Hello friends. I must confess that over the Thanksgiving weekend, I fell off the reading regimen I have enjoyed so much this year. Both my brothers and wives and my niece came to visit. A destabilizing event of great joy, but it's taken awhile to get back into my routines. So I missed Daniel, but I've decided to just come back to him some other time and get back with the schedule. I think my favorite thing about this project has been rediscovering the OT prophets. Really, I had forgotten or maybe never noticed. I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Ali for helping me rediscover all that richness by inviting me to be part of this project. Thanks much, Ali.
As promised many months ago, below you will find something of a bibliography of fairly recent writings about the KJV. I don't claim it is comprehensive, but it's a start. I've enjoyed poking around in some of these resources.
Alter, Robert. Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Bobrick, Benson. Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Brake, Donald L. and Shelly Beach. A Visual History of the King James Bible: The Dramatic Story of the World’s Best-Known Translation. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011.
Burke, David G., ed. Translation that Openeth the Window: Reflections on the History and Legacy of the King James Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.
Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Christian History, Issue 100, 2011. www.christianhistorymagazine.org
Crystal, David. Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Daniell, David. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Daniell has also written what is arguably the definitive biography of William Tyndale, to whom English readers and lovers of the Bible owe so much. Simply entitled William Tyndale: A Biography, it was published also by Yale University Press in 1994. I came away with an increased appreciation of the seemingly incalculable cost in martyrs’ blood for my salvation. Besides the good this has wrought in my soul in increasing its bent towards gratitude, it has also provided a helpful perspective on the sometimes necessary entanglement in politics the truth of the gospel can lead to, simply in a Christian’s willingness to proclaim the truth of Scripture, as gently and yet forthrightly as possible for its own sake and for the salvation of its hearers, even when it is politically or culturally unpopular, even dangerous to do so.
Fujimura, Makoto. The Four Gospels. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2011.
Fujimura illuminates the text of the ESV in honor of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version. His illuminations are exquisite. I find it a unique tribute to the artful language of the KJV to take what some would consider verbally a less elegant modern translation (even for all its other benefits) and embellish the text with visual beauty. The fact is the ESV shares a strong connection with the KJV in its translation lineage, and some of Tyndale’s exact phrases remain in the ESV.
McGrath, Alistair. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. New York: Random House, 2001.
Moore, Helen and Julian Reid, eds. Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Version. Oxford: Bodleian Library, U of Oxford, 2011.
Nicolson, Adam. God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
Noll, Mark. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/may/worldwithoutkjv.html
Norton, David. A Textual History of the King James Version. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Rhodes, Errol F. and Liana Lupas, eds. The Translators to the Reader: The Original Preface of the King James Version of 1611 Revisited. New York: American Bible Society, 1997.
Ryken, Leland. Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most Influential English Translation. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2011.
Teems, David. Majestie: The King Behind the King James Bible. Thomas Nelson, 2010.
Wilson, Derek. The People’s Bible: The Remarkable History of the King James Version. Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2010.
http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/view.html?id=1147
One further brief note in this excessively long post. In his 2003 book The Death of Picasso, Guy Davenport includes a great essay on Benson Bobrick’s book listed above. The following two tidbits are from that essay, found on pages 134-139 of his beautiful book of essays.
1. Bobrick took his title, Wide as the Waters Be from an anonymous, (and prophetic) hymn about John Wycliffe (1328-1384), who died before they could burn him at the stake for translating the very first English Bible. In 1428, the Church dug up his bones and burned them postmortem on a bridge over the River Swift, a tributary of the Avon. Thus the hymn:
The Avon to the Severn runs
The Severn to the sea,
And Wickliffe’s dust shall spread abroad,
Wide as the waters be.
2. Tyndale was burned at the stake on October 6, 1536 for his English translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, which largely was the basis for Authorized Version of 1611. King James’s translators tidied up Tyndale’s translation, but accepted much of what he had rendered. Davenport comments:
Tyndale was burned alive for translating ekklesia as “congregation” (rather than “church”) and presbyteros as “elder” (rather than “priest”)—throwing open the way for Baptists to worship God in cellars and for Presbyterians to sing hymns in darkest Scotland. The hierarchy in Rome feared that placing the Bible in the hands of weavers and grocers would fragment the Church into a chaos of amateur theologians, wild enthusiasts, and illiterate exegetes. They were right: Protestant sects have chosen a menu of virtues, vices, and fixations from the Bible. (I know of a congregation in South Carolina that does not wear neckties, citing Isaiah’s putdown of gaudy apparel that the King James Version calls “tyres,” archaic English for “attire.” “Tyre” and “tie” sound the same on a South Carolina tongue.) (p.138)
