Many Armidale people and their forebears have read the King James Bible. This year is the 400th anniversary of the first edition in 1611. Its story is fascinating, combining brilliant scholarship, outstanding organisational skills and political skulduggery.
Let’s start at the beginning. The word ‘Bible’ is derived from the Greek word ‘biblia’ meaning books, and became the term for the Holy Scriptures – a collection of Sacred Books. The Jews classified their Scriptures in three groups: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Before the Christian era, the Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek for the use of Greek-speaking Jews, and the version in most general use was the Septuagint. This was the version in which Christians received the Jewish Scriptures. Later, the Books or parts of Books which were not in the Hebrew Canon were designated as ‘Apocrypha’.
At an early date the Christian Church came to regard certain of its own writings as of equal authority and inspiration to those inherited from Judaism. In 382 Pope Damasus decided to remedy the confusion caused by a variety of translations. He encouraged St Jerome to revise the Gospels and make a fresh translation of the Old Testament using the Hebrew original. St Jerome’s version is known as the Vulgate.
Before the age of the printing press began in 1450, Bibles were not readily available, and even when they were, they could be read only by those people who understood Greek and Latin. Thus, most people did not have access to the Bible. Enter the Reformers such as John Wycliffe (1330-1384), who quickly grew in his repugnance of the religious institutions of his time. He argued that the Bible was the sole criterion of doctrine, and that the civil authority should reform the Church. Some of his disciples translated the Bible into English.
The Council of Oxford in 1407 decided to prohibit making translations of the whole or portions of the Bible with diocesan approval. But translating continued, because the printing press enabled the Vulgate and Hebrew text to be circulated widely, and this led to a push for translations into English.
William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament was completed in 1526. Printed in Holland, copies soon reached England. Tyndale then started translating the Old Testament. He was arrested, condemned and eventually burned at the stake near Brussels in 1536.
Meanwhile, in 1534, the Canter-bury Convocation petitioned King Henry VIII for the whole Bible to be translated into English. There was no royal command, but Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) published a complete Bible in 1535, dedicating it to the King. Further versions, such as the Great Bible of 1639, followed. Changes of monarch saw permissions granted and withdrawn. Matthew Parker (the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1559) and other bishops revised the Great Bible in 1566 and the new translation in 1568 was known as the Bishops’ Bible and was revised in 1572.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558, the Geneva Bible of 1560 achieved great popularity in England. It was divided into numbered verses and had roman type, and there were marginal notes. English-speaking Catholics got their first English translation of the New Testament from the French city of Reims 1582, and of the Old Testament from Douai in 1609.
Queen Elizabeth died childless in 1603 and was succeeded by James VII of Scotland who became James I of England by right of his mother’s decent from Henry VII. James had the title King of Great Britain. From 1598 James had sought restoration of Episcopacy in Scotland and from 1603 upheld the connection between the Divine Right of Kings and Apostolic Succession.
James I presided at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 between the English bishops and the Puritans, who were demanding reforms of the Church. The Puritans demanded the modification of Episcopacy, but James declared “No bishops, no king” and supported the bishops. James believed the Apostolic Succession of bishops underpinned and supported the Divine Right of Kings. He needed bishops so he could be king. A new version of the Bible was suggested, and the King appointed 54 men to do the job. King James was determined to assert his authority by setting his seal on every Bible in the land via a state project that would celebrate the King as its God-like principal mover and author.
The scholars sat in six groups, two at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster. Their instructions were to take the Bishops’ Bible as the basis, but to consult other English translations, especially the Reims New Testament and the Geneva Bible.
Rules were drawn up for massed teams of experts to follow. Old terms such as “Church” were to be used instead of “Congregation” and “Baptism” instead of “Washing”. Marginal notes were to be excluded unless required to explain some Hebrew or Greek word. The best resources of contemporary scholarship were utilised for translating texts and composing the marginal notes.
Initially each group worked separately with a portion of the Bible assigned to it. Their work was sent to the others for criticism. Factions formed and rivalries festered as scholars raced to outdo each other. Final settlement was made at a general meeting of the chief members of each group. Work began in 1607 and took two years and nine months to prepare for the press.
The outcome was a revision rather than a new translation. The revisers, who had the original Hebrew and Greek texts before them, steered a course between the Puritan and Roman versions. It would win favour by its intrinsic merits rather than by official backing.
First and foremost, the King James Version was a remarkable feat of scholarship: its translators were fluent in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopic, as well as being expert theologians and Bible historians. It was also an organisational feat, which brought together Britain’s leading scholars in “companies” and committees, and which entailed a concerted effort by cohorts of printers, typesetters and bookbinders.
Robert Barker (the King’s Printer) bought the final manuscript which was published in 1611. Despite some dissenting voices, the King James Version was a huge success. It displaced all earlier versions and became the most familiar form of the Bible to generations of English-speaking people. Its texts were used for the Epistles and Gospels in the Book of Common Prayer of 1662.
Known as the Authorized Version, the King James Version was carried from England to the American Colonies. Modifications in spelling, punctuation and the use of capitals were unobtrusively made by editors at Cambridge in 1762 and Oxford in 1769. Today it is the all-time bestselling book in the English language and, in 2011, it has been continuously in print for 400 years.
The importance of the King James Version does not rest on its linguistic legacy. It enabled 17th-century men and women to read the Bible in their own language, it remains at the heart of the English-speaking Christian tradition, and today it continues to be celebrated as one of the great works of English literature
At the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) Catholics were encouraged to read the Bible and have mostly used the Jerusalem Bible, from the Dominican Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. Whatever version we use, the Bible is very important.
