Thinking Anew
THE JOURNALIST Bernard Levin once wrote a wonderful piece to demonstrate how widely spoken Shakespeare was, as this brief excerpt suggests: "If you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied - a tower of strength - hoodwinked or been in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows - made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play - slept not one wink - stood on ceremony be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are as good luck would have it, quoting Shakespeare."
What is true of Shakespeare is even truer of the Authorised Version of the Bible - The King James Bible - published 400 years ago this year. It has added hundreds of new idioms to the English language including "apple of your eye", "salt of the earth", "a leopard cannot change its spots", "take root", "filthy lucre", "sour grapes", "scapegoat" and many more. However, its influence reaches far beyond words into the realms of politics and religion.
It emerged from the fertile tensions of the 16th-century Protestant reformation. Till then the Bible's radical ideas were safely locked away in Latin. Those in authority in church and state preferred it that way as they recognised the danger of allowing the masses to discover that "the meek would inherit the earth" and that Jesus was present "in the least of these" his brethren. They saw real danger in allowing ordinary people access to material that might encourage them to express their opinions and air their grievances with more confidence.
This is what gradually happened as new translations in English emerged.
One of the most popular translations was the Geneva Bible, produced by a group of reformers who fled from England to Geneva to escape the bloody purges of the Catholic Queen Mary.
This edition came with explanatory notes but these troubled James I who considered them "very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits." Sensing political danger he commissioned the Authorised Version. Prof Owen Chadwick states that the king "selected forty-seven scholarly translators and provided inadequately for their remuneration" and that they drew on a variety of sources including the Douai Bible which Roman Catholic recusants published between 1582 and 1610.
In a recent documentary on the King James Bible Melvyn Bragg described it as "The Book that changed the World". He claimed that not only did this translation have a dramatic impact on the church, but that it shaped the political world as we know it.
He gave examples such as the anti-slavery movement led by William Wilberforce, a committed Christian, inspired by the words, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." The Afro-American slaves got the same message from their Bibles and more, seeing a parallel to their predicament in Moses confronting a cruel oppressor with God's demand: "Let my people go".
In time Martin Luther King would emerge as their Moses to demand freedom with the fervour of an Old Testament prophet.
With its emphasis on personal liberty and freedom Bragg argued that the teaching of the Bible was the seedbed of democracy as we know it. He noted that inscribed on the famous Liberty Bell which was rung at the moment of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence are words from the book Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants therefore."
Of course these radical thoughts belong to the whole biblical tradition, but it was the King James Bible, the Authorised Version of 1611 "appointed to be read in churches" that was available to most English speaking people. It is surely true therefore to agree that it is a book whose message changed people and still can.
Mark Twain said of it: "Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me I always noticed that the passages of Scripture which trouble me most are those that I do understand."
- GL