The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
Religion
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 do not know much of the personnel of the company. Their names would
mean very little to us at this distance. All were clergymen except one.
There were bishops, college principals, university fellows, and rectors.
Dr. Reynolds, who suggested it in the first place, was a member, though he
did not live to see the work finished. This Dr. Reynolds, by the way, was
party to a most curious episode. He had been an ardent Roman Catholic, and
he had a brother who was an equally ardent Protestant. They argued with
each other so earnestly that each convinced the other; the Roman Catholic
became a Protestant, and the Protestant became a Roman Catholic! Dr.
Lancelot Andrewes, chairman of one of the two companies that met at
Westminster, was probably the most learned man in England. They said of
him that if he had been present at the tower of Babel he could have
interpreted for all the tongues present. The only trouble was that the
world lacked learning enough to know how learned he was. His company had
the first part of the Old Testament, and the simple dignity of the style
they used shows how scholarship and simplicity go easily together. Most
people would consider that the least satisfactory part of the work is the
second section, running from I Chronicles to Ecclesiastes. A convert from
another faith, who learned to read the Bible in English, once expressed to
a friend of my own his feeling that except for the Psalms and parts of
Job, there seemed to be here a distinct letting-down of the dignity of the
translation. There is good excuse for this, if it is so, for two leading
members of the company who had that section in charge, both eminent
Cambridge scholars, died very early in the work, and their places were not
filled. The third company, sitting at Oxford, were peculiarly strong, and
had for their portion the hardest part of the Old Testament--all the
prophetical writings. But they did their part with finest skill. The
fourth company, sitting at Cambridge, had the Apocrypha, the books which
lie between the Old and the New Testaments for the most part, or else are
supplemental to certain Old Testament books. Their work was rather hastily
and certainly poorly done, and has been dropped out of most editions. The
fifth company, sitting at Oxford, with great Greek scholars on it, took
the Gospels, the Acts, and the Revelation. This company had in it the one
layman, Sir Henry Savile, then the greatest Greek scholar in England. It
is the same Sir Henry Savile who heard, on his death-bed in 1621, that
James had with his own hands torn from the Journal of Parliament the pages
which bore the protest in favor of free speech in Parliament. Hearing it,
the faithful scholar prayed to die, saying: "I am ready to depart, the
rather that having lived in good times I foresee worse." The sixth company
met at Westminster and translated the New Testament epistles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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