Upload
major3320
View
251
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
1/221
GUNPOWDER,
SPITTLE &PARCHMENT:
The curious origins
of the greatest English Bible
Richard Major
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
2/221
a talk given
at the four hundredth anniversarycommemoration
of the King James Bibleat Faculty of Teacher Education,Zagreb, Croatia,
on 10 November 2011,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
3/221
organised bythe Anglican Chaplaincy of Zagreb
(www.anglican.hr)and
Hravatsko Biblijsko Drutvo(www.hbd.hr)
http://www.anglican.hr/http://www.hbd.hr/http://www.hbd.hr/http://www.anglican.hr/8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
4/221
Its a great privilege to be here before you. And its a pleasure to be here
to praise something as splendid and beautiful as the King James Bible.Were come together this evening to commemorate the greatest
of all modern bibles. Youll be hearing from Janet Berkovic about itsliterary beauty, and from Jutta Henner about the principles of its
translation.Its my job to tell you why, humanly speaking, the King JamesBible came into existence. Im here to discuss the politics and history.
If you came expecting an edifying story youll be disappointed.Its a matter of intrigue, perversion, menace, and above all of violence:
of gunpowder, spittle and grubby old parchment. The production of theKing James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times.
And that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and sopeaceful. It hadto sound like that.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
5/221
Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible:
King James himself.y ol
d parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I
will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
L
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
6/221
1.
SPITTLE:King James and his Bible
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
7/221
In spring of 1603 a curious little Scot travelled south to England,
a country he had never seen before.James had been King of Scotland for 33 years.
.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
8/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
9/221
Now at last, after a lifetime of waiting, he had become Kingof the much larger and richer realm of England.
.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
10/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
11/221
It is difficult to like James.Of course hed had a wretched life. His mother was the
infamous
. y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
12/221
Mary,Queenof Scots
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
13/221
Mary,Queenof Scots,
the most
notoriouswoman ofthe age.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
14/221
Mary,Queenof Scots,
the most
notoriouswoman ofthe age.
His fatherwas
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
15/221
the pitiful Henry, Lord Darnley,
h f l d l
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
16/221
the pitiful Henry, Lord Darnley,
a diseased and dimwitted teenager.
h i if l H L d D l
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
17/221
the pitiful Henry, Lord Darnley,
a diseased and dimwitted teenager.
In March 1566, when Mary was heavily pregnant,Darnleys cronies broke into her bedroom, put a gun to her head,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
18/221
and stabbed to death David Rizzio,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
19/221
her Italian secretary.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
20/221
her Italian secretary.Very soon afterward later James was born; then the house
where Darnley was staying was blown up with gunpowder,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
21/221
and Darnley was found in the orchard,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
22/221
dead.
Everyone thought Mary was guilty of her husbands assassination.She was forced to abdicate, and fled to England,
where she plotted to murder Queen Elizabeth.
In the end, Elizabeth had to have her
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
23/221
beheaded.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
24/221
Meanwhile
her son,little James Stuart
was, fromthe age of one,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
25/221
James VI,King of Scots.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
26/221
He grew up ugly andfurtive. He stammered.
His tongue was too bigfor his mouth he had theunfortunate habit of
spitting,
which everyone noticed,which annoyed everyone,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
27/221
and which somehow seemed to define him.
James was, in a way,clever, an intellectual but without being,in any sensible
direction, intelligent.He was bookish andfoolish. His nickname
was the wisest fool in
Christendom. He wasa pedant, a bigot and abore. His mind wasfull of bent, bitter,nightmarish notions,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
28/221
and so werehis books.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
29/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
30/221
The book King James was proudest of was not the King James Bible,
but a treatise he wrote as King of Scots called
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
31/221
Dmonologie (1597),
which was all about witches:how to detect if they had
got through a keyhole;how to track them down;how to prosecute
and kill them.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
32/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
33/221
Such he was,for many decades:King of Scotland;
scribbler of treasties;witch-hunter;red-headed, arrogant, sneaky,
full of spit.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
34/221
Such he was,for many decades:King of Scotland;
scribbler of treasties;witch-hunter;red-headed, arrogant, sneaky,
full of spit.
He was waiting, waiting for a death, waiting for his splendid cousin
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
35/221
Elizabeth I,Queen
of Englandand Ireland,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
36/221
to die; and when she did, early in 1603,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
37/221
to die; and when she did, early in 1603,
James came south to
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
38/221
London,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
39/221
the greatest metropolis of Christendom,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
40/221
to be crowned
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
41/221
king.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
42/221
Great thoughElizabeth had been,England was
tired of her,and expectations
were high for
king.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
43/221
King James.
All those expectations were
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
44/221
disappointed.
His reign wasa failure and ascandal.
England has
never before orsince known
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
45/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
46/221
a morass ofintrigue,corruption
and depravity.of almostunthinkable
wickedness,
of poisoning,assassinationand debauch.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
47/221
James himself was grossly fond of a succession of
a morass ofintrigue,corruption
and depravity.of almostunthinkable
wickedness,
of poisoning,assassinationand debauch.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
48/221
beautifulyoung men,
of whomthe very
worst,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
49/221
Steenie, createdby JamesDuke of Buckingham,
was allowed to
dominate thegovernment.
James was notoriouseverywhere.
About the time he washaving theKing James Bibleprinted, this
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
50/221
filthy poemwas being circulatedin France
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
51/221
James was despised throughout Europe,and under the mismanagement of Buckingham
the prestige of the kingdom sank low.
More seriously, the king abused the English constitution,and bequeathed a civil war to his saintly son and successor.
James was, surely,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
52/221
the worst kingwe have ever had.He left our history
defiled withhis spittle.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
53/221
But one very good thing came out of James reign.James I commissioned a revised translation of the Bible; and the
beauty and dignity of its English dazzled everyonethen, and eversince. As long as the language lasts, people, religious or not, will readthe King James Version with delight.
The very phrase King Jameshas come to mean, most often, not
the ghastly little monarch, but the glorious book he ordered intoexistence.Did King James commission the King James Bible out of virtue or
poetry or good taste?No; not a bit of it. He commissioned it out of fear. His fear was
the origin of its beauty.y old
parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that,
I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
54/221
2.
GUNPOWDER:
The explosive nature of
translating the Bible
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
55/221
James was full of fearnaturally enough, I suppose. When he was in
the womb hed heard the shrieks and roars as Rizzio was hacked todeath in his mothers chamber. He grew up knowing his mother hadconspired to murder his father with gunpowder. His mother was inprison throughout his boyhood, while his own government connived ather beheading so that he might succeed the woman who killed her. It isnot surprising that James nervous, tyrannical, distrustful.
Being a highbrow, he knew ways to deck out his vices as virtues:he posed as a peacemaker, and took as his motto Beati pacifici, Blessedare the peacemakers.
But the truth is that James was simply afraidafraid of theworld, notably afraid of soldiers, and afraid, most of all, of gunpowder.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
56/221
Unfortunately, when James arrived in England the situation was indeed
explosive.The Reformation had wrecked the unity of Europe. It had
created a huge civil war in European civilisation, ebbing and flowingover the whole divided Continent.
In 1603 this civil war, eighty years old, was not dying down. Itwas intensifiying. Catholicism, revivified by the Council of Trent, hadreclaimed Austria, Hungary and Poland from the new religion. it wasnow pressing its counter-attack into the heartland of heresy: intoGermany itself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
57/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
58/221
Politically, too, Catholicism was reviving. Its great secular champion,the imperial Hapsburg dynasty, was on the march. The Hapsburgs vastterritories surrounded France
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
59/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
60/221
and looked across the Narrow Seas at England.
Already religious wars were alight in the Netherlands andIreland, and in beseiged France. It was clear that the whole Continentwas rolling towards a final conflagration, a culmination of all the warsof religion since Luther, a war that would decide the future of European
civilisation.And indeed that war was to erupt while James was still on the
throne. It would go on for thirty years, kill eight million peopleandend, alas, in a draw, so that Europe remained divided; and still does.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
61/221
Meanwhile, England herself was divided.In 1603 James found his new kingdom torn into three
antagonistic religious factions.There was
the Established Church the state Church under the domination of
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
62/221
the Established Church, the state Church, under the domination ofthe monarchy: a Church shapeless, formless.
neither unimpeachably Catholic, nor properly reformed,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
63/221
practising that ill-defined sort of Christianity later known as
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
64/221
Anglicanism.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
65/221
Then, on the religious Left, were the party known as the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
66/221
Puritans, so-called because they upheld the creed ofpure
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
67/221
Calvinism. The Puritans thought the English Reformation had
not gone far enough, and they were growing impatient with delay.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
68/221
And on the religious Right were the Papists (as they werealways called), who rejected the Reformation altogether,
and remained loyal to the ancient creed of
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
69/221
Roman Catholicism.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
70/221
The government fiercely persecuted the Papists, and intermittentlypersecuted extreme Puritans. And both these groups were increasingly
committed to violent revolution against the government.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
71/221
Now, all three religious factions in England had their own Englishversion of the Bible.
Each translation expressed partisan position, and bolstered itsfaction in its position and its militancy.
For nothing in the seventeenth century was more politicallycharged than Bible translation.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
72/221
Lets think about Bible translation for a moment.
In the beginning were the actual words, the Hebrewbooks of the Old Testament and the Greek books of the NewTestament.
The only people who can actually read the Bible arethose fluent in ancient Hebrew and Hellenistic Greek. And therehave never been many of them.
A few centuries before Christ, the Jews of the Diasporahad stopped using Hebrew, and their scriptures were translated
into Greek as the Septuagint.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
73/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
74/221
Then, as Christianity spread to the West, there were more and moreChristians who couldnt read Greek, either.
The Old and New Testaments were therefore translated into
Latin. The definitive Latin text, produced by St Jerome at the beginningof the fifth century, became known as the Vulgate.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
75/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
76/221
The Vulgate is incomparably the most important version of the Bible.
For more than eleven centuries the Vulgate simplywasthe Bible.Latin was the educated language of almost all Christendom, and thevast majority of Christians knew only one Bible, the Vulgate.
It was the verbal expression of the unity of the Church.
Its influence throughout the West was absolutefar greaterthan the influence of the King James Bible in England.The highest praise we can give the King James Bible is that it is
an echo, in one vernacular, of some of the universal authority andpower of the Vulgate.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
77/221
Heres a
mediaevalmanuscriptof the
Vulgate Bible;
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
78/221
This is the Louvain printing of the Vulgate, done in 1583.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
79/221
Heres an edition of 1922,showing the In principio, the luminous prologue to John,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
80/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
81/221
Its worth stressing that there was no prohibition on translating the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
82/221
Vulgate into localptois, and this was often done, when pastorallyusefuljust as people sometimes try to render bits of the English Bible
into various slangs and dialects.For instance, the tenth century Wessex Gospels translated thefour evangelists from Vulgate Latin into a Western dialect of OldEnglish. Heres the Lords Prayer. See if you follow it (represents th):
Fder ure u e eart on heofonum, si in nama gehalgod.To becume in rice, gewure in willa,
on eoran swa swa on heofonum.Urne gedghwamlican hlaf syle us todg, and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfa urum gyltendum.And ne geld u us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. Solice.
One of Luthers first acts of rebellion was to produce a Bible ofhis own.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
83/221
It was a revolutionary act. Indeed it would have been even morerevolutionary if Luther had had his way. He wanted to make the canon
his own by ejecting certain books: Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, andRevelation (I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit producedthem,he argued).
He made the text his own, amending it to make the Lutheranintention of the authors more clear. Thus Luthers Bible reads man is
justified alonethrough faith(Romans iii28). That word allein, alone,isnt in the Greek St Paul had forgotten to write itbut Luther wasthere to make the Epistle to the Romans a Lutheran work.
Most importantly, Luther rejected the Vulgate altogether. He
translated and adapted the Hebrew and Greek texts into German, orrather into a version of German of his own devising. And becauseLuthers Bible became so influential, his particular dialect became thefoundation of Modern High German.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
84/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
85/221
Lets reflect on the Vulgate.The Vulgate was the Bible of (virtually) all Christendom. The
Church was happy to see cribs produced, so that the illiterate couldhave things read to them in their own parochial speech. But the Vulgateremained, the literary symbol of Christian unity.
Luthers Bible was an attack on the principle of universality. Itwas sectarian, because it meant to vindicate the claims of the new
religion from its own rewriting of scripture; and it was national,designed to be read only by Germans, and even helping to define aseparate Germany by helping forge a separate German literarylanguage.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
86/221
Thus in the sixteenth century Bible translation suddenly became an
explosive matter.To revolt against the Vulgate was to revolt against the universal
Church.To create new vernacular Bibles (which sometimes involved
inventinga vernacular) was to set up national Christianities, in revoltagainst the one Latin Church.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
87/221
This impulse quickly spread from Germany to other northern nations.One of Luthers first followers in England was a clergyman
named
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
88/221
WilliamTyndale,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
89/221
who left England for Luthers Wittenberg, and in 1525 produced anEnglish version of the New Testamenttranslating straight from theGreek (although naturally he couldnt get the Vulgate out of his head).
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
90/221
Like Luther Tyndale was anxious to prove that the new religion was
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
91/221
Like Luther, Tyndale was anxious to prove that the new religion wasthere in the ancient texts, by making the ancient texts consonant withProtestant views.
Thus (presbuteros), which for twelve centuries hadbeen the Christian word forpriest, was translated notpriestbut senior.And (ekklesia) became congregation, not church, lest the NewTestament sound ecclesial.
This was all very provocative. Tyndales Bible was burned by theauthorities, when they could seize it, and Tydnale himself was on thereceiving end of almost a million words of printed abuse by St ThomasMore.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
92/221
But even if we grant Mores point,
the fact is that Tyndale wrote themost wonderful English.Heres his version of the
prologue to Johns Gospel. (Note,by the way, how printed Bibles
were touched up by hand to lookmore like manuscripts!)
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
93/221
In the begynninge was that worde/ and that worde with god: andgod was thatt worde. Its very like the version were used to, theKing James Bible.
And theres no surprise there, for some 83% of the KingJames Bible simplyis Tyndale.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
94/221
Well, then: if the King James Bible is not a new translation but a mildrevision, why is it so important? Why are we making a fuss about theKing James Bible, and not about William Tyndale?
That is the question!Well answer it in due course.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
95/221
Tyndale, despite his Protestantism, was consistently biblical enough tooppose Henry VIIIs divorce the issue which was the shipwreck ofCatholic England.
His old opponent More was martyed for opposing the divorce in1535, and a few months later Tyndale was captured near Brussels on a
warrant from Henry, and burned at the stake, having first beenstrangled. His last words, famously, were Lord, open the King ofEnglands eyes:
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
96/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
97/221
Sure enough, within a few years Henry had decided it suited his ownends to co-opt the new religion. He broke definitively with the Pope,began to persecute Catholic loyalists, and commanded the publicationof an official English Bible.
The Coverdale Bible had many weaknesses. Miles Coverdale,
who produced it, wasnt proficient in Hebrew or Greek. So he had tocobble his Bible together from Tyndale, from the Vulgate and evenfrom Luthers German.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
98/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
99/221
Worse still, this hodgepodge was obviously a political gambit by the
English monarchy.Henry was quite happy to martyr both More and Tyndale. Hewas happy to have Catholics hanged for treason (for following thePope) and Protestants burned for heresy (for following Luther) on thesame day, in the same market-places. They both had to die, because
they both defied the essence of King Henrys new religion, which washis own role as autocratic Head of the Church.
The English Bible Henry produced was essentially a royalistdocumentand we can see from its
title page
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
100/221
title page.
At the top are a few images
summarising
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
101/221
salvation history, from Adam to Christ(note the quotation from the Vulgate!); butthe big important picture is of Henry himself,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
102/221
handing out copies ofhis book to his grateful peers and bishops,
kneeling before him.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
103/221
Revisions of the Coverdalewere just as overtly political.
Heres the Great Bibleof 1539; Henry is now at thetop of the page
(with Christ crowded
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
104/221
(with Christ crowdedinto a niche behindthe throne),
and beneath Henrysfeet are scores ofEnglish subjectsreceiving his book
with shouts of
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
105/221
VIVAT REX!
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
106/221
GOD SAVETHE KING!
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
107/221
The Bible said what the King told his translators it said.The divine text was throughly subordinated to the
Tudor project.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
108/221
The next revision, the BishopsBible of 1568 (a paticularlyfeeble piece of work, by the
way), had Henrys daughter,
Queen Elizabeth,on its title-page.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
109/221
In this half-coloured edition ofthe Bishops Bible she is beingcrowned by Justice and Mercy,and hailed by Fortitude andPrudence, between garlandsand cornucopias and caryatids.
Amidst all this pagan clobberthere is
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
110/221
no room for any Christian symbol at all!
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
111/221
While the royal presses were grinding out the official,royal scriptures (the Coverdale, which evolved into the GreatBible, which evolved into the Bishops Bible), the Puritans or
Calvinist zealots were not idle. They were not satisfied by themonarchys shoddy Bibles; they produced their own version,
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
the Geneva Bible( 6 6)
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
112/221
(1560, 1576),
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
113/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
114/221
which in terms of mere scholarship was an advance on Tyndale.Its English was very bold and energetic, too.But here was the problem:
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
115/221
quite overshadowing thetext of the Geneva Bible
was a preposterously largeand controversial
apparatus:
Ephesians i3-4
headers,defining the subject
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
116/221
interpolated essays
marginal commentary,setting out Calvinistdoctrine
the actual text
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
117/221
The divine text was thus thoroughly subordinated to the Calvinistproject.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
The Roman Catholics, meanwhile, answered both the royal andPuritan Bibles with their own English translation.
The Catholic position had hardened in the face of the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
118/221
The Catholic position had hardened in the face of thesectarian Bibles of the Protestants. The Council of Trent declared
that the
old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so manyyears, has been approved of in the Church, be held as authentic;
and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretextwhatever .
Christ had promised to remain with His Church, the Catholicsargued, leading His people into all truth; the Vulgate, which had be
authoritative for eleven of the fifteen-and-a-half centuries sinceChrist, wasthe normal vehicle for Christs bibical revelation ofHimself.
Therefore the Catholics counterblast,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
119/221
the Douai-RheimsNew Testament of 1582,declared forthrightlythat it was
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
120/221
translated faithfully out of the authentical Latin, but also diligentlyconferred the Greek. In other words, it aimed at being authoritative,and aimed at the discovery or exposure of
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
121/221
corruptions of diverse late translationsthe Bishops Bible,the Geneva Bible and the resolution of the controversies inreligion, of these days.
The Douai-Rheims didnt clear away controversy, ofcourse. But it greatly strengthened the Catholic position.They now had an English text translating what Christianshad read as the Bible for over a millennium a text whichdidnt say what the Reformers said the Bible said.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
122/221
So what did the Bible say?In 1603 there were three rival English Bibles, each
confidently preaching a different religion, each justifying
violence against the other two.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
123/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
124/221
Three different Bibles! Three hostile Christianities!The time for religious reconciliation seemed over The
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
125/221
The time for religious reconciliation seemed over. Theseason of coexistence was gone. The great controversy was
coming to a head.Europe was slithering towards a final, total religious conflic
the Thirty Years War.In England too there was a dangerous increase in tension.
Expectations had been high when James arrived in England.Puritans hoped he would reform the Church, Papists that he wouldlighten persecution.
But he was a sneaky fellow, as we have seen, used toworming out of promises. Both factions were disappointed and
disgusted with James, and their reaction was terrifyingA group of young papist aristocrats
resolved to move the situation along at the next State Opening.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
126/221
resolved to move the situation along at the next State Opening.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
127/221
They secreted a ton of gunpowder in a cellar beneath theHouses of Parliament. The blast would obliterate James, the royalfamily, the entire government, the peers and the House of
Commons except for a few Papists warned to stay home
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
128/221
Heres a crash-test dummy mock-up of the Jacobean House ofLords, constructed for a sensationalist documenary,
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend(ITV, 2005).
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
129/221
Here is James, reading his address from the throne to
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
130/221
his peers; and this is what things look like
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
131/221
a second later.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
132/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
133/221
Of course it didnt quite happen. The governments spies followedthe Gunpowder Plot from the beginning. On the eve of the
blast they swept in to arrest the plotters, who were
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
ll argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets be in with the man behind the Kin James Bible: Kin James himself.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
134/221
put to
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
135/221
death
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
136/221
with theutmost
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
137/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
138/221
barbarity.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
139/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
140/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
141/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
142/221
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
143/221
3.
PARCHMENT:
The creation of a new Bible
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
144/221
All this would have been sufficiently alarming for any government;
with King James hereditary horror of gunpowder, it was critical.For at some moment, the other wing of English Christianitywas becoming more restive.
The Puritans were insisting on religious reform. Jamessummoned them to a conference at the most imposing of his palaces,
Hampton Court
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
145/221
a good place to intimate people.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
146/221
The Hampton Court conference of 1604 was a very mixed success.Puritan demands were not met; except in one area.
Reynolds, one of the Puritan leaders, moved his Majesty there might bea new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
147/221
reign of Henry VIII .were corrupt, and not answerable to the truths of
the original.James, who always liked to think himself a great scholar,declared he could never yet see a Bible well translated into English, butthe worst of all his Majesty thought, the Geneva, since some of its noteswere very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoured too much ofdangerous and traitorous conceits.
The stress here is on sedition and treason. The Bible must nolonger serve the Kings enemies. It had to stop being a weapon againsthim. It had to stop encouraging the assassination of kings (James
explained at some length how the Geneva Bible notes tended toregicide). The Bible had to be pacified. Beati pacifici.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
148/221
As a matter of fact, the Puritans had a case. There wasa lot of
corruption in the royal Bibles (the Coverdale-Great Bible-Bishops Bibletext).
It was often marred by awkward misprints. In 1562, forinstance, instead ofBlessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called
the children of God, it read Blessed are the placemakers.And apart from typos, some translations were pretty shocking.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
149/221
Psalm xci5
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
150/221
Thou shall not nede to be afrayed forenybugges by night.
The Coverdale Bible(popularly known as the Bug Bible),
and also the Great Bible
Jeremiah viii22
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
151/221
Is there no balm in Gilead?
(King James Bible)
Jeremiah viii22
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
152/221
Is there no tryacle in Gilead?
The Great Bible(henceforth known as
the Treacle Bible)
Genesis iii7
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
153/221
they sewed fig leaves together,and made themselves aprons.
(King James Bible)
Genesis iii7
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
154/221
they sowed figge-tree leaves together,and made themselves breeches.
The Geneva Bible
(generally known asthe Breeches Bible)
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
155/221
And so James resolved to commission a new translation, as one
way of soothing the dangerous divisions of England.This revised translation would be of such splendid
scholarshipwould sound so serene and authoritativewouldbe so free of controversial marginal notesthat it would drive
out all the alternatives, and unite the nation. Beati pacifici.
Who were they, the 47 men James appointed to revise the Bible?
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
156/221
Who were they, the 47 men James appointed to revise the Bible?A mixed bag. They divided up the text and worked in
separate companies, and the differences still show.Some were companies were hardworking, and some
more inclined to leave their base-text, the Bishops Bible,untouched.
Some made more use than you might expect of theDouai-Rheims Bible of the Roman Catholics.
Forty-six of the 47 were clergymen, but their religiouspolitics were various, too.
There wasLancelot Andrewes,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
157/221
Lancelot Andrewes,Bishop of Chichester
and then of Ely,a saintly figure,and an author ofexquisitely lovely
prose. He acted asgeneral editor of thenew translation.
There was RichardBancroft, Archbishop ofCanterbury Bancroft
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
158/221
Canterbury. Bancroftmaintained general controlof the project until hisdeath in 1610, and insistedon a few changes inlanguage, to make the new
Bible teach a more Catholicsort of Christainity. He wasa great persecutor ofPuritans. If Bancroft had
lived, says Clarendon, hewould quickly haveextinguished all that fire inEngland which had beenkindled at Geneva.
And after Bancroft died,he was succeeded as
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
159/221
he was succeeded asArchbishop by GeorgeAbbot, a sincere butnarrow-minded Calvinist,
who saw the new Biblethrough the press.
(Abbot came to a badend. While hunting deerhe shot a keeper dead byaccident, fell into
depression, was deprivedof his primacy, thrust outof power ...).
They worked quickly, and presented their work to King James
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
160/221
only six years after he commissioned them.And so in 1611 the new translation or Bible without
notes was
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
161/221
published.
Now theres a lot of cant spoken and written about the KingJames Bible, the KJB; lets try to praise it honestly.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
162/221
J J ; y p yWas it a great translation? No, it wasnt a translation at
all. It was just a revision, and a light revision at that, of theBishops Bible, often lifting passages from the Geneva Biblewhere the Bishops Bible was too verbose. And both the BishopsBible and the Geneva Bible overwhelmingly preserve William
Tyndales English.The KJB companies referred to published editions of the
Hebrew and Greek text andmore than you might expecttheVulgate, but they didnt bother looking at any old manuscripts.No actual parchment was involved. Theres not much freshscholarship involved in their work.
(True, the title-page of the KJB claimed to offer the Oldand New Testaments
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
163/221
newly translatedout of the originaltongues
but that is a fib!)
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
164/221
So (as we have already said) why do we make such a fussabout the KJB, if it was merely the final revision of
Tyndales work?Why arent we talking about Tyndales Bible?
This is why.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
165/221
yTyndales Bible was a self-consciously heretical work. It
was meant to blow up the existing English Church and createsomething new in the rubble. That was Tyndales project.
King James Bible was a self-consciously soothing work.It was meant to defend and vindicate the existing English
Church. That was James project.And it was James project that succeeded.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
166/221
Of course most of Tyndales work survived in the 1611 Bibleunchanged, counting word by word. But the changes wereenough to change what the English Bible signified.
The KJB is the Bible of peace. It is designed to soothe.
1. For instance: James insisted that all the Greek ecclesial
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
167/221
terms be translated in a way that affirmed the existing
arrangements in England. Thus we read church,priest,bishopricbut notpenance. The KJB is an AnglicanBible. It fits innicely with the style and terms of the Book of Common Prayer.There is nothing in it to suggest that the Church of England
should reform itself further and become more like ContinentalProtestantism; there is nothing in it to suggest that the Church ofEngland should recover its history and return to Rome.
The KJB is mellow. It affirms the existing compromise.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
168/221
2. Although James was just as insistent as Henry VIIIthat his Bible say what he want, the monarchical quality of theBible is much more discretely expressed.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.
True, the KJB has a nasty craven Preface,dedicating the whole Bible to James.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
169/221
It continues:
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
170/221
ru
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
171/221
No mentionof spittle, then,nor of Steenie.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
172/221
But in appearance the KJBcarefully avoids lookinglike royalist propaganda
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
173/221
the title page actually shows the Twelve Apostles,rather than the English monarch!
Here (it is implied) is the Bible: simply the Bible.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
174/221
3. Again, the KJB is not meant
to stir the reader into angrytheological debate. It has noneof the polemics of Luther orTyndale or Geneva or Douai-
Rheims. There is no doctrinalcommentary in the marginsto guide the reader,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
175/221
just a few marginal glosseson Greek and Hebrew terms,
and modest,uncontroversial
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
176/221
headnotes,
summaringeach chapter.
4. Again, while there is some preemptive aggression againstRoman Catholics and Puritans in the Dedication, the final note is ofpeacefulness: James, the prince of peace, will guarantee the KJB
against uncharitable and violent critics.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
177/221
5 B t f th titl d th D di ti t th t
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
178/221
5. But of course the title-page and the Dedication arent the most
important thing.What matters about the KJB so much is its style. It is the styl
of the KJB that transformed the English Bible from an angryProtestant tract, liable to promote rebellion, liable to provoke
gunpowder plots, into a thing of such universal serenity and beautyno one could resist it.The KJB virtually brought English Bible translation to an en
for three centuries: no one could want anything else. Its style wasirresistible
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
179/221
You hear a lot of nonsense about the style of the King James Bible.The important thing to remember is this ravishing beauty has apolitical purpose. It was part of King James programme.
Most of the base-text (which was, ultimately, Tyndales wor
was preserved. But the deft touches made by King James men allpoint in the same direction. They make the Bible sound more melloand even more dreamy.
The KJB virtually invents its own dialect.I f h i d f h d i h h i i
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
180/221
It perfumes the mind of the reader with archaic, romantic
terms: verily, and it came to pass.The KJB is happy to sound Latinate. The Douai-Rheims
translators had invented lots of English words to turn the Vulgateinto English: acquisition, adulterate, advent, allegory, verity,
calumniate, character, cooperate, prescience, resuscitate, victim,and evangelise. Whereas the Geneva often simplified the Greek intoAnglo-Saxon words (with pungent marginal notes to raw out thefullCalvinist -- meaning), the KJB, forbidden marginalcommentary, is not afraid of long, newly-invented Latinate wordswhere they are necessary.
A d th KJB f ld f hi d E li h f Th d
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
181/221
And the KJB prefers old-fashioned English forms. Theeand
thouare always used instead of singularyou. The third personsingular present is always -ethand never not -es: appearethandhateth, that is, never appearsand hates. Quite often the KJB haswhichinstead ofwhoor whom: Lot also which went with Abram. I
all these matters the Jacobean English spoken in the streets (and onthe stage) was closer to modern English than is the KJB.Consider these two versions of a passage in the Apocalypse:
Revelation vi12the sun was as black as sackcloth of hair,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
182/221
the sun was as black as sackcloth of hair,
and the moon was like blood.And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,
as a fig tree casteth hergreen figs,
when it is shaken
the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,and the moon became as blood;
and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth,even as a fig tree casteth heruntimely figs,
when she is shaken
The top version is the Geneva Bible, the bottom the KJB. TheGeneva is more modern, the KJB much more beautiful. In KJB
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
183/221
the vision of cosmic annihilation (windfall constellations rainingdown) is softened, and we can behold it with pleasure. The moonwas like bloodis alarming, it sounds like eyewitness testimony of acatastrophe; the moon became as bloodis an incantation. Greenfigsis ominous, untimely figsis poetry. Even the end of the world
charms us. This is an Anglican apocalypse: gentle, moderate,whimsical, comfortable, cheerful, clever.
These differences may not seem much in this short passage.But the King James Bible is consistent; all its touches are in the same
direction; and the differences accumulate over the whole giganticbulk of Scripture until they create what is really a new book.
The Geneva Bible became contraband after 1616. It was printedin Amsterdam and smuggled into England. It lay in the hands of aCaroline Puritan as an act of defiance against King and Church and
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
184/221
Caroline Puritan as an act of defiance against King and Church and
law. Its language was as bare and belligerent as the traditions of Englishtranslation then allowed. We have seen much more bleak prosepurporting to translate the Bible, but bleakness is relative, and to aBaroque Englishman, the Geneva seemed brutal and swaggering as a
1960s poured concrete tower block. And its every marginal note,folding itself into the text so it could scarcely be distinguished, was awhispering tempter, urging pride or rebellion or slaughter.
The Geneva was the book the Roundheads literally carried intobattlea selection of passages from the Geneva was given toevery soldier in the New Model Army as The Soldiers Pocket Bible
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
185/221
every soldier in the New Model Army as The Soldier s Pocket Bible
(Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord? I hate them withperfect hatred.) It was book that pricked them to their murders inEngland, their assassinations in Scotland, their massacres inIreland. What else was it likely to inspire? When King Asa
deposing his grandmother for worshipping other gods, theGeneva Bible hisses in this he showed that he lacked zeal, for sheshould have died but he gave place to foolish pity. The leitmotifof the Geneva Bible isput them to the sword.
When Cromwell laid Ireland waste he was only acting out the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
186/221
Geneva Old Testament, as he said himself, and his words are full ofwhat he thought were biblical notes. Drogheda surrendered; Cromwellhad the garrison and population exterminated. I believe we put to thesword the whole number of the defenders. I do not think 30 of thewhole number escaped with their lives. Women and children crowded
into a church were burned to death. The moon was like blood. AnyCatholic clergy were, as he breezily said, knocked on the head, which isto say clubbed to death without any foolish pity, after the manner of theChildren of Israel with the priests of Baal.
When good triumphed over evil in 1660, many things were
restored along the monarchy: the Church, parliament, drama andthe King James Bible. The Geneva, was finally stamped out; its infamousnotes were printed for the last time in 1715
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
187/221
notes were printed for the last time in 1715.
That is the early history of the KJB: it was generally known asthe Bible without notes, the Bible that wasnt the Geneva. The Genevawas the regicide book , the book ofperfect hatred; the Douai was theBible of the Gunpowder Plotters; the KJB was the book of peace.
That is why it sounds so serene. It hadto.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
188/221
4.
GLORY:a fresh revelation
So far I have tried to describe the origins of the KJB levelly.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
189/221
Now its time to ask: What do we reallythinkof it?Now we turn controversial.There is so much pious balderdash uttered about the KJB
that its healthy to hear from a wise and cynical pagan: in thiscase, the great American journalist H.L Mencken.
Whoever it was who translated the Bible into excellent Frenchprose is chiefly responsible for the collapse of Christianity inFrance. Contrariwise, the men who put the Bible into archaic,sonorous and often unintelligible English gave Christianity a newlease of life wherever English is spoken They did their work at a
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
190/221
lease of life wherever English is spoken. They did their work at a
time of great theological blather and turmoil, when men of allsorts, even the least intelligent, were beginning to take a vast andunhealthy interest in exegetics and apologetics. They were far tooshrewd to feed this disconcerting thirst for ideas with a Bible in
plain English; the language they used was deliberately artificialeven when it was new. They thus dispersed the mob by appealingto its emotions, as a mother quiets a baby by crooning to it. TheBible that they produced was so beautiful that the great majorityof men, in the face of it, could not fix their minds upon the ideasin it. To this day it has enchanted the English-speaking peoples soeffectively that, in the main, they remain Christians, at leastsentimentally.y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:
and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets be in w
Mencken, in his ironic, hardboiled fashion, is putting his finger onan important truth. English-speakers
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
191/221
still remember the twenty-third Psalm when the doctor begins toshake his head, they are still moved beyond compare (though not,alas, to acts!) by the Sermon on the Mount, and they still turn once
year from their sordid and degrading labors to immerse themselves
unashamed in the story of the manger. It is not much, but it issomething.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
192/221
I think its quite a lot. For many Anglophone Christians, thesoundof the KJB is tied up with what they mean by religiousexperience. Its English was designed to sootheto soothe rebelliousCalvinists and recalcitrant papists. But it is too splendid merely to
soothe: it conjures up the peace that passes understanding, therichness of heaven, the presence of God. The language of the KingJames Bible is a sacred language.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently argued that we have nosacred languages.
Of all the great world religions, it is Christianity that has the most
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
193/221
obvious and pervasive investment in translation. We do not have asacred language; from the very first, Christians have been convincethat every human language can become the bearer of scripturalrevelation. The words in which revelation is first expressed are notsolid, impenetrable containers of the mystery ..
But this cannot be right. Christianitydoeshave sacred languages:Hebrew, Greek, Latin, the only languages whose words werehammered up over the dying Word.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
ll argue is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful It had to sound like that
That is a particular fact about Jesus. All the interesting factsabout Jesus are particular. God didnt just become human, He
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
194/221
became a man. God first revealed Himself in Hebrew poetry, andbecame a man in a particular placewithin Hellenistic culture anwithin Latin polity. The church He founded remains Jewish in itspoetry, Greek in thought and Roman in structure. These are oftenthought to be scandalous facts; but after all incarnation always
involves the scandal of particularity. The Gospel of Tiberius subjectthe man Whose name was always hellenised to Jesus, can't beculturally neutral. Vatican II inculturation is bunk.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
ll argue is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful It had to sound like that
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
195/221
Every language presumes a culture. Language is very noisy.I fear that vernacular translation risks drowning out the concreteand specific Christ in the roar or titter of random cultures. After
all, isn't the Living Bible essentially a faithful record of what liberalWest Coast Protestantism was like in the 1960s? And if so, of whatelse can it be a faithful record?
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
ll argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had tosound like that.
Lets be in with the man behind the Kin James Bible: Kin James himself
Myself, I would cheerfully have burned Tyndale. But theirony is that in due course his translation was adapted by KingJames men into a text almost as numinous opaque and evocative
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
196/221
James men into a text almost as numinous, opaque, and evocative
as the Vulgate. The loudest note in King James English is exoticism.The KJB cries out: These words come from a different place, faraway, long ago. It resists the idea of a God Whos very like me(which means, in the end, culturallylike me) murmuring directly to
me, the solitary Bible reader, without His voice crossing throughany distance of history or ecclesial authority.It is this false idea of the solitary reader, at one with the
Word whatever words he happens to be reading, which has hasproduced all the modern heresies and schisms and massacres.
Bring back the Vulgate! But failing that, KJB forever! For I
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
197/221
suppose we might say that Christianity has, beside its threelegitimate sacred languages, fabricated certain semi-sacredlanguages: Old Church Slavonic; and King-James-ese. The languagof the KJB is just as much a self-conscious art-tongue as OldChurch Slavonic in Eastern Europe.
And that is why the KJB seems such a huge thing: it is notjust a book, it is a whole language.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and th
ll argue is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful It had to sound like that
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
198/221
We seem to have wandered quite some way from 1611!Let us return to King James reign. He was lucky to
commission his Bible when he did. These were the years of
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
199/221
Shakespeares final plays:
Elizabethan English, having reached its classic perfection, was justpassing into baroque decadence. It was an ideal moment tocompose something of perpetual value.
The KJB is perpetual. It is so valuable it surmounts itssordid background and its origin in that obscene king, in his
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
200/221
sordid background and its origin in that obscene king, in his
effeminate timidity and horror of bangs in the night. It is sovaluable it survived the failure of his selfish political goals.
For there was a failure.The incomparable literary excellence of the KJB
drove all competitors from the market; it soon became theEnglishBible; Papists and (in the end, after 1660) even Puritansembraced it.
Nonetheless, James was not a real peace-maker.The Roman Catholics were never reconciled to the Church of
England.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
201/221
And, as for the Puritans, they clungto the Geneva, rebelled againstKing James son, the saintly Charles
Stuart,
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
202/221
defeated him,andmartyred him.
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
203/221
The English dynasty King James founded was overthrown, its placeeventually usurped by princes from Germany.
But the English Bible King James sponsored has never beenoverthrown, nor had its place usurped. The glory of King James
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
204/221
Bible has outlasted the disgraces and scandals of his reignthewretchedness of his parentage and catamitery, the witch-dread,gunpowder and the slobber.
In the end no one could resist it. It has dominated English literature and the English language ever since 1611, virtually
unaltered. And I suspect it always will. The glory King James Bible iinexhaustible. We never quite get to the end of it. It tells ussomething about England which we cant hear anywhere else,something about English, something about language, something
about the peace that passeth understanding, and even somethingabout God.
AN AFTERTHOUGHT
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
205/221
We say the KJB is unchangingbut that is to forget printers errors The King James Bible has not been well served by the press,beginning with the so-called Printers Bible of 1612, its second yeaof publication:
Psalm cxix161
Princes have persecuted me
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
206/221
p
without a cause
was misprinted as
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
207/221
Psalm cxix161
Printers have persecuted me
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
208/221
p
without a cause
And printers have persecuted it!
Exodus xx14Thou shalt
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
209/221
not commit adultery.
(King James Bible)
Exodus xx14Thou shalt
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
210/221
commit adultery.
(TheAdulterous Bible of 1631;printers fined 300;
only 11 copies survive)
John viii11
Go and sin no more
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
211/221
(King James Bible)
John viii11
Go and sin on more
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
212/221
(Sin On Bible of 1716)
Psalm xiv1
the fool hath said in his heart
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
213/221
f
there is no God
(King James Bible)
Psalm xiv1
the fool hath said in his heart
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
214/221
f
there is a God
(The Fools Bible of 1763;printers fined 3000;
all copies ordered destroyed)
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
215/221
ANOTHER AFTERTHOUGHT
Incidentally, there is a Croatian connection to all this!
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
216/221
chapel of Windsor Castle in timefor Evensong, you might haveheard the lovely cadences of the
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
217/221
King James Bible being readaloud to King James himself ina Croatian accent.
SOME NOTES
The views of late Elizabethan London, and ofShakeaspeares stage, are stills from RolandEmmerichs imbecilic filmAnonymosus (2011).
The enthroned portrait of King James
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
218/221
The enthroned portrait ofKing James
I of England and VI of Scotlandis by DanilMijtens (1621).
The obscene manuscript poemaddressed to the duc de Boukinquan(Buckingham) is by Thophile de Viau; it wascomposed around 1611, and is archived in Parisas MS. Fr. 15220 B.N. (fol. 50v) .
Chesterton from Charles II in TwelveTypes: A Collection of Biographies.
H. L. Mencken, Holy Writ, from theSmart Set, October 1923.
The Eadwine Psalteris in TrinityCollege, Cambridge (MS R.17.1).
SOME MORE THINGS ONLINE
Rowan Williams sermon in St Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the bicentenary of theBritish and Foreign Bible Society, 8th March 2004, athttp://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1648/bicentenary-of-the-british-and-foreign-bible-society; Im grateful to Matjaz Crnivec of the Bible Society of Slovenia
8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
219/221
and foreign bible society; I m grateful to Matjaz Crnivec of the Bible Society of Slovenia
for this reference.You can boggle at James morbidity in this online version of Dmonologie,
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/demonologie/index.html; and at Mores rancouragainst Tyndale, http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/moretyndale.pdf.
For a fine but fusty defence of the Douai, seehttp://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm#CHAPTERXIII
The Geneva Bible notes are athttp://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htm
The Soldiers Pocket Bible is athttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01rale#page/14/mode/2up The bloodthirsty devoitons I quote are on p. 14.
I have been unable to master the technology and embed these videos: theexecution of Tyndale at http://www.anglican.si/1611/Tyndale.flv; an excerpt fromExploding the Legend at http://www.anglican.si/1611/boom.flv; and an edifying hanging-drawing-and-quartering to go with the Gunpowder Plot,http://www.anglican.si/1611/hanging.flv.
MORE BOOKS ON THE KING JAMES BIBLE
The best general introduction is Bruce M. Metzger and Michael CoogansOxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford University Press, 1993; ISBN0-19-504645-5); or more narrowlyFrederick Fyvie Bruce, History of the Bible inEnglish (Lutterworth Press, 2002, ISBN0718890329).
For the political aspects of the King James Bible, you can read theexcellent but, alas, Marxist, ChristopherHill, The English Bible and the
h l i (All L ISBN 8 ) th
http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htmhttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01ralehttp://www.archive.org/stream/soldierspocketbi01ralehttp://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/gbnmatthew.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Presshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Fyvie_Brucehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0718890329http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Christopher_Hillhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Christopher_Hillhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0718890329http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Fyvie_Brucehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-19-504645-5http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_University_Press8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
220/221
seventeenth-century revolution (Allen Lane, 1993, ISBN0713990783); or theWhiggish Benson Bobrick: Wide as the waters: the story of the English Bibleand the revolution it inspired(Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN0684847477).
On the religious impact, see, from an Evangelical perspective,Alister McGraths In the beginning: the story of the King James Bible and how itchanged a nation, a language, and a culture (Anchor Books, 2002,ISBN0385722168).
On the language, see Charles Laurence Barber, Early modern
English (Edinburgh University Press, 2nd edition 1997, ISBN0748608354).Adam Nicolson, 5th Baron Carnock, a member of a great English literarydynasty, wrote a charming book, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the
Making of the King James Bible (HarperCollins, 2003, ISBN0007108931), whichwas published in America as Gods Secretaries, and reissed this year with thecamp new title When God Spoke English.
However, the best recent book on the Jacobean period isJohnStubbsJohn Donne: The Reformed Soul(2008; ISBN 0393333663,9780393333664), an exemplary literary biography which manages to be lots ofother things too, including a harrowing account of Jamie Stuart.
Dr Richard [email protected]
A FINAL CAVEAT
Chesterton, writing in the Daily News
Protestant Christianity believes that here is a Divine record in a book;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0684847477http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0385722168http://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0748608354http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0007108931http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22John+Stubbs%22http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0007108931http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0748608354http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://books.google.com/?id=Iat4Bk_YeR4Chttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0385722168http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0684847477http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Numberhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0713990783http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number8/3/2019 Gunpowder Spittle and Parchment
221/221
Protestant Christianity believes that here is a Divine record in a book;that everyone ought to have free access to that book; that everyone who
gets hold of it can save his soul by it, whether he finds it in a library orpicks it off a dustcart.
Catholic Christianity believes that there is a Divine army or
league upon earth called the Church; that all men should be induced tojoin it; that any man who joins it can save his soul by it without everopening any of the old books of the Church at all. The Bible is only oneof the institutions of Catholicism, like its rites or priesthood; it thinks