The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature — John Shaqi
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
Naming one other English version will complete
the series of facts necessary for the consideration
of the forming of the King James
version. It will be remembered that all the
English versions of the Bible thus far mentioned
were the work of men either already out of favor
with the Roman pontiff, or speedily put out of
favor on that account. Thirty years after his
death; Wiclif's bones were taken up and burned;
Tindale was burned. Coverdale's version and
the Great Bible were the product of the period
when Henry VIII. was under the ban. The
Genevan Bible was the work of refugees, and
the Bishops' Bible was prepared when Elizabeth
had been excommunicated. That fact
seemed to many loyal Roman churchmen to
put the Church in a false light. It must be
made clear that its opposition was not to the
Bible, not even to popular use and possession
of the Bible, but only to unauthorized, even
incorrect, versions. So there came about the
Douai version, instigated by Gregory Martin,
and prepared in some sense as an answer to the
Genevan version and its strongly anti-papal
notes. It was the work of English scholars connected
with the University of Douai. The New
Testament was issued at Rheims in 1582, and
the whole Bible in 1609, just before our King
James version. It is made, not from the Hebrew
and the Greek, though it refers to both,
but from the Vulgate. The result is that the
Old Testament of the Douai version is a translation
into English from the Latin, which in
large part is a translation into Latin from the
Greek Septuagint, which in turn is a translation
into Greek from the Hebrew. Yet scholars are
scholars, and it shows marked influence of the
Genevan version, and, indeed, of other English
versions. Its notes were strongly anti-Protestant,
and in its preface it explains its existence
by saying that Protestants have been guilty
of "casting the holy to dogs and pearls to hogs."
The version is not in the direct line of the
ascent of the familiar version, and needs no
elaborate description. Its purpose was controversial;
it did not go to available sources;
its English was not colloquial, but ecclesiastical.
For example, in the Lord's Prayer we read:
"Give us this day our supersubstantial bread,"
instead of "our daily bread." In Hebrews xiii:
17, the version reads, "Obey your prelates and
be subject unto them." In Luke iii:3, John
came "preaching the baptism of penance." In
Psalm xxiii:5, where we read, "My cup runneth
over," the Douai version reads, "My chalice
which inebriateth me, how goodly it is."
There is a careful retention of ecclesiastical
terms, and an explanation of the passages on
which Protestants had come to differ rather
sharply from their Roman brethren, as in the
matter of the taking of the cup by the people,
and elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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