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
We need not seek more instances. These are
enough to illustrate the saying that here is an
honest version, the fruit of the best scholarship
of the times, without prejudice.
II. A second trait of the work as a version is
its remarkable accuracy. It is surprising that
with all the new light coming from early documents,
with all the new discoveries that have
been made. the latest revision needed to make
so few changes, and those for the most part
minor ones. There are, to be sure, some important
changes, as we shall see later; the wonder
is that there are not many more. The King
James version had, to be sure, the benefit of
all the earlier controversy. The whole ground
had been really fought over in the centuries
before, and most of the questions had been discussed.
They frankly made use of all the earlier
controversy. They say in their preface: "Truly,
good Christian reader, we never thought from
the beginning that we should need to make a
new translation, nor yet to make a bad one a
good one, but to make a good one better. That
hath been our endeavor, that our work." Also,
they had the advantage of deliberation. This
was the first version that had been made which
had such sanction that they could take their
time, and in which they had no reason to fear
that the results would endanger them. They
say in their preface that they had not run over
their work with that "posting haste" that had
marked the Septuagint, if the saying was true
that they did it all in seventy-two days; nor
were they "barred and hindered from going over
it again," as Jerome himself said he had been,
since as soon as he wrote any part "it was
snatched away from him and published"; nor
were they "working in a new field," as Origen
was when he wrote his first commentary on the
Bible. Both these things--their taking advantage
of earlier controversies which had cleared
many differences, and their deliberation--were
supplemented by a third which gave great accuracy
to the version. That was their adoption
of the principle of all early translators, perhaps
worded best by Purvey, who completed the
Wiclif version: "The best translation is to
translate after the sentence, and not only after
the words, so that the sentence be as open in
English as in Latin." That makes for accuracy.
It is quite impossible to put any language over,
word for word, into another without great
inaccuracy. But when the translators sought to
take the sentence of the Hebrew or the Greek
and put it into an exactly equivalent English
sentence, they had larger play for their language
and they had a fairer field for accuracy. These
were the three great facts which made the
remarkable accuracy possible, and it may be
interesting to note three corresponding results
which show the effort they made to be absolutely
accurate and fair in their translation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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