THE BIBLE

This golden age also saw a publication that has probably has an even greater influence than Shakespeare’s First Folio on the language of ordinary people. The translation of the Bible into the English of The Authorized Version. Here at last was the world of God, expressed, in terms that everyone could understand. “Bring hither the fatted calf and kill it”. “Lord now let us this, thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word”.”Physician, heal thyself”. “For any are called but few are chosen. All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Where Shakespeare drew on his teeming vocabulary of 34,000 words, the new translation achieved the majestic effects of its prose with barely 8,000.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. An God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God Called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Its an interesting reflection on the state of the language that the poetry of the Authorized Version came not from a single writer but from a committee, some of whom worked here, at the University of Cambridge. One of the translators was a certain John Bois, a fellow of St.Johns College here in Cambridge. A brilliant scholar, he and five colleagues, spent most of the year, 1610 refining and revising the final draft. Their brief, to make the King James’ Bible not only read well in English but sound well, a quality for which is revered to this day.

Let’s compare a passage in Henry VIII’s Great Bible with one in the King James’ Version. Tell Great Bible in chapter 12 of Ecclesiates, the preacher says: Or ever the silver lace by taken away, or the gold band be broke, or the pot be broke as the well and the wheel upon the cistern, then shall the dust be turned again unto earth from whence it came and the spirit shall return unto God which gave it. All is but vanity said the preacher, all is but plain vanity.

And the King James makes that into: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern: Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, said the preacher, all is vanity.

And I think you can see from that comparison that not only is the King James’ Version clearer, but a good deal more poetic.

Contemporary with the King James’ Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, expresses the rites of passage in the English Church, from the cradle to the grave: “renounce to devil and all his works, give us this day our daily bread, with this ring I thee wed. Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes”.