The King James Bible and the World It Made

5 THE KING JAMES BIBLE, MISSION, AND THE VERNACULAR IMPETUS

99 Five THE KING JAMES BIBLE, MISSION, AND THE VERNACULAR IMPETUS Lamin Sanneh Translation of the Bible into the vernacular has had important unintended consequences not only for culture and society generally, but also, notably, for subject and colonized populations. Bidding fair to the scruples of the Enlightenment regarding the intellectual inferiority of illiterate cultures, the proponents of vernacular Bible translation produced the first systematic documentation of non-Western languages, including languages with no written form. Access to the Bible became the cutting edge of literacy and national awakening in many indigenous societies. Indeed, biblical literacy in the mother tongue was a catalyst for broad cultural transformation, affecting family life, personal motivation , popular mobilization, interethnic encounter, and national identity. Under conditions of colonial rule, biblical literacy became an unexpectedly potent weapon against the suppression of local agency. Rather than reinforcing the power of overlords, it induced sentiments of cultural and national autonomy, as biblical themes provided new paradigms for political aspiration and models for education, citizenship, and human dignity. The transformation in such cultures has altered the face of global Christianity by giving it distinct and various indigenous features. My purpose here is not so much to discuss the role of the KJV in bringing the gospel to indigenous societies as to reflect on the King James Version of the Bible as the example par excellence of vernacular Scripture as a means of indigenous encounter with the gospel. It is easy to forget the extraordinary excitement with which the “Englished” Bible, 100 Lamin Sanneh in its various early forms, was met in its day, or the revolutionary impact of the King James Version on all of society as it found its way into household use.1 Having the Scriptures in the mother tongue is arguably no less important or less revolutionary in non-English and developing-world contexts. On the Christian view, providing the Bible in the tongue of the people is a requisite phase of the divine instruction of the human race, with the diverse, multiple languages of the world the appointed and indispensable means by which God chooses to bring into existence communities of faith. As Adolf Deissmann has put it, as the message of God to humanity , the New Testament was written in the simple style of the carpenter’s and tentmaker’s language, which rendered it suitable to be the book of all the peoples of the world.2 There is no such thing as a church without language or without the Scriptures. In spite of the barriers of natural separation among us (often reinforced by cultural systems), God remains accessible to all through the spoken and written word, allowing our divisions to be overcome and our aspirations to be directed toward a common purpose. God woos us in tones and accents that accord with our primal self-understanding. The response of faith is born of a living encounter with a personal God. On any credible view, Christianity is recognizable only in the embodied idioms and values of the cultures in which we find it, allowing Christians to speak and respond with the facility of the mother tongue, and mother-tongue speakers to express faith and trust in God’s universal promises. As a distinctive religion, Christianity is in principle invested without prejudice or favoritism in the particularities of national life, and flourishes in, not in spite of, those particularities. The premise of Bible translation is that no culture is inherently impermeable or alien to its message, nor is any society indispensable or exceptional as its audience. It will be evident that this premise carries implications for religious, linguistic, and cultural initiatives above and beyond the specific , technical concerns of translators. The creation of the King James Bible vindicated that premise with respect to the culture of England. In the process of its wider dissemination as an example of a successful vernacular translation, the King James Bible became a model of the impact of Scripture on other cultures. Christianity and Translation By general consent the German Reformation is recognized as the major impetus behind the modern movement of vernacular Bible translation, The King James Bible, Mission, and the Vernacular Impetus 101 though in fact Bible translation is as old as Christianity itself. Yet the Reformation story, in providing the lens through which modern writers have tended to consider the subject, has sometimes obscured Christianity’s universal nature and historic character as a translated and...