In 1604, King James I of England authorized a new translation of the Bible intended to resolve some thorny religious differences in his kingdom and consolidate his own power.
but in trying to prove his own supremacy, king james ended up democratizing the bible. Thanks to emerging printing technology, the new translation took the Bible out of the exclusive control of the church and put it directly into the hands of more people than ever before, including the Protestant Reformers who settled England’s North American colonies in the 17th century.
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Emerging at a high point in the English Renaissance, the King James Bible stood out among some of the most celebrated literary works in the English language (think William Shakespeare). its majestic cadences would inspire generations of artists, poets, musicians, and political leaders, while many of its specific phrases worked their way into the structure of the language itself.
Even now, more than four centuries after its publication, the King James Bible (also known as the King James Version, or simply the Authorized Version) remains the most famous Bible translation in history, and one of the most printed books in history.
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how the king james bible came about
when king james vi of scotland became king james i of england in 1603, he was well aware that he was entering a difficult situation.
For one thing, her immediate predecessor on the throne, Queen Elizabeth I, had ordered the execution of her mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had posed a Catholic threat to Elizabeth’s Protestant reign. And although Elizabeth had established the supremacy of the Anglican Church (founded by her father, King Henry VIII), her bishops now had to contend with rebel Protestant groups like the Puritans and Calvinists, who questioned the absolute power of Elizabeth. she.
when james came to the throne, many people in england listened to one version of the bible when they went to church, but read another version when they were at home. While one version of the sacred texts of Christianity, the so-called Bishops’ Bible, was read in churches, the most popular version among the Protestant Reformers in England at the time was the Geneva Bible, which had been created in that city. By a group of exiled Calvinists during the bloody reign of Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I.
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for the new king, the geneva bible posed a political problem, since it contained certain annotations that questioned not only the power of the bishops, but his own. So in 1604, when a Puritan scholar proposed the creation of a new translation of the Bible at a religious conference meeting at Hampton Court, James surprised him by agreeing.
Over the next seven years, 47 scholars and theologians worked to translate the different books of the Bible: the Old Testament from the Hebrew, the New Testament from the Greek, and the Apocrypha from the Greek and Latin. Much of the resulting translation was based on the work of Protestant reformer William Tyndale, who had produced the first translation of the New Testament from Greek to English in 1525 but was executed for heresy less than a decade later.
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bringing the bible directly to the people
Published in 1611, the King James Bible quickly spread throughout Europe. Due to the vast amount of resources devoted to the project, it was the most faithful and scholarly translation to date, not to mention the most accessible.
“Printing had already been invented, and copies were relatively inexpensive compared to hand-made copies,” says Carol Meyers, a professor of religious studies at Duke University. “The translation into English, the language of the land, made it accessible to all those people who knew how to read English and who could afford a printed Bible.”
While before, the bible had been the exclusive property of the church, now more and more people were able to read it for themselves. Not only that, but the language they read in the King James Bible was an English unlike anything they had ever read before. With its poetic cadences and vivid imagery, the KJV sounded to many like the voice of God himself.
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religious and political impact
By giving more people direct access to the Bible, the King James Version also had a democratizing influence within Protestantism itself, especially in the English colonies that were settling in the New World. The Puritans and other reformers “didn’t supersede the Anglican church in England,” explains Meyers. “But in the colonies the Anglicans no longer had supremacy, because the Puritans, Presbyterians, Methodists came,” all of whom made use of the King James Bible.
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Meanwhile, in England, the bitter religious disputes that had motivated the new Bible translation would spiral in the 1640s into the English Civil Wars, ending with the capture and execution (by beheading) of the son and successor to King James, Charles I.
if james hoped to remove any doubt about his (and his successors’) divine right to power, he clearly hadn’t. Meyers points out that the King James Bible gave people access to passages not normally read in church, passages that limit the power of secular rulers like James. As an example, he cites Deuteronomy 17, which says, “You shall make one of your brothers king over you.” but he also suggests that the king should not acquire too many horses, wives, or silver and gold for himself; and that he, like everyone else, must be subject to the laws of god.
“king james wanted to solidify his own reputation as a good king by commissioning the translation,” says meyers. “Perhaps he didn’t know about those passages about the limits of the king’s powers, or he thought that making them available to everyone might threaten his divine right as king.”
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the cultural legacy of the king james bible
From Handel’s Messiah to Coolio’s “Gangster’s Paradise,” the King James Bible has inspired a wide swath of cultural expression throughout the English-speaking world for generations. Writers from Herman Melville to Ernest Hemingway to Alice Walker have drawn on its cadences and imagery for their work, while Martin Luther King Jr. He quoted King James’s version of Isaiah (from memory of him) in his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Beyond the countless artists and leaders inspired by the King James Bible, his influence can be seen in many of the expressions English speakers use every day. phrases like “my brother’s keeper”, “the kiss of death”, “the blind leading the blind”, “falling from grace”, “an eye for an eye” and “a drop in the bucket”—to name just some—all owe their existence, or at least their popularization in English, to the kjv.
From the early 20th century onward, major Protestant denominations increasingly turned to more modern Bible translations, which have been able to provide more accurate readings of the original texts, thanks to the use of more recently discovered ancient Semitic texts that were not Available in 1611. Even so, the King James version remains extremely popular. Still in 2014, a major study on “The Bible in American Life” found that 55 percent of Bible readers said they sought out the King James Version most often, compared to just 19 percent who chose the King James Version. New International Version, first published in 1978. and most recently updated in 2011. (The high percentage probably also includes people who prefer the New King James Version, an update of the classic English text published in the 1980s.)
It’s clear that after more than 400 years, the King James Bible has more than proven its staying power. “[for] reading in worship services, it is much more stately than most modern translations,” says Meyers. “has had a very powerful influence on our language and our literature, right up to the present day.”
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