Bible Heaven/Bible Heaven.iso/1611_kjv/preface.ejg

Text File | 1994-02-11 | 32KB | 540 lines

                          THE TRANSLATORS TO THE READER

                     Preface to the King James Version 1611

                                   Thesis by
                               EDGAR J. GOODSPEED

                         THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
                               CHICAGO - ILLINOIS

                                (Not Copyrighted)


     No book means so much to religion as the Bible.  In all its forms it has
greatly served religion, and in its modern forms its meaning comes out more
clearly and more tellingly than ever.  It has more to teach the modern world
about religion than even its strongest advocates have realized.  Few of them
have fully explored the wealth and depth of its contribution to modern religious
attitudes.

     Of all the forms of the English Bible, the most distinguished and widely
cherished is the King James Version.  Its value for religion is very great,
and it is on that account all the more important that its origin and place in
the history of the Bible be understood, so that false ideas about it may not
prevail, for in so far as they do prevail they are likely to impair and to
distort its religious usefulness.

     There can be no doubt, however, that widespread and serious misappre-
hensions as to its origin do very generally prevail, and that these seriously
condition its religious value.  The literary interest and the liturgical value
of that version are of course universally recognized.  It is a classic of 16th
and 17th century English, and it is a treasure of Christian liturgy, deeply
freighted with religious associations.  These are values every man of culture
will at once acknowledge and approve.

     It is, moreover, deeply imbedded in the affection and devotion of great
groups of people, not all of them religious.  They find in it the final
embodiment of moral, social, and literary values which they greatly prize.
This is in itself a fact of great importance.  Even if the version were itself
less eminent as an English classic or a liturgical masterpiece the extra-
ordinary prestige it enjoys would give it a consequence all its own.

     The tremendous significance thus generally attached to it by the public
makes it imperative that the facts as to its origin and ancestry be well
known, or the most fantastic misconceptions about these matters will arise
and prevail.  But these facts are not well known, and misconceptions conse-
quently do prevail to an amazing extent.

     The King James Version is predominantly the Bible of the layman, and
it will undoubtedly continue to be so for a long time to come.  This fact
makes it doubly important that it be presented to him as intelligently
and as intelligibly as possible.  This well-recognized fact has led its
publishers through the generations to have it tacitly revised from time
to time, so that the obsolete words and spellings might not confuse the
ordinary reader.  This commendable activity began immediately upon the
first publication of the version in 1611 and continued intermittently until
1769 when, under the hands of Dr. Blayney of Oxford, it reached its present
form.  It has cleared the text of the version of innumerable antique spel-
lings, such as Hierusalem, Marie, assoone, foorth, shalbe, fet, creeple,
fift, sixt, ioy, middes, charet and the like.  Comparatively few verses
in the version have escaped such improvements and modernizations, and
most verses contain several such changes.

     It has also corrected the numerous misprints of the version, so that
it is now of the most accurately printed books in the world.  The one
original misprint to survive is the famous "strain (straine) at the gnat"
in Matthew 23:24 (for "strain out a gnat"), which has so endeared itself
to users of the King James that no modern publisher has the temerity to
set it right.

     The omission of the Apocrypha from most modern printings of King
James and the insertion of Archbishop Ussher's chronology, which first
appeared in its margins in 1701, were more serious changes from the
original King James; the chronology in particular has certainly out-
lived its usefulness and, as at best a late accretion upon the version,
out not to continue.

     But it is the omission of the great Preface, "The Translators to
the Reader," that is most to be regretted.  The makers of the version
in their day felt that the work called for some explanation and defense,
and entrusted the writing of a suitable preface to Myles Smith, of
Brasenose College, Oxford, afterward Bishop of Gloucester.  His Preface
for many years stood at the beginning of the version.  But for various
reasons -- its length, its obscurity, its controversial and academic
character -- it has gradually come to be omitted by modern publishers
of the King James, which is thus made to present itself to the reader
abruptly and without explanation or introduction of any kind.

     The result of this upon the hosts of ignorant and untrained people
who use the version is disastrous in the extreme.  My own correspondence
abounds in letters from well-meaning people who have been led into the
strangest misconceptions by its absence.  It is indeed long, contro-
versial, and pedantic, but this very fact is significant.  And with all
its faults, it says some things about the version and its makers and
their aims that still greatly need to be said, indeed, that must be said,
if the readers of the version are to be given the protection and guidance
that they deserve and that its makers provided for them.

     For they will accept this guidance and protection from no one else.
It is idle for any modern to attempt to correct these misapprehensions;
his efforts will only be resented or ignored.  But if the King James Bible
itself can be shown to say to its adherents the very things they most need
to know about their version, it will be possible for them to benefit by
them without embarrassment or inconsistency.  All the more necessary, it
would seem, for restoring the great Preface, or at least the essential
parts of it, to its rightful place in the "Authorized Bible."

     What are some of the views held by the habitual readers of the King
James Bible about it?  Let me answer out of my own recent correspondence
and experience, being careful not to exaggerate or distort, but to set down
only what self-constituted champions of King James have actually written
over or under their own signatures.

     First of all must come the widespread belief that the King James
Bible is "the original."  This is probably the prevailing impression of
those who use it, but it has been most definitely and repeatedly
expressed by a distinguished journalist in his paper, the North China
Daily News.  In an article published in the News in 1926 the editor
steadily refers to the King James Version as "the original."   We
cannot doubt that this cultivated Englishmen actually believes the
King James Version to be the original English Bible.  For him the
illustrious services of Bible translators and revisers from William
Tyndale to Matthew Parker simply do not exist.  That these men
produced 19/20ths of what now stands in the King James Version has
no force for him.  Indeed, he definitely denies them and all their
words when he steadily and publicly, in print, in an editorial
article in his own newspaper, describes the King James Version over
and over again as the "original."

     It is no matter that you and I know that this is far from true.  For
these people will not give up so cherished a view for any say-so of ours.
On the contrary, it would only serve to set them more rigidly in it.  To
whom then would they look with some willingness to learn?  To the King
James Bible itself.  If its original Preface were once more offered to
them, as it was offered to the first readers of that version, and as its
makers intended it to be offered to all its readers, they could hardly
refuse to listen.

     And, indeed, the people who hold these fantastic ideas are not so
much to blame for them as the publishers and printers who have so steadily
deprived them of the protection from such egregious mistakes which the King
James Preface so amply and ably provided.  They could not have gone so
absurdly wrong if they had found in the Preface of their King James these
words which the makers of that version meant to have them find there:

   "Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning,
   that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a
   bad one a good one, ... but to make a good one better, or out of many
   good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against."

     Not only do most readers of the King James Version suppose it to be
the original English Bible; they are actually unconscious that there is
any more ultimate form of the Bible to translate or consult.  A leading
layman, in one of our most intellectual communions, has told me that he
always supposed the modern translations of the Bible were made from the
King James Version, and not long ago a newspaper paragraph, with the
commanding endorsement of the Associated Press, explicitly made that
assertion.  The same idea appeared in the New Republic as recently as
April of last year.  What can save these untrained, well-meaning people
from the idea that the King James Bible is the "original"?  Nothing
but the statements of its own Preface.

     "If you ask what they [the Translators] had before them," says the
Preface, "truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek
of the New ... If truth be to be tried by these tongues, then whence
should a Translation be made but out of them?  These tongues therefore,
the Scriptures we say in those tongues, we set before us to translate,
being the tongues wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his
Prophets and Apostles ... Neither, to be short, were we the first that
fell in hand with translating the Scripture into English, and consequently
destitute of former helps, ..."

     These are just the things that the modern reader of King James
needs to know, and that the Translators intended him to know.  Why
should they be kept from him?  A few months ago the New York Times
and the Literary Digest united in offering the strange intelligence
that "the King James Version was compiled from the only six original
papyri extant in 1611."  What more can possibly be said?

     Another widespread impression as to the King James is that it is
the "Authorized" Bible.  The dean of a well-known New England divinity
school recently insisted upon that designation for it, and strongly
resented the application of it of any other name.  We need not go into
the old vexed question of whether or not it was ever actually authorized.
For practically it certainly was so, and so regarded, being in fact the
third Authorized Bible of the English Church.  The first was the Great
Bible of 1539, which was intended for church use.  The second was the
Bishops' Bible of 1568, and the third was the King James of 1611.
"Authorized" meant, of course, officially recognized for us in public
worship, as the phrase "Appointed to be read in Churches" shows.

     But when the Convocation of Canterbury in 1870 inaugurated the
revision of the English Bible, it was definitely with a view to pro-
viding a more suitable Bible for purposes of public worship, and as a
matter of fact the English Revised Bible of 1881-85 has, we are told,
actually displaced the King James in the use of Canterbury Cathedral
and Westminster Abbey.

     In the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, Canon 45 provides
that the lessons at the morning and evening shall be read in the King
James Bible ("which is the standard Bible of this church"), or in the
Revised Version, or in the American Standard Version.

     The Roman Catholic Church in this country uses in public worship
the Douay Bible.  It will be seen that the King James is far from
being the Authorized Bible today.

     But the tragic part of it all is that the people who still call
it the "Authorized Bible" understand by that term something very
different from this.  They understand it to mean DEVINELY AUTHORIZED.
I have today received a letter from a very zealous young minister in
Atlantic City, definitely declaring his belief in the verbal inspira-
tion of the King James Version.  This extraordinary view is very
widely held.

     Of course the Translators made no such claim; indeed, their
account of their method of work fits very poorly with such an idea:

   "Neither did we think much to consult the Translators or Commenta-
   tors, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or Latin, no nor the Spanish,
   French, Italian, or Dutch; neither did we disdain to revise that
   which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had
   hammered; but having and using as great helps as were needful, and
   fearing no reproach for slowness, nor coveting praise for expedition,
   we have at length, through the good hand of the Lord upon us, brought
   the work to that pass that you see."

   "Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the
   margin, lest the authority of the Scriptures for deciding controver-
   sies by that show of uncertainty, should somewhat be shaken.  But we
   hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point.  ...  Yet for
   all that it cannot be dissembled, that partly to exercise and whet
   our wits, ... and lastly, that we might be forward to seek aid of
   our brethren by conference, and never scorn those that be not in all
   respects so complete as they should be, being to seek in many things
   ourselves, it hath pleased God in his divine providence, here and
   there to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubt-
   fulness, ... that fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence,
   and if we will resolve upon modesty with S. Augustine, .... There be
   many words in the Scriptures, which be never found there but once,
   ...  so that we cannot be helped by conference of places.  Again,
   there be many rare names of certain birds, beasts and precious
   stones, etc. ... Now in such a case, doth not a margin do well to
   admonish the Reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize
   upon this or that peremptorily? ... Therefore as S. Augustine saith,
   that variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the
   sense of the Scriptures: so diversity of signification and sense in
   the margin, where the text is not so clear, must need do good, yea,
   is necessary, as we are persuaded."

     These candid, scholarly words of the Translators are not the words
of inspired men, oracularly confident of every word they use; they are the
unmistakable words of careful, sincere scholars, well aware of the inevitable
limitations of their knowledge.  The doctrine of the inspiration of the
Translators was not held by them, and it is difficult to see how it can be
held by anyone who will read even this much of their Preface.

     Another prevalent notion about the King James Bible is that it is
poetry.  On this point Thomas Hardy wrote in his journal, in 1918:

   "By the will of God some men are born poetical.  Of these some make
   themselves practical poets, others are made poets by lapse of time
   who were hardly recognized as such.  Particularly has this been the
   case with the translators of the Bible.  They translated into the
   language of their age; then the years began to corrupt that language
   as spoken, and to add gray lichen to the translation; until the
   moderns who use the corrupted tongue marvel at the poetry of the old
   words.  When new they were not more than half so poetical.  So that
   Coverdale, Tyndale and the rest of them are as ghosts what they never
   were in the flesh."

     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 veneration 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
   reason, what the necessity of the employment:  Hath the Church been
   deceived, say they, all this while? ... Was their Translation good
   before?  Why do they now mend it?  Was it not good?  Why then was it
   obtruded to the people? ..."

     Without these trenchant sentences, people are left with the impression
that the King James translation descended like the gentle dew from heaven,
amidst universal acclaim.  The silencing of the controversial note of the
Preface puts a false face upon the version, for which its original makers
are not to blame.

     A third objection raised by the publishers to restoring the Preface
is its obscurity, and the confusion it would create, in the mind of the
ordinary reader.  If this confusion means that the reader would be made
aware that there had been and might be other versions of the Bible, it
might better be called clarification.  Confusion is the ordinary reader's
present condition of mind, as I have tried to show.  Left without the
translator's guidance, he now believes the King James to be the "original"
divinely inspired, unique, not made with hands, final, and definitive.
To break in upon this false assurance with the clear statements of the
Preface may produce a temporary confusion, but the confusion will be due
to the disastrous practice of omitting the Preface, not to the healthful
one of including it.

     As for obscurity, is the Preface any more obscure than the version
it introduced?  This is the strangest of all reasons for the King James
printers to adduce, yet I have it before me in writing from one of the
greatest of them.

   "The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by
   the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd."
                                           - Ecclesiastes 12:11

So reads the King James Version.  Is there anything in the Preface that
approaches this in obscurity?  Yet publishers justify the omission of
the Preface on the ground that it is "obscure."  There is not a sentence
in it as obscure as this one, or as hosts of others in the King James
Version.  No, if obscurity is the criterion, the publishers might have
omitted the version and printed the Preface, but hardly the other way.
It must be that the publishers are quite unaware of the marked obscurity
of great areas of their own version.

     A recent advocate of the King James Version says of the English
Bible:  "Much of the writing is inferior.  .... Whole sections of the
historical narratives are written in an immature and inferior manner.
... Some of the prophets have only a single verse that arrests attention.
Only occasionally did Paul reveal his tremendous capacity to express
thought in a memorable manner?"  What does this mean, but that the writer
does not understand his version?  The simple truth is, the obscurity of
the King James Version is its outstanding trait.  When a man says things
like this about Paul and the prophets, he is indicating, not the Bible
at all, but his version of it.  He reveals the fact that he is using a
version he cannot understand.

     It may require some patience for the modern reader to peruse the
King James Preface.  But think of the patience he is called upon to
exhibit in reading long obscure areas of Paul and the prophets!  He is
by no means unaccustomed to reading his Bible in the midst of obscurity.
And it is an admirable idea to have a genuine piece of first class
Jacobean prose before him, side by side with the Jacobean revision,
to show him how these revisers actually wrote when not translating
but expressing their own thoughts.  Here their real literary standards
appear, in an authentic sample.  If to their modern publishers their
style appears obscure, it may in part explain the greater obscurity of
their version.  And at all events, it shows how they thought one should
write.  This affords their readers an example of what they considered
clear and forceful English, and the value of this to any serious reader
of King James, as a measuring rod, a standard of style, is unmistakable.
Anyone who can understand the Preface can understand the version.

     Especially for students, the Preface, with its wealth of contem-
porary materials and attitudes, is indispensable.  In a humanities
survey course for college Freshmen, a western university recently
purchased 43 copies of the King James Bible without the Preface.  In
no other field of study would such a course have been dreamed of.  To
approach that version historically, and as any student should, without
the Preface, is simply impossible.  What has been said of the importance
of the Preface to the general reader is even more true of the student,
and it is high time our teachers of the English Bible in colleges awoke
to the fact.  But how can they be expected to awaken to it, when very
few of them have ever seen a Bible containing the Preface?  For the
past hundred years, from the point of view of everyone -- ministers,
professors, students, general readers, pious readers -- the Preface
has been virtually suppressed.

     The chief edition of the Bible containing it since 1821 is the
English royal quarto, published by the Oxford University Press.  This
is an expensive pulpit Bible, seldom seen in America, which we cannot
expect colleges to place in quantities in their reading rooms.  On the
other hand, the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible
Society seem never to have included the Preface in their Bibles at all.
It has been included in only two other printings of the Bible, so far
as I can learn, in the past hundred years.

     It is true, it has more than once been published in books about
the Bible.  J.R. Dore, at the special request of Christopher Wordsworth,
Bishop of Lincoln, introduced the Preface as an appendix into the second
edition of his OLD BIBLES; and A.W. Pollard, in his RECORDS OF THE ENGLISH
BIBLE, reprinted it in full.  "This preface," said Richard Lovett (The
Printed English Bible), "most unhappily long ago ceased to form a part of
the ordinary editions."  "It is to be regretted," wrote John Stoughton
(Our English Bible), "that while the dedication appears in all the
editions, the address to the readers is inserted in very few.  It would
be good alteration to cancel the former and universally introduce the
latter."

     This is no idle demand of a few savants and specialists, in the
interests of mere erudition, but a crying need of present-day religion,
of which the King James Bible is undeniably still the chief stay.  That
that edition should continue to sink into greater and greater miscon-
ception and misrepresentation, when much of it might be prevented by
the simple and obvious device of restoring the Preface, is intolerable.
That version is too deeply freighted with religious values to be left
at the mercy of every charlatan to exploit.  Its Preface is a great
monument of sound biblical learning and method.  Its readers need it as
they have never needed it before.  It lies ready to our hands, enfolding
in itself the very correctives modern vagaries about the King James
Bible so sadly need.

     It is not enough that it is somewhere available in public libraries,
in books about the Bible.  Who knows about these books?  I have had
letters and inquiries from intelligent, educated ministers, asking where
the Preface can be found.  They had never heard of it.  What chance, then,
has the ordinary reader to know of it or find his way to it?  The King
James Version is a tremendous force in the modern world, very potent for
good if it be intelligently used, but for evil if it be left unexplained.
What most of its readers chiefly need is education about it, and that is
precisely what its Preface provides.

     For my part, I know of no greater service that can be done to
biblical study today than to put back the King James Preface into its
rightful place, in every copy of that great version, to the understanding
of which it is so indispensable.

     The English university presses, which have been since the days of
Charles I among the great printers of the King James Version, used to
carry a separate printing of the Preface for free distribution to those
who asked for it.  But this supply is now exhausted.  The Preface is
practically out of print.  The great version, in its day a monument of
enlightened learning, is left defenseless, to the inevitable confusion
of all its readers.

     Sound learning and common sense alike demand the reprinting of the
Preface.  It is essential to any real understanding of the King James
Version.  This has at length been made possible through the liberality
of Charles Forrest Cutter, Esq., a generous friend of the Bible in all
its forms.  The Oxford and Cambridge presses have given their consent
to the reprinting, and the Huntington Library has permitted us to
publish the text in facsimile from the Bridgewater copy of the first
printing of 1611 in its collection.  We are particularly happy to do
this (with the spellings somewhat modernized) in 1935, the 400th
anniversary of the first printed English Bible (by Myles Coverdale)
of which the King James Bible is the most illustrious descendant.

     To me, of course, the religious values of the Bible far outweigh
any mere literary considerations.  It has great messages which the
modern world greatly needs.  To obscure these messages in phraseology
which may once have conveyed them but is now so quaint and antique as
to belong to the museums of literature, seems to me a very shocking
and tragic business.  It is like denying a very sick man the medical
aid of today and giving him instead the treatment of the 16th century,
because it is so picturesque!  It is like insisting upon cupping him
and bleeding him, at the risk of his health and even his life.

     But even to those who take the Bible less seriously -- to the
dogmatist and the dilettante -- it must be clear that the King James
Preface belongs at the beginning of the King James Bible, where its
makers put it and meant it to remain; and that the reasons advanced
by its publishers for omitting it are really very cogent reasons for
restoring it to its rightful place.

                                /s/ Edgar J. Goodspeed

Meredith Publications
1030 South Santa Anita Avenue
Arcadia, California