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English Bibles

Authorised Myths

In case you hadn’t noticed, we are now into 2011, which marks the 4ooth anniversary of the publication of the Authorised Version of the Bible in English. This is a significant event and one which I have been involved in celebrating through the launch of Biblefresh. However, attitudes to the AV being what they are, it is also an opportunity for people to miss the point about the Bible and Bible translation.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to highlight a few of the myths that surround the Authorised (or King James) Version of the Bible.

Myth 1: It is the First Translation in English.

This morning, a prominent British Christian (name withheld to protect the guilty) posted this on Twitter:

2011 is the 400th anniv of the King James Bible, which put the Bible in the language of ordinary people for the first time

Thankfully, the satirical magazine, Ship of Fools (@shipoffoolscom) has a better sense of history and they tweeted:

Wyclif begat Tyndale; and Tyndale begat Coverdale; and Coverdale begat Matthew; and Matthew begat Great; and Great begat Geneva…

Far from being the first translation of the Bible into English, the AV was part of an already long tradition of English translations. In fact the translators were specifically charged not to produce an entirely new version of the Bible, but to improve and update an older translation (the Bishop’s Bible). (See  Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired p.237.)

The most popular translation in the early 1600s was the Great Bible. This was so well entrenched in people’s minds, that when the introduction to the AV came to be written, all of the Scripture Quotes were from the Great Bible, not the AV!

It is worth remembering that although the AV is 400 years old, that is not particularly long in the history of the Christian Church. If you think of the history of Christianity as a 24 hour day, the AV didn’t actually get published until 7 pm – for most of Christian history we have done without it. My Hungarian friends wonder what all the fuss is about – they had a Bible more than 200 years before the AV.

Myth 2. It is the Best English Translation

One of the reasons that the AV was translated was that the scholarship of the time meant that people had a better grasp of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible than earlier translators. Because of their more up to date knowledge, the translators were able to improve on earlier translations.

Over the last 400 years our understanding of the original manuscripts, of archaeology and of how translation works has improved out of all recognition. Today we are in a position to produce much more faithful translations than was possible all those years ago. I get irritated (as many of you know) by the profusion of translations in English but there can be no doubt that in an age where we can consult the ESV, the NIV and the NLT and numerous others, we are living through a golden age in English Bible translation.

Myth 3. It Is Most Culturally Valuable Translation

One cannot doubt the impact that the Authorised Version has had upon English life. The choice of phrase and the quality of some of the poetry is truly impressive. Even though I have not used the AV as my regular Bible for over thirty years, I can still often quote passages from there and not from the translation that I use regularly. In one of my poetry books, David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1 is given as an example of good English poetry. That’s not bad for something that started off as a lament by a Hebrew bronze age warrior.

However, this reverence for the language of the AV can be taken too far. Cranmer, in typically overblown prose describes it like this:

Yet there is something of the majesty and grandeur of God Himself in this translation: its cadences are poetic perfection and its vocabulary is a breath away from divinity. Coming during the life of Shakespeare, in the years immediately following his greatest tragedies and his richest poetry, one senses the imprimatur of the Bard himself upon the heavenly spark of Godhead.

It is important to realise that these cadences and poetic perfection were not there in the original. These are additions by the translators. The New Testament writers could well have written in Homeric Greek, their equivalent of Elizabethan English, but they didn’t. They wrote in Koine, common Greek. The Greek of everyman. I recall one critic of the NIV saying that they did not want a Bible that sounded like today’s newspaper. That’s a shame, because the NT was written in newspaper language, not high flowing Shakespearean cadences. Enjoy the touch of grandeur by all means, but don’t be fooled into thinking that this is how God speaks!

God speaks! This is the point of the Bible. It is not a cultural artifact to be preserved in a museum and admired for it’s beauty and poetry. In its own words, the Bible is:

Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

The next year will see many articles like the one from Cranmer which I quoted above or this one from the Daily Telegraph. They rightly praise the AV for its artistic and cultural merit, but as long as they ignore the whole purpose of the Bible as God’s self-revelation to humanity, they are missing the point completely.

The AV may well be the most culturally valuable translation – but that is simply not what a Bible is for!

Myth 4. We Should Use the AV Because our Forefathers Did.

This argument is getting close to the old “if the King James Bible was good enough for St Paul it is good enough for me.”

Many people suggest that because great Christians of the past (choose your name…) used the AV then so should we today. Of course, this makes no sense at all. Many Christians in the past used the AV because it was the only translation available to them. Who knows what Bible Hudson Taylor or William Wilberforce would have used if they had today’s choice? And of course, if we are going to base our choice of Bible on what our predecessors used, then we should follow Jesus example and use the Old Testament in Aramaic or Greek.

In the end, I don’t hold a brief for any version of the Bible. My concern is that people read God’s word in whatever translation they please and that they hear God speaking through it and that they align their lives with God’s story. The Archbishop of Canterbury captures this well in his New Year address: though he would have done well to point out that the ‘big story’ belongs to the Bible in whatever language or translation, not just the Authorised Version.

I know that the picture has nothing to do with the Authorised Version of the Bible, but it is just a gentle reminder that the Scriptures exist in more languages than English and that there are still 2,000 languages without a single word of the Bible.

14 replies on “Authorised Myths”

Thanks Eddie – very helpful. (I have to do a piece on this for LICC’s next EG.)

Very nice post, and especially “Myth 1” is worth banging on about … actually, Myths 2 and 4 are as well!

But about Myth 3 … as your first and last sentences indicate, it’s not a “myth”! That one can find hyperbole regarding its significance, that its cadences are not those of the parent text — fair enough. But it remains a myth that Myth 3 is a myth! 😉

One useful resource here: David Norton’s A history of the English Bible as Literature. (And you’re right, of course: that is “not what a Bible is for!”)

An excellent post!

While I am aware that the Greek of the NT is not particularly fancy, I think the point about it being at the newspaper level could use some nuancing. Newspapers today don’t tend to have the structural patterns of, say, the Sermon on the Mount. Things like inclusio and chiasmus are simply not practiced, though the art of repetition can certainly be found ad nauseum. And, also, even if one speaks of the Greek NT as at the everyday reading level, just look at the Old Testament (Hebrew or LXX). Has anyone ever seriously contended that the OT was written in everyday language?

A good post Eddie. Just a comment on this paragraph…”The most popular translation in the early 1600s was the Great Bible. This was so well entrenched in people’s minds, that when the introduction to the AV came to be written, all of the Scripture Quotes were from the Great Bible, not the AV!”

The Geneva Bible was by a very long way the favourite version for Bible reading people through to mid century. The reason the quotes are from the Great Bible is the political nature of the KJV. James and the translators were at pains to demonstrate continuity from H8 days through to the ‘new day’ of James,denying place to the Puritan Geneva Bible and even to the Bishops Bible of 1568. Tradition and continuity were vital for James’ view of King and Church, over against the reforming zeal of the variously placed Puritan groups. The Great Bible ( so called because of its size) was the Bible chained to the lecterns of most parish churches, and therefore still an ‘official’ version.Having said that, the Geneva Bible dis have some influence on the translators from all accounts.

Thanks Roger. I’ll go with you on the issue of the relative popularity of the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible – I did think about expanding on this, but decided to keep things short and didn’t express myself as well as I should.

However, I’m not convinced that the quotes in the introduction were from the Great Bible so as to demonstrate a continuity between versions. Most of the sources I’ve looked at sugges that the quotes were from the Great Bible simply because that is what came to mind when the Introduction came to be written. My experience as a translator makes this all too plausible. I’d be interested in documentation on this as I’m in the middle of writing a lecture or two on the subject.

Thanks, Eddie. This is helpful. I have a friend who needs to be ‘converted’ from his belief in the ‘originality of the AV’. i hope that this ‘gospel’ will now do it! Amen.

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