Impact of KJV according to the BBC’s Politics UK
‘Politics UK’ have given over a whole programme to the legacy of the KJV
Some assorted quotes:
Professor Gordon Campbell: “It’s one of the cultural building blocks of civilisation in the English speaking world… You cannot hope to understand the English speaking world without reference to the King James Bible.” Professor Gordon Campbell
Baronness (P. D.) James: “It is one of the most interesting and important books ever written… It is a translation of genius.”
Frank Dobson MP: “For centuries it dominated all religious and political thought in this country and in those countries to which the British and most particularly the English emigrated.”
Richard Chartres, Bishop of London: “You must read the Authorized Version aloud. It isn’t something just for the head. There are sonorities there, there is an authority that can only really be communicated by a good reader.”
I was interested by the Bishop’s response when asked whether we should try to read the bible divorced from its religious context (as Dawkins suggests here). He replied:
You bring a quite different attention to the sacred text if you realize that it is shot through with divinity. To treat it tyrannically as some kind of secular expression of a culture of a particular time long past means that you’re shut out from it’s power and its capacity to move.
One of the most important things now is, people are always saying, ‘We want versions of the bible that are accessible.’ And that’s not wrong of course. But the bible is very strange. It’s very deep. It’s symphonic. It’s music. There are themes adumbrated which are then reversed, which are decorated. Therefore a certain defamiliarization when you encounter the biblical texts is a way to the depths.
If you think you understand it with the top of your mind because it is written in racey contemporary English, then you probably haven’t approached it in a way in which it is going to release its power and its depth.
What do you think about that? I’m all for entering the bible as a strange and foreign country. But that doesn’t mean you need arcane language does it? Tyndale didn’t think so!
It’s on BBC iPlayer for the next little bit
If we’re used to modern translations, perhaps approaching the text in an ancient translation allows us to give up any old prejudices or rote reading we might otherwise have done. It forces us to actually get into Scripture and read it (instead of skim it), because it’s not what we’ve become accustomed to.
For many people who use NIV, if they switch to KJV, they might have to pause every few verses, scratch their heads, and think, “Now, what is being said here?” Perhaps that’s what they should be doing no matter what translation they use, but using a different one than usual forces you to do it.
Totally agree with Joshua B! I’m only too guilty of skimming over familiar passages of the NIV/ESV, so I started reading KJV in the last few months (blissfully unaware of the significance of 2011!) and I’m getting so much more out of it!
The “thee-thy-thou” language isn’t off-putting for long. You soon get used to it, and then don’t even notice until you find you want to relay to someone who’s NOT been reading the KJV some uber-cool shard of light you’ve just seen for the first time, and you start to quote it out loud!
Yes Joshua B and Nick MS – my abysmal Hebrew and Greek serve the same person – every time I try to read the bible in the original languages, it slows me to a standstill and I’m forced to really puzzle over what’s going on. And that’s a great thing.
I agree that reading in the KJV does the same kind of thing. But I wouldn’t state things quite like the bishop above. I think the bible can ‘release its power’ just as well in a modern translation – after all, it was originally written in a modern translation! :)
To translate my previous comment – “serve the same person” means “served the same purpose.” That’s Old English for you!
Agreed: I wouldn’t want to say that I read the KJV to release a power not released by other versions (Isaiah 55:10-12) – rather, I want to avoid disaffection through over-familiarity.
… No, it’s too good to simply give the reference:
“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
Dorothy Sayers, in The Mind of the Maker, says that one of the few clear things we know about God at the end of Gen 1 is that He is creative; therefore to be “in the image of God” means that we are creative. I think about that a lot, esp as I watch my children’s various creative modes develop, and as I discover further ones in myself.
Thanks-a-mundo for the post.Really thank you! Awesome.
Muchos Gracias for your blog article.Really looking forward to read more. Really Wonderful.