The King James Bible and the World It Made: KJV Library Resources

In this encyclopedic overview of the origins and impact of the English Bible in Britain and America, Daniell (emer., University College, London) offers an intriguing, insightful, and well-written history of one of the most influential books in Western civilization. The first six chapters tell the story of the Bible in Britain before the printing press, from the sixth-century Christian missions through the work of John Wyclif in the 14th century. The second and largest portion of the study spans the work of Erasmus to the so-called "corporate" translations of the 20th century. In between, the English pinnacles of Tyndale, Coverdale, the Geneva Bible, the King James Bible, the American Standard Version, and the New International Version, among others, are sketched in the contexts of the Reformation, American colonization, Enlightenment deism, the Great Awakening, and the growing consumerism of the publishing industry. Daniell clearly views Tyndale and the King James Bible as pivotal for the history of the English Bible; equally clear and eloquent is his concern for the uncertain future of that Bible in light of the contemporary decline in biblical awareness and theological rigor.

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven intoMoby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sun Also Rises, Seize the Day, Gilead,andThe Road, Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.

"Let there be light," "A fly in the ointment," "New wine in old bottles," "How are the mighty fallen," "The salt of the earth." All these everyday phrases owe their popularity to the King James Bible. Indeed, it is said that this astonishing Bible has contributed more to the color and grace of the English language than almost any other literary source.InBegat, best-selling language expert David Crystal offers a stimulating tour of the verbal richness and incredible reach of the King James Bible. How can a work published in 1611 have had such a lasting influence on the language? To answer this question, Crystal offers fascinating discussions of phrases such as "The skin of one's teeth" or "Out of the mouth of babes," tracing how these memorable lines have found independent life in the work of poets, playwrights, novelists, politicians, and journalists, and how more recently they have been taken up with enthusiasm by advertisers, Hollywood, and hip-hop. He shows, for instance, how "Let there be light" has resurfaced as "Let there be lite," the title of a diet cookbook, and "Let there be flight," the title of an article about airport delays. Along the way, Crystal reminds us that the King James Bible owes much to earlier translations, notably those by Wycliffe in the fourteenth century and Tyndale in the sixteenth. But he also underscores crucial revisions made by King James's team of translators, contrasting the memorable "Am I my brother's keeper" with Wycliffe's "Am I the keeper of my brother."Language lovers and students of the Bible will be equally enthralled by Begat and its engaging look at the intersection of religion and literature.

The King James Bible remains the most influential Bible translation of all time. Its elegant style and the exalted cadences of its poetry and prose echo forcefully in Shakespeare, Milton, T.S. Eliot and Reynolds Price. As travel writer Nicolson points out, however, the path to the completion of the translation wasn't smooth. When James took the throne in England in early 1603, he inherited a country embroiled in theological controversy. Relishing a good theological debate, the king appointed himself as a mediator between the Anglicans and the reformist Puritans, siding in the end with the Anglican Church as the party that posed the least political threat to his authority. As a result of these debates, James agreed to commission a new translation of the Bible as an olive branch to the Puritans. Between 1604 and 1611, various committees engaged in making a new translation that attended more to the original Greek and Hebrew than had earlier versions. Nicolson deftly chronicles the personalities involved, and breezily narrates the political and religious struggles of the early 17th century. Yet, the circumstances surrounding this translation are already well known from two earlier books-Benson Bobrick's Wide as the Waters and Alister McGrath's In the Beginning-and this treatment adds little that is new. Although Nicolson succeeds at providing insight into the diverse personalities involved in making the King James Bible, Bobrick's remains the most elegant and comprehensive treatment of the process

In 1382, John Wycliffe sponsored the first English translation of the Bible, for which he was persecuted by the state and condemned as a heretic by the Church. In this text, independent scholar Bobrick chronicles the English Bible from this contentious beginning, through the torture and death of translator William Tyndale in 1536, and the royally-authorized King James Version of 1611. Bobrick also examines the ramifications of the English Bible in the realms of religion and politics, contending that the spirit of inquiry that it fostered lead to people asserting their rights to just government and the freedom to worship as they pleased.

Containing many quotes from original documents and portraits of the protagonists, McGrath's (historical theology, Oxford U., UK) history brings to light the personal and political story behind the making of this pivotal work. The story is written for the lay reader by a historian with deep knowledge of the subject; he's able to go into detail on the cause and effects of every aspect of the Bible's production, the controversy surrounding its translation, the larger context of printing history, and the Bible's profound impact on the English language.

"James VI of Scotland - now James I of England - came into his new kingdom in 1603. Trained from birth to manage rival factions, he was determined to hold his God-appointed position and unify his realm." "The King James Bible is the greatest work of prose ever written. It is no coincidence that the translation was made at a time when Englishness and the English language had come into its first maturity. Boisterous, elegant, majestic and sonorous, the English of Jacobean England has a greater reach than any before or since. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book." "The sponsor and guide of the whole Bible project was the King himself. His dream of a Jacobean peace, some sort of Eden in England, lies behind a book of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power. About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work and that is the central question of this book: how did this group of near anonymous divines, muddled, drunk, self-serving, ruthless and obsequious, manage to bring off this astonishing translation, which has never been bettered?" "Adam Nicolson gives an account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king and of the scholars who laboured for seven years to create his Bible, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a building but a book."

he Story of the Bible does more than explore the history of the Bible; it makes that history come alive with more than 90 illustrations and 23 removable life-size reproductions from the world's most important Bibles, including the Gutenberg Bible, the Book of Kells, the Great Isaiah Scroll, Wycliffe's New Testament and the 1611 printing of the King James Bible.

This revised, compelling, and thought-provoking study of Christian missions and biblical translation (1st ed., 1989) propounds the thesis that Christianity, in keeping with its Jewish roots by proclaiming a universal God, nevertheless understood the need to embrace cultural specificity in each historical manifestation of the religion. Sanneh (Yale Divinity School) provides a myriad of examples throughout the history of Christian missions, with Africa as the main focus. As it shed its Jewish framework and encountered Gentile cultures, Christianity realized (often grudgingly) that cultural chauvinism was a hindrance to the Christian mission and that success was predicated on translatability into the vernacular of recipient cultures. Sanneh indicates that missionary promotion of the vernacular played a vital role in preserving the languages and cultures of many of the people groups encountered, allowing the gospel to take root and be transformed within its particular context. The resulting indigenization of the gospel was central for the establishment of independent, self-propagating churches and the awakening of ethnic nationalism. This adaptation of indigenous cultural criteria is in marked contrast to the Islamic movement in Africa, which rejects vernacular translation for the main rites of the faith while aspiring to emulate Middle Eastern social and political models.