Of making many bookes there is no end.(Ecclesiastes 12:12)
FEW, HOWEVER, have surpassed or will surpass in impact that all-time one-billion sales bestseller, the Book itself, in its finest if most florid translation, the 1611 King James Bible, or King James Version (KJV). Its 400th birthday will prompt innumerable ceremonies this year and, no doubt, the spilling of gallons of ink in tribute. And rightly so.
Although wrapped up in thees, thous, begats and words ending in -eth, the KJV's legacy lives on in majestic cadences that have gloriously infused the rhetoric of politics from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama. It nourishes still in many writers, from Seamus Heaney to PD James, and even atheists like Richard Dawkins, their deep love of the richness of the English language. It captures what one writer has called "the unavoidable rhythms of good English. Its words . . . almost never Latinate, and its rhythms . . . never hampered by the literalism that afflicts other translations".
We may go “from strength to strength”, “fighting the good fight” against the “powers that be”, and “see the writing on the wall”, “bemoan the signs of the times” as we are led “like a lamb to the slaughter”. But in doing so, even with phrases that have become cliches, we again pay homage to a text that has arguably left a greater mark on the culture and language of the Anglophone world than even Shakespeare.
In truth, though, ’twas not always so. By 1611 the text – the thees and thous – was already seen as archaic and redolent of another age, and it was poorly received, not gaining in real popularity until much later. The style and sonority, its awe-inspiring purpose, had been explicitly mandated by James on his team of 54 translators for a particular end – to give a biblical legitimacy to the Church of England and the divine right of kings.
The Greek word ekklesia, for example, was to be translated as "church", rather than "congregation" or "assembly", to give the impression the Bible proposes a top-down, bishop-led form of ecclesiastical authority. James also decreed, for example, that marginal notes were to be purged in an attempt, some have argued, to preserve doctrinal ambiguities in the text that would make it acceptable to the widest possible audience.
What he has left us, however, is an inspirational work of huge religious, political and literary importance, of great beauty, a milestone in our civilisation’s growth.