Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/1611_kjv/msg-ejg.04

Text File | 1994-02-11 | 6KB | 96 lines

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     It must be clear that the men who, by making innumerable small
changes in the text of the Bishops' Bible, produced the King James
Version were poets, if at all, only in the most attenuated sense of
the word.  It is not thus that poems are made.

     But if anyone had any doubt remaining as to the justice of Thomas
Hardy's judgment, it must unquestionably evaporate in the presence of
the Preface.  The Translators who there emerge are much closer to
pedants than to poets.  "They came or were thought to come to the work,
not exercendi causa (as one saith) but exercitati, that is, learned,
not to learn; ... Therefore such were thought upon as could say modestly
with Saint Jerome, .... Both we have learned the Hebrew tongue in part,
and in the Latin we have been exercised almost from our very cradle."

     Their aim was not poetry but clearness:  "But we desire that the
Scripture may speak like itself, ... that it may be understood even by
the very vulgar."   But of course the greatest illusion about the King
James Bible is that it is the sole, unique, divine Bible, untouched by
human hands.  This doctrine, grotesque as it is, is actually held as a
matter of course by the vast majority of people.  The publication of any
preface from the Translators to the Reader would, by its very presence,
whatever its contents, do much to remedy this.  The superstitious vener-
ation with which some very pious people regard it would be corrected by
the reprinting of the Preface.

     But not the pious alone.  Many editors, novelists, and professors
cherish views about the version that are simply slightly rationalized
forms of the same notion.  Sentimental statements about it in current
books and papers that its translators "went about their work in the
spirit of little children," or that "it is a finer and nobler literature
than the Scriptures in their original tongues," are but survivals of the
old dogma of uniqueness, so explicitly disclaimed in the Preface:

   "... we are so far off from condemning any of their labors that
   travelled before us in this kind, either in this land or beyond
   sea, ... that we acknowledge them to have been raised up by God,
   ... and that they deserve to be had of us and of posterity, in
   everlasting remembrance.  ... Yet for all that, as nothing is
   begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are
   thought to be the wiser; so, if we building upon their foundation
   that went before us, and being helped by their labors, do endeavor
   to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure,
   hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they
   were alive, would thank us."

     These great sentences, are well worth reproducing today. I have
ventured to lay before the leading publishers of the King James Bible
the duty of restoring the great Preface to its rightful place, at the
beginning of it.  They have courteously replied, giving various reasons
for continuing to omit it.  Let us examine these one by one.

     The first reason is that it is too academic.  But this does not
justify them in omitting it.  If they will let their readers know even
this about the origin of the version, it will save them from grievous
error.  The King James revisers were university professors and scholars.
They were an academic group.  Why withhold this fact from their readers,
especially if silence on this point is leading to such dire consequences?

     One of the most unfortunate things about the adherents of the King
James Version is their antipathy to scholars.  They regard them with
grave suspicion.  Yet their own version is the masterpiece of biblical
scholarship in Jacobean England.  If the Preface reveals no more to them
than this, it would be worth printing, for it is precisely this rift
between piety and learning that is most dangerous to the church.  As a
matter of fact, we owe the English Bible to university men, from the
sixteenth century to the twentieth.  It could hardly be otherwise.  But
today, not one reader of King James in ten thousand even dreams that any
biblical scholar had anything to do with his English Bible.

     The argument of the publishers that the Preface is controversial
is also nugatory.  The version sprang out of controversy; the Preface
reflects the fact; why conceal it?  The hushing of the controversy in
the history of Christianity does not make for intelligence.  The New
Testament itself sprang, much of it, out of controversy; I and II
Corinthians, for instance.  It is precisely this muting that has
produced the impression that the version originated in some other,
better world than ours.  If the Preface shows its human background,
let us have it, since it is a part of the truth.

     The Translators were well aware that their work would have to
encounter strong opposition:

   "Zeal to promote the common good, whether it be by devising any thing
   ourselves, or revising that which hath been labored by others, deserves
   certainly much respect and esteem, but yet finding but cold entertainment
   in the world. ...  For he that meddles with men's Religion in any part,
   meddles with their customs, nay, with their freehold, and though they
   find no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear
   of altering [it]. ... Many men's mouths have been open a good while (and
   yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand,
   or rather perusals of Translations made before:  and ask what may be the

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