The words of God

IF the Almighty had sent down the injunction to be fruitful and to multiply to what is commonly called the Bible, his word could not have been more adequately fulfilled.

Now, after centuries of different editions of the Bible, comes the first batch of studies published to coincide with the 400th anniversary, this year, of the King James Version (KJV), of 1611, also known as the authorised version. The anniversary has a significance beyond Christian communities; it embraces Judaism and aspects of Islam, and reflects international religious developments over four centuries. This is the Bible on which Barack Obama took his presidential oath of office, using a copy on which Abraham Lincoln had done the same in 1861.

It is also the edition acknowledged as the finest expression of the English language.

Ending his book of wide-ranging research into the history of the KJV, Gordon Campbell reminds us that while the best modern translations are models of good, scholarly practice, “the King James Version is the Bible of the heart.”

Outstanding among the plethora of material now appearing, Campbell takes his examination of earlier vernacular versions and the history of their editors, publishers, and printers (several of the first of whom ended at the stake) right up to the present day: Geneva, Douai-Reims, the Revised Version Revised, but without the burnings.

Here are the KJV’s organising companies and secretaries, their linguistic and theological qualifications, their rivalries within the maze of ecclesiastical politics. Here are the issues of grammar, of the making of a folio, the technology and hazards of early, 17th century printing and the controversies of interpretation, for where obedience is demanded, understanding is crucial.

The story of the KJV, as a translation, begins in 1603 with the arrival in England of the said king, a haunted man whose path to the English throne included the imprisonment and eventual execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. It was no wonder that he felt the need to find the way, the truth and the life. After generations in which publication of the Bible in English was deemed heretical, the scholars of divinity, assembled in 1604 to produce an “authorised” translation, had a reasonable faith that the days of burnings and beheadings were over. They were susceptible to metaphor, to rhythm as an aid to memory, and to the enhancement of doctrine by beautiful phrasing. They also observed the requirement to find a scriptural justification for the divine right of kings, to the fatal detriment of James’ son, Charles I.

Instead of exegesis, the discipline of biblical theology and interpretation, the subject is approached in this review from the viewpoint of the Christian reader, unversed in the verses except through hearing them read in church, or discovering favourite passages from either testament. Or through retelling: the Book of Tobit magically used in Miss Garnett’s Angel, by Salley Vickers, or Ecclesiastes invoked by Henry James in his novel, The Golden Bowl (Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken …’), or in films such as ‘Legion’ (from My Name is Legion, for we are many, Mark 5.9).

Even the unbelievers amongst us speak the Bible all the time, especially if we are at our wit’s end, are saved by the skin of our teeth, if we don’t want to be our brother’s keeper, if we go from strength to strength, if someone finds a man after his own heart or else a thorn in the flesh, if we believe in an eye for an eye, especially where we can’t see eye to eye.

That’s the topic attacked with gusto by David Crystal, in Begat, where he traces not only the semantics of biblical phrases, but the uses to which they are put. Backed by excellent appendices, his pages track usage from Colonel Ghaddafi to Amy Winehouse, politicians and the writers of news headlines, although he sometimes ignores the context, as with his consideration of “a law unto themselves.”

In fact, St Paul (to the Romans ch 2 v 14) gives us Gentiles who do not have the law yet “do by nature the things contained in the law … which show the work of the law written in their hearts.” Adam Nicolson is more passionate and less mischievous. When God Spoke English was first published in 2003 and is now the subject of a BBC television series.

A writer of fine, historical perception, Nicholson offers a more personal tone, especially in his appreciation of the obscure group of scholars concerned: ‘ … a gaggle of 50 or so black-gowned divines whose names are almost unknown but whose words continue to resonate with us.’

Even as he discusses their disputes, he captures these men in essence, wondering if, perhaps, the King James Bible is so alive precisely because the translators were not, themselves, entirely good?

The KJV was first published by the King’s Printer and then by Cambridge University, followed by Oxford. Gordon Campbell is published by Oxford, and pays tribute to his Cambridge colleague, David Norton, “who probably knows the text of the KJV better than anyone now alive.”

In The King James Bible, Norton sets out his own shorter stall with a resounding ‘begat’ of his own, the moment when the descendants of Abraham moved from telling their heritage and creed to writing them down, when ‘the ancient Hebrews began to be the people of the written word.’

Each book in this list is readable, surprising and informative; Campbell, and Norton are the more authoritative, while, in The People’s Bible, Derek Wilson gives a purposely generalised guide to “this complicated library of books” and its influence on world history and cultures. But, of them all, it is Adam Nicolson who most cogently grasps the fate of what was handed down in 1611, now that “the churches and biblical scholarship have, by and large, abandoned the frame of mind which created this translation.”

The King James remains the Bible of the heart, but if there is a single truth about the authorised version, today, it is that it is no longer authorised.