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A History of the King James BibleThe Reverend Michael Hadaway
First published in 1611, the King James Bible is not the first English Bible. It is, however, the greatest single selling
book in the history of the English language. Almost 2/3 of American homes have a copy of it and more than 80% of regular Bible
readers own one. It was the sole English version of the Bible read by almost all Protestant English-speaking
Christians for more than 250 years. It remains, along with the works of William Shakespeare, who died a few years after it
was first published, the most profound and influential source of modern English. Most importantly it is the instrument God
used to bring countless people to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. In 1604 no one would have guessed this. King James I, as the new King of England
called a meeting to deal with disagreements within the Church of England (the Anglican Church) between those who wanted to
maintain the historic episcopacy (leadership by bishops) and the Puritans who wanted to do away with it. Once the episcopacy
was saved, as an afterthought the king agreed to a new translation of the Bible to be authorized by the Church of England,
which would become the Authorized or King James Bible. Remember the Bible is a collection of books broken into the Old Testament, originally written in
Hebrew over several centuries, and the New Testament, originally written in Greek within a century or so of the life of Christ.
By the time of Christ the Old Testament had already been translated into Greek and was popular among Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews).
This Greek version, called the Septuagint (for 70, the traditional number of rabbis who worked on its translation) was the
first Bible most Christians knew. The Gospels, letters, and other books written by the Apostles and their students became
the New Testament by the early part of the fourth century. The Anglican Communion considers the Bible to be the inspired word
of God and to contain all things necessary for salvation. We believe that God was active through the person of the Holy Spirit
in the creation of the canon (or list) of books in the Bible.By the fourth century there was another problem with reading the Bible. Most people no longer spoke Greek in the western
part of the Roman Empire. They spoke Latin. In the 380’s Jerome, a monk, was tasked by the Church with translating the
Bible into the common or vulgar Latin language. His translation, the Vulgate, was to remain the main translation of the Bible
in Western Europe for more than 1,000 years. In 1454 it was the Vulgate Bible that Johannes Gutenberg first printed in Germany.No one is sure when Christianity first reached Great Britain
and Ireland, but it was before 304 AD. The land that was to become England fell to non-Christian Anglo-Saxon settlers between
400-600 AD. Christianity continued to spread in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, during this period.
The Bibles they used were the Greek and Latin Vulgate, but local language translations are known to have existed.In 597 the Roman Catholic Church sent a mission to spread
the Gospel among the Anglo-Saxons and over the next hundred years or so England became Christian. The root of the Bible in
English goes back to this period. There were translations of whole books of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Often
there would be a Latin Vulgate with English translations between the lines. Anglo-Saxon poetry is full of Biblical allusions.
The Anglo-Saxons adorned themselves with quotes from the Bible and it became very much a part of their lives. In 1066
this all changed with the Norman Invasion of England. The new French-speaking overlords suppressed Anglo-Saxon literature,
including the English Bible. Their ban would remain longer than the United States has been a country.It is important to be clear that translating the Bible into the vernacular was
not against the rules of the Roman Catholic Church at this point, but rather against the laws of Norman England.
Biblical stories were still known through stained glass, sermons, and various mystery and miracle plays, but were often
conflated with later stories, myths, and legends. By 1382 Oxford philosopher John Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, had come to believe the Roman Catholic
Church needed major reform. His chief complaint was the keeping of the Bible out of the people’s hands. Wycliffe translated
the Vulgate into English in1382 and handwritten copies of this began to spread. Fortunately no one got around to officially
condemning him until 1415 and they did not burn him until 1428. As he had died in 1384, he made no protest.
Wycliffe’s ideas lived on. English
authorities, fearing the Lollards, outlawed translations of the Bible. While there were German and French Catholic Bibles,
now not only were there no legal English Bibles, there could not be. Yet outside of England others picked up the torch Wycliffe
had taken and within a hundred years the Western Catholic Church would split into the Roman Catholic and various Protestant
Churches. The convoluted story
of the Reformation in England need not be recounted here in full, but it depended in part on the new technology of the printing
press. Most people in Medieval Europe could not read or afford any book. With printing, that changed. Wycliffe had wanted
preachers and teachers to read an English Bible to the people of God, but the leaders of the Reformation wanted people to
have and read the Bible for themselves. William Tyndale, a priest, fled England so he works on a translation.
Unlike Wycliffe who used the Vulgate, Tyndale went back to the original languages for his translation.
He completed the whole of the New Testament and parts of the Old before being betrayed to agents of the English government.
His work was outlawed and in 1536 he was burned at the stake. His last words were a prayer, “God Lord, open the eyes
of the King of England.” Within three years of Tyndale’s death that same King, Henry VIII, would order the Bible to be read in English
in every church in England. Miles Coverdale, who finished and edited Tyndale’s work, provided a translation known as
the Great Bible (because it was large). What Tyndale left unfinished Coverdale completed from Latin and German sources. The
King James Bible would include 80% of the text of Tyndale’s translation. The Geneva Bible was translated by English exiles during the temporary restoration
of the Roman Catholic Church in England under the reign of Queen Mary Tudor (1553-1558). With the restoration of the Church
of England in the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) the exiles returned with differing ideas on how to run a church. The Geneva
translation was not actually printed in England until 1575, but copies made it to England from Europe. It was generally considered
to be a good translation from the Hebrew and Greek. What some people were concerned about were its notes. This Bible had extensive
footnotes (on some pages longer than the actual text of the Bible). The notes insisted on a certain way of interpreting the
Bible, sometimes in direct opposition to the Church of England. Yet this proved the most popular English Bible in its time
and was the first Bible printed in Scotland. It was the Puritans’ desire to be allowed to use this Bible in worship
that would lead James to commission the Authorized version that bears his name. When Elizabeth I came to the throne the Church of England translated a
new version of the Bible normally called the Bishop’s Bible. Finally the Roman Catholic Church published its own translation
of the Vulgate, called the Douay–Rheims
Bible (New Testament 1583, the Old Testament 30 years later). It was not as popular as either the Bishop’s
or Geneva. Yet it showed that the Roman Catholic Church, far from keeping the Bible out of the hands of the common people,
was sending its own translation.So James I had
a mess of competing Bibles and competing Christians. He called for the creation of a group of scholars to translate the Bible.
The Bible they were trying to translate was designed to keep all factions at the table. Lancelot Andrews headed the commission
which split the Bible into six parts and handed these parts to regional groups of scholars. They also had three gifts earlier
translators into English did not have. The first was time: no one was in in a hurry. The second was security: they worked
in academic libraries and well-stocked studies rather than hidden rooms. The final gift they had was the
work of earlier English translators. What they created was the Authorized Version of the Bible. The name King James actually
comes from the dedication of the Bible by Andrews and the other translators to King James. While he ordered its translation,
James had nothing else to do with the work as far as anyone knows. Now the Church of England had a Bible that, along with the
Book of Common Prayer, would finally, they hoped, end religious division in England. This hope was not to be met. James I’s
son King Charles I was martyred in 1649 by Puritans in the English Civil War. The Puritans did away with the Book of Common
Prayer, but did not try to republish the Geneva Bible with any real zeal.What the translators of the King James Bible did succeed in doing was to create the first English Bible to
unite the English people. With the reestablishment of the Church of England in 1660 all Protestant English Christians had
a common text. Though born from the hearts of Anglicans the King James Bible would be accepted by Puritans and other Calvinists
(Presbyterians), Baptists and other Independent Churches, eventually by Methodists and other Wesleyans, by English-speaking
Lutherans, and by the American branch of the Anglican Communion – the Episcopal Church. Why not stop with the King James Bible? Jesus Christ, during his Earthly ministry, did not speak in 17th Century
English. The meanings of words change and new translations are needed. The translators
of the King James Bible did not use only Greek and Hebrew texts, but they also used earlier English texts (they say so on
the title page of their translation). They saw themselves as building on a tradition of translation, not
as the end of translation. They did not expect their translation to last forever as the main Bible of the church any more
than St. Jerome thought the Vulgate would.We
have older Bible texts today than they had in 1611. This seems counterintuitive, but it’s
true. The various books of the Bible were so popular that thousands of copies and parts of copies exist from before printing.
Many of these were in the backs of libraries, buried, or simply forgotten once the printing press made neater copies more
available and affordable. Copies made by hand often contained minor mistakes (a doubled line, spelling errors, lost words,
and the like). In the last couple of hundred years a lot of study on the earlier texts has been done,
so we now have a better idea of what the original Greek and Hebrew was than they had in 1611. Reading
a newer translation of the Bible is in no way an offense to the King James Bible, it is the intent of the translators that
the word of God is made readily available to all persons. It was with the King James Bible that missionaries set out to bring the Gospel to the corners of the world. It was with
the King James Bible that Abraham Lincoln made his oath as President. Most importantly for generation after generation it
was with the King James Bible that the saving grace of God in Christ Jesus has been declared in the language of the people.
These translators worked in a sacred tradition, and what they generated has moved far beyond what any eye could see. Indeed:
This is the Lord’s work, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ September 11th, 2011
One Decade and Counting On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the annual Sunday School
picnic from St. Mark’s Lutheran Church chartered the Steamship General Slocum for a tour around New York City. Around 10 a fire was discovered onboard and within an hour 1,021
of the 1,342 people on the ship were dead. Most of them were women and children. The lifeboats were chained
up, the fire hoses so old they fell apart in people’s hands, and the life jackets did not float. The Little Germany
area of New York, where the church was located, was forever changed. Hundreds of people
who had lost some or all of their families left the area. Today St. Mark’s Church is a synagogue
and few people of German descent still reside around the old church. A crumbling monument to those who died remains.In US history this was the second worst maritime
disaster, the thirteenth worst overall disaster, and the worst disaster in the greater New York area prior to September 11,
2001. The only reason I have ever heard of this ship is that the fiancée of John Schrank was one of the victims. Her
death has been credited with the start of the downward spiral that would end in Schrank’s attempted assassination of
Teddy Roosevelt. This is an obscure way to learn about an important event. Even
though many people were to blame for the General Slocum
disaster, I have trouble getting worked up about it. History is selective. We remember what we choose. More Americans died
on the Trail of Tears than as a result of the Virginia/New York/Pennsylvania terror attacks. More Americans
were killed in one day at Antietam than on 9/11. I remember this by crossing myself whenever I drive across that creek. What
is my silent prayer saying? What do we as the body of Christ have to say to those who are suffering from the aftereffects
of 9/11 (which include two major wars)? Do we want these events to pass into history and be forgotten?
No, but why not? Why bother remembering at all? We need to remember what happened and that this is something that is deeply personal for a lot of people, but anyone
can do that. As the Church we are the ones
who must both explain why the attacks happened and offer a way of moving beyond the pain and anger they caused for so many
people. We need to first of all take them seriously. The 9/11 attacks were evil, like
a lot of things are evil. That word gets thrown around too much perhaps, and it loses some of its power.
When I use it I mean it as the Biblical authors mean it. This is, to my mind, best defined by St. Thomas Aquinas who
sees evil as the privation (removal) of a due good. In other words, something that should be done or present is left undone
or taken away. The respect for human life that should have been present in the hearts of those who planned and executed these
attacks was not there. We can and should not explain that away. No amount of cultural
understanding makes evil like this okay. Yet we as the Body of Christ have a responsibility, in fact
a privilege, to show something more than mere memory this day, to move beyond so-called “righteous indignation”
and into forgiving. This is hard. It is easy for most people to look on history
unemotionally once it no longer affects them: the US Civil War is more over in Vermont than Virginia. What
is hard is to see that someone knowingly did evil and say, “I forgive you.” Jesus Christ died for Osama Bin Laden.
I am not saying that Bin Laden accepted the free gift of forgiveness offered to him in Christ Jesus (I have no evidence
he did and much that he did not). This does not matter; both forgiveness and vengeance are in God's hands.
What I am saying is that Jesus Christ died for the very people who murdered him. The Christian response to 9/11 is
the same as it was to the General Slocum, the Trail of
Tears, or thousands of other atrocities in history: horror at what was done, but proclaiming God’s mercy even in the
midst of it. Please take a moment to read the prayer
below. It is by the late Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti of Iran, an Anglican bishop who was exiled during
the revolution there. Before this, his son was dragged from a car and murdered because of who he was and who his father was.
I believe this is the response Christ wants us to have and I believe this is the hardest thing in the world, not possible
without the grace of God. I pray that grace for us all. Mike + A Prayer O God, We remember not only Bahram but also his murderers; Not because they killed him in the prime of youth and made our hearts bleed and our tears flow,
Not because with this savage act they
have brought further disgrace
on the name of our country among the civilized nations of the world; But because through their crime we now follow thy footsteps more closely in the way of sacrifice. The terrible fire of this calamity burns up all selfishness and possessiveness in us; Its flame reveals the depth of depravity and meanness and suspicion, the dimension of hatred and the measure of sinfulness in human nature; It makes obvious as never before our need to trust in God’s love as shown in the cross of Jesus and
his resurrection; Love which makes us free from hate towards our persecutors; Love which brings patience, forbearance, courage, loyalty, humility, generosity, greatness of heart; Love which more than ever deepens our trust in God’s final victory and his eternal designs for the Church and for the world; Love which teaches us how to prepare ourselves to face our own day of death. O God,Bahram’s
blood has multiplied the fruit of the Spirit in the soil of our souls; So when
his murderers stand before thee on the day of judgment. Remember the fruit
of the Spirit by which they have enriched
our lives, And forgive. |
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