The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
History
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
And that was fortunate, for then came Mary
--and the deluge. Of course, she again gave in
the nominal allegiance of England to the Roman
control. But she utterly missed the spirit of
the people. They were weary with the excesses
of rabid Protestantism; but they were by no
means ready to admit the principle of foreign
control in religious matters. They might have
been willing, many of them, that the use of the
Bible should be restricted, if it were done by
their own sovereign. They were not willing
that another sovereign should restrict them.
So the secret use of the Bible increased. Martyr
fires were kindled, but by the light of them the
people read their Bibles more eagerly. And this
very persecution led to one of the best of the
early versions of the Bible, indirectly even to
the King James version.
The flower of English Protestant scholarship
was driven into exile, and found its way to
Frankfort and Geneva again. There the spirit
of scholarship was untrammeled; there they
found material for scholarly study of the Bible,
and there they made and published a new version
of the Bible in English, by all means the
best that had been made. In later years, under
Elizabeth, it drove the Great Bible off the field
by sheer power of excellence. During her reign
sixty editions of it appeared. This was the version
called the Genevan Bible. It made several
changes that are familiar to us. For one thing,
in the Genevan edition of 1560 first appeared
our familiar division into verses. The chapter
division was made three centuries earlier; but
the verses belong to the Genevan version, and
are divided to make the Book suitable for
responsive use and for readier reference. It was
taken in large part from the work of Robert
Stephens, who had divided the Greek Testament
into verses, ten years earlier, during a journey
which he was compelled to make between Paris
and Lyons. The Genevan version also abandoned
the old black letter, and used the Roman
type with which we are familiar. It had full
notes on hard passages, which notes, as we shall
see, helped to produce the King James version.
The work itself was completed after the accession
of Elizabeth, when most of the religious leaders
had returned to England from their exile under Mary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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