Number 117:  July 11, 2007

I am reading a book called In the Beginning by Alister McGrath. It is the story of the King James Bible and how it changed a nation, a language, and a culture.

In a series of lectures at Cambridge University during the First World War, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch declared that the King James Bible was “the very greatest” literary achievement in the English language. His audience had no quarrel with this judgment. It was the accepted wisdom of the age. It did not follow literary trends; it established them.

The King James Bible was a landmark in the history of the English language, and an inspiration to poets, dramatists, artists, and politicians. The influence of this work has been incalculable. For many years, it was the only English translation of the Bible available. Many learned biblical passages by heart, and found that their written and spoken English was shaped by the language and imagery of this book.

The importance of the Bible went far beyond personal religious devotion and faith. It was central to the life of Western European society in a way that we cannot begin to imagine today. If one wants to understand the 16^th and 17^th centuries, then read this Bible. It was seen as a social, economic, and political text. It came to be seen as the foundation of every aspect of English culture, linking monarch and church, time and eternity.

The lives of countless men and women since then, like me, have been changed and molded by the King James Bible. Refugees from England, fleeing religious persecution in the 17^th century brought copies with them. It would be their encouragement on the long and dangerous voyage to the Americas, and their guide as they settled in the New World. Prisoners in English jails found solace in reciting biblical verses they had learned by heart. Without the King James Bible, there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim’s Progress, no Handel’s Messiah, no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address. These, and innumerable other works, were inspired by the language of this Bible. It played no small part in shaping English literary nationalism, by asserting the supremacy of the English language as a means of conveying religious truths.

Yet the Bible is far more than a work of literature, it tells the story of the creation of the world by God, and its redemption through Jesus Christ. It speaks words of hope in the face of suffering and death. It is a living and powerful heart tool. 

Hebrews 4:12:

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner [critic] of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Once it was translated, it allowed every English-speaking person the opportunity to read it for themselves, no longer did they have to take the clergy’s interpretation only.