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The Impact of the English
Bible
• “for everything there is a season” Eccle 3:1
• “Pride goes before a fall. “ Prov 16:18
• “Can the leopard change his spots?” Jer 13:23
• “No New Thing Under the Sun” Eccle 1:9
• “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”
Luke 12:19
• “How are the Mighty Fallen” 2 Sam 1:27
Wycliffe Bible. c. 1415–30. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
John Ball
“When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty”
Peasants revolt 1381
Peple, pepul, pepulle, poepul
puple pople...
"Truly we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one,...but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one."
Miles Smyth
• "The best example of very easy prose (about 20 affixes per 100 words) is the King James Version of the Bible: . . ." (Rudolf Flesch, The Art of Plain Talk, p. 43)
"The King James Bible was published in the year Shakespeare began work on his last play, The Tempest. Both the play and the Bible are masterpieces of English, but there is one crucial difference between them. Whereas Shakespeare ransacked the lexicon, the King James Bible employs a bare 8000 words—God’s teaching in homely English for everyman." (Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil, The
Story of English, p. 113)
"The sponsors of the ‘Good News’ version boast that their bible is as readable as the daily paper—and so it is. But do readers of the daily news find themselves moved to wonder, ‘at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth’"? (Reagan In His own Hand, p. 409-411)
“When God gave Adam reason, he gave him
freedom to choose, for freedom is but
choosing”
John Milton (1608-1674)
Democracy
“We allure the people to read and hear God’s word... We lean unto knowledge they [Catholics] unto influence...unless thou know thou canst not judge: unless thou hear both sides thou canst not know”
Bishop John Jewel 16th Century
“Nothing is by scripture imposed upon us to be
believed which is flatly contradictory to right
reason and the suffrage of our senses”
Bishop John Gardner, 1662
Protestantism
“The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism” Max Weber
“the decline of religion in Europe has led to Europeans becoming the "idlers of the world" (while the more religious US remains hard-working)”.
English model of property Rights and democracy vs Spanish model of concentrated wealth and authoritarianism.
Niall Ferguson
“the scholars who produced it had forged an
enduring link, literary and religious, between
the English-speaking people of the world.”
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
Winston Churchill
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