, 44(2), 64-65. Nicolson, A. (2011, December). The Bible of King James. National Geographic, 220(6), 36+.
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