The King James Bible at CD

At CD, not on CD.  Roman numerals seemed somehow appropriate; it is the Bible after all.  Although I guess I could have said "Twenty Score" instead. 

As you may have already heard, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, indisputably the most famous and widely used of all the English translations of the Holy Scriptures ever produced.   Sadly, as far as I'm concerned, it's not as widely used as it once was.

I can still remember Mrs. Sloan, my 10th-grade public school English teacher, responding to resistance from some in the class over the difficulty of the language in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which we were reading.(Not from me, I was both too proud and too vain.)  As she had been teaching at that point for many years already, she said she suspected that much of students' frustration with Shakespeare's Elizabethan English came from the fact that the King James Bible had been replaced in church increasingly with more modern translations. 

I think she was right about that and I regret that my own children, for example, are not as familiar as I am with its syntax, cadence, and style.  When I grew up, the King James Bible simply was the Bible.  As the old joke went, if the King James was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it was good enough for me.

Surprisingly, as I learned from this piece about the project which was completed in 1611, and which I recommend to you, the achievement of an elevated style was not a principal objective of the translators.

As for the literary style of the new Bible – so often regarded as its greatest glory – there is little sign that the translators paid it much attention. For the most part, it seems, they were content to take care of the sense and leave the sounds to take care of themselves.

If this is true, then perhaps the King James translation is indeed something like the miracle its fiercest defenders have always insisted it was.  For it's that "sound" more than anything else that distinguishes it.

Anyway, if you have a moment, read the article.  More importantly, read the Bible, the Bible, of course.

Thus sayeth the Sage.