Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611 – 2011 (Gordon Campbell)- AND ~ The Bible Now (Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky)

I’ll admit from the outset that I’m not the most obvious person to be reviewing these two books, being not only an agnostic atheist but also liable to break out in hives if anyone utters the words “What Would Jesus Do?” anywhere within earshot, but I’ve been fascinated by the Bible since I was a child in primary school in Scotland and was given one by the Gideons.  Mind you, I’m not sure the Gideons would have been terribly impressed with my reasons for falling in love with it … which were more to do with the lovely thin, crinkly paper, the ersatz leather cover and the fact that it was mine, all mine!  I’m fairly certain, however, that they would have hoped that this fascination with its physical qualities would eventually lead to me actually opening it, reading it and digesting it … which, eventually, it did – but not in quite the way they hoped.  From a very young age, I found the language of the Bible entrancing – its hypnotic rhythms and cadences, the words its used – just the way it sounded.   I grew up with it too, of course, carrying its most famous passages around with me as personal luggage in my journey through life without ever thinking deeply about it or wondering how it came to be as it was.  Without ever knowing that William Tyndale had died to put that little English  language Bible in my hands in that primary school in Scotland all those years ago.

It seems extraordinary now to think that the man who first tackled translating  the  Bible into English should be executed for heresy – but that’s effectively what happened.  He was executed in 1536 without coming close to achieving his goal of translating the entire bible, but the wheels that he had set in motion simply refused to stop turning.   His words lived on and would be followed by other versions – the Coverdale, the Matthew, the Great, the Geneva, the Bishops and the Douai-Reims, all of them variously argued over, disapproved of and downright loathed, depending on who was voicing the opinion and what their theological standpoint was.

It was after the death of Queen Elizabeth that her successor James, who loved nothing more than a good theological argument, assembled a group of bishops and moderate Puritans at Hampton Court for a three day conference  -  not to discuss a ‘new’ version of the Bible at all, but to debate the Puritans’ views on such things as ‘popish’ ceremonies, married clergy and the grounding of doctrine in Scripture.  Quite how the idea for a new translation came about no-one now seems to know for sure, but on the second day of the conference in 1604, and man called John Rainolds proposed it, and King James approved it.

A list of Procedures and Instructions was drawn up, the finest scholars in the country rounded up and the work of translation began.  The scholars were formed into six ‘companies’ and each company worked on a specific part of  Bible.  In fact, it wasn’t so much a translation as a revision of the Bishop’s Bible – but a painstaking one.  Every word, every phrase, was scrutinized and compared against other versions, the Greek translations and the original Hebrew – a notoriously tricky language to interpret – and then argued over. Eventually, in 1610, the work of all six companies was combined and the entire Bible examined in daily meetings at Stationers’ Hall in London that stretched over nine months.  Finally, the completed revision was sent to Archbishop Bancroft, who apparently made fourteen further revision (but we don’t know what they were) before the first edition of the King James Version was sent to the King’s Printer, Robert Barker, who at that time held the sole right to print all Bibles printed in English in England.  Later, the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge would assert their right to print Bibles – but in 1611, Robert Barker was the sole authorized printer.

That was only the beginning of the story, of course.  There were reprints and revisions of the revision, amending debated translations, correcting inevitable printer’s errors  (such as the “Wicked” Bible where God showed not his ‘greatnesse’ but his ‘great asse’ – mean a donkey, rather than the modern meaning, but still amounting to blasphemy) and adding illusrations.  Then the ‘versions’ started to appear, which is where I own up to losing the plot a little – somewhere in amongst the Revised Standard Version, the New King James Version, the Cambridge Paragraph Bible, the New Authorised Version and the American Standard Version.

Gordon Campbell goes into far more detail about the actual process – the men involved, the extraordinary depth and breadth of their learning, the choice of language -  than I can possibly do justice to here.  He writes with a surprisingly light touch, given the weight of his subject, displaying a sound grasp of the convoluted story and a wry amusement at man’s vanities and foibles – all of which make for an unexpectedly easy and enjoyable read.

The KJV was, in effect, written by a Committee.  That the end result was so poetic, homogenous and – sometimes – just downright beautiful, is a credit to the men who laboured so long and hard and devotedly to produce it – which makes it all the more irritating when people start quoting it to justify their bigotries.

If you, like me, have ever been left slack-jawed by someone trying to ‘prove’ that their nasty little prejudices are perfectly okay because “it says so in the Bible” – you need to get your hands on a copy of Friedman and Dolansky’s The Bible Now.

Looking at topics like homosexuality, abortion, women’s status and the death penalty in a remarkably even-handed way, they tell us exactly what it is that the Bible has to say on the matter.  They look carefully at the poetry, the prose and the law and even revert to the original Hebrew to examine the grammatical construction of words and phrases – such is their thoroughness.

You think you know what the story of David and Jonathan is about?  You think Cain murdered Abel?  You think that women in the Bible were property – the powerless subjects of male supremacy?  Think again … The authors take a step back and examine the ‘evidence’ with the analytical  eye of a researcher.

And from the midst of the stories of Onan, the two Tamaras, Deborah,  Rachel, Solomon, David and Absolom, one absolute truth emerges.  The Bible is descriptive, not prescriptive.  In other words, it doesn’t tell you what to do. True, it lays down a few useful guidelines, but basically it’s reporting on the world as it was THEN, which doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on the world as it is now.   Further, if you try to interpret what the Bible says out of context – without reference to the laws and customs of the timeand the country – you run a serious risk of completely MISinterpeting it.

If you’re looking for a book to reinforce your own opinions, you don’t want to read this one.  If you want a cool-headed guide to what the Bible actually ‘says’, give it a go.  Like Gordon Campbell’s book, it’s not devoid of humour but unlike his, it occasionally gets a little bogged down in its own scholarship – which shouldn’t by any means deter you from reading it, because what the world really needs now are more  people who don’t think they have an exclusive claim to righteousness ‘because it says so in the Bible’.

Bible: The Story of the King James Version – Oxford University Press.  2011.  ISBN: 978-0-19-955759-2.  367pp.

The Bible Now – Oxford University Press Inc, New York.  2011.  ISBN: 978-0-19-531163-1.  220pp.

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