The King James Bible and the World It Made

NOTES

177 NOTES Introduction 1 See David Lyle Jeffrey, “Habitual Music: The King James Bible and English Literature,” in Translation That Openeth the Window: Reflections on the History and Legacy of the King James Bible, ed. David G. Burke (Atlanta, Ga.: American Bible Society, 2009), 181–97. 2 D. Seaborne Davies, The Bible and English Law (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1954). 3 See Martin J. Medhurst, ed., Before the Rhetorical Presidency (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008); also Preston Jones, The Highly Favored Nation: The Bible and Canadian Meaning, 1860–1900 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 2007). 4 C. L. Wrenn, Word and Symbol: Studies in English Language (London: Longmans, 1967), 11. 5 Not, however, the Revised Standard Version, whose 1887 translators said in their preface: “We have had to study this great Version carefully and minutely, line by line; and the longer we have engaged upon it the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy terms of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences and the felicity of its rhythm.” 6 See Collin Hansen, “The Son and the Crescent,” Christianity Today 55, no. 2 (February 2011). 7 Problematic culturally: unlike the culture of biblical times, the expectation of virginity in a young woman is no longer reflexive. See the review by Michelle Boorstein, “Sign of the Times: Updated Bible,” Washington Post, March 8, 2011. 8 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. “Rainolds, John.” 9 Wrenn, Word and Symbol, 12. 178 Notes to pp. 5–12 10 Another example of concern from a philologist in this period is that by Ian Robinson , in his detailed negative review of the Good News Bible, which he found diminished by its word choices not only divine but human transcendence. See his “The Word of God Now,” PN Review 6, no. 5 (1980): esp. 26–27. 11 C. S. Lewis, “The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version,” in They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962). 12 De Nyew Testament (New York: American Bible Society, 2005), vi. 13 Basilikon Doron (Edinburgh, 1599; London, 1603), 143. Chapter 1: The “Opening of Windows” 1 For some classic comments, see C. S. Lewis, “The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version,” in They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), 26–50. More recently, see Melvyn Bragg, The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011). 2 The conference was originally due to take place in November 1603, but had to be postponed due to an outbreak of the plague in London. 3 For recent studies of this question, see David Norton, The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). More generally, see Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611–2011 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Our chief source for this event is William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference at Hampton Court (London, 1605), which offers a colorful and highly biased account of events. For the background to this conference and an assessment of its significance, see Charles W. A. Prior, Defining the Jacobean Church: The Politics of Religious Controversy, 1603–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), esp. 83–89. 4 Barlow, Summe and Substance, 45. 5 Barlow’s account of this development should be noted: “His Highnesse wished, that some especial pains should be taken . . . for one uniforme translation (professing that he could never yet see a Bible well translated in English; but the worst of all, his Maiestie thought the Geneva to be) and this to be done by the best learned in both the Universities, after them to be reviewed by the Bishops, and the chiefe learned of the Church; from them to be presented to the Privy Councell; and lastly to be ratified by his Royall authority; and so this whole Church to be bound unto it, and none other.” Barlow, Summe and Substance, 46. 6 Olga S. Opfell, The King James Bible Translators (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1982), 139–40. The textual provenance of these “rules” remains unclear. For further discussion, see Alister McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2001); and Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible...