King James I ascended
the English throne in 1603, following the death of Elizabeth I. The religious
issues that had started with Henry VIII and the English Reformation had never
really stopped – a swing to the radical Protestant under Henry’s son, Edward; a
swing back to the Catholic under Queen Mary; and swing back toward the center
under Elizabeth. But the issues were far from settled.
The
background of James himself exemplified these conflicts. He was the son of the
Catholic Mary Queen of Scots; he was raised by ardent Presbyterians in Scotland
where, for self-protection, he learned to lie and dissemble. And then he
becomes king of England (and Scotland) and the head of the Church of England.
One of the first things he did as king was to convene a conference at Hampton
Court Palace of the various Protestant religious groups and factions, seeking
some kind of common ground as long as that common ground accepted him as head
of the church.
It was a
time of excitement about regime change, expectations of things getting better,
and anticipation of the good things the reign of James would bring. It couldn’t
last, but of all the things James did, one had by far the greatest and most
long-lasting impact – the assembling of six companies of theologians to create
a new version of the Bible. It became what we know as the King James Version;
it’s impact on religion and the English language can’t be overestimated.
In God’s
Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, British writer Adam Nicolson tells the
full story of how that version of the Bible came to be. Originally published in
in 2003, reissued in 2009, republished yet again in 2011 for the 400th
anniversary of the KJV, and republished in 2016, God’s Secretaries provides the history and context of the times,
and how the KJV emerged from it. It was not a sure thing.
Religious
conflicts were ongoing. If anything disabused James of his notion of him
leading a new era, it was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605,
in which a small group of Catholic extremists planned to blow up Parliament,
the King and Queen, and government officials.
The
conflicts weren’t only between Protestants and the remaining Catholics in
England. They could be just as intense between Anglican officials and groups
called “Puritans,” people who had a more radical Protestant view. They could be
persecuted as much as the Catholics at times; one group, known as the Pilgrims,
would eventually leave England for Holland, and a few years later sail in the Mayflower for America.
But some of the KJV translators, and particularly the group based in Cambridge
University, had definite Puritan sympathies.
Few
documents from the translation program actually survive. A few discoveries in
the 1950s (by American scholars, no less) of documents mostly in Oxford have
shed light on translators themselves and how they went about the process of
translation.
The
translators had no qualms about borrowing from five previous translations
approved for the work. One of those translations was by William Tyndale
(1494-1536), and the KJV translators borrowed liberally from it (so did William
Shakespeare).
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| Adam Nicolson |
Nicolson
is the author of a number of popular history and nature books. His history works
include Seamanship:
A Voyage Along the Wild Coats of the British Isles (2004);
Men
of Honour: Trafalgar: and The Making of an English Hero (2005); Seize
the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson’s Battle of Trafalgar (2006); Quarrel
with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War
(2008); Sissinghurst:
An Unfinished History (2008); Gentry:
Six Hundred Years of a Peculiarly English Class (2011); and The
Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters (2014), among others. His nature books
include accounts of walks in France, Britain, the United States, and Scotland
and The
Smell of the Summer Grass: Pursuing Happiness at Purch Hill (2011).
“The
language of the King James Bible,” Nicolson writes, “is the language …of
patriarchy, of an instructed order, of richness as a form of beauty, of
authority as a form of good.” He notes that this kind of language has largely
died.
God’s Secretaries
is a wonderful story of the KJV, one that places the translation in its time
and context, and one that judges the main actors in its creation and its
translators in their own era and not ours.
Related: “Tyndale”
by David Teems.
Top illustration: the title page of
the first edition of the King James Bible in 1611.
1 comment:
I was never a fan of the KJV. Now, knowing that it Puritanical roots, my aversion becomes clearer.
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