00 Years Old and Ageless

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Detail from the Wicked Bible, a version of the King James that contained an unfortunate error in the commandment against committing adultery.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Published: September 29, 2011

WASHINGTON The race, we know, is not to the swift. And we are well acquainted with the fate of a kingdom divided against itself. We may tell it not in Gath, and publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, yet that still, small voice will be clearly heard. We reap far more than a whirlwind from the phrases and rhythms left to us by the King James translation of the Bible, whose 400th anniversary is being commemorated this year. Pay close attention to the major new exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library here, Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible, and you will see not only manuscripts going back to the year 1000, an early translation from the 14th century, Queen Elizabeth Is copy of the Bible, and imposingly bound versions of the King James; you will also sense the gradual birth of the modern English language and the subtle framing of a cultures patterns of thought. In honor of the occasion, the Folger joined forces with the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, which mounted its own exhibition earlier this year before lending the Folger important artifacts, and also published an impressive catalog that chronicles the evolution of early Bible translations. The subject also inspired the National

Endowment for the Humanities, which became a major sponsor of the enterprise, including a smaller traveling exhibition mounted on 14 textual panels that will be seen at 40 locations in the United States during the next two years. The Folger shows curators Steve Galbraith, the librarys curator of rare books, and Hannibal Hamlin, who teaches English at Ohio State University have added a slightly American twist, paying attention to the texts migration to the New World. They even display what is probably the first King James translation to make its way here, in 1620, brought by a carpenter, John Alden, on the Mayflower. The consequences, the exhibition recalls, are all around us: One can hear the language of the King James Bible echoing from English cathedrals to rural American churches, from traditional Anglican hymns to Jamaican reggae music, from the poems of John Milton to the novels of Toni Morrison. Displays also allude to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech, to R. Crumbs recent graphic version of Genesis, and to the 2010 film The Book of Eli, in which Denzel Washingtons postapocalyptic character must protect the worlds last copy of the King James Bible. The ones shown here would have sufficed. Folger owns a first edition of the King James version; the Washington National Cathedral has lent a Bible that once belonged to King James Is son, Henry. Frederick Douglasss copy is on display. So is Elvis Presleys. The Bodleian has supplied the only surviving annotated copy of the earlier Bishops Bible, whose translation was used as a foundation for the King James. It has also lent the 1631 Wicked Bible a version of the King James, in which the unfortunate printer Robert Barker and his associate, Martin Lucas, left a not out of the commandment against committing adultery; both were fined. Barker was later put into debtors prison, where he ultimately died. The Folger is also showing another example of his typographical mayhem in a 1613 printing: Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 26, was set as Judas, an error fixed, we see here, by pasting Jesus name over that of his betrayer. Not all was smooth with the translations reception, either. One brilliant Hebrew scholar of the day, Hugh Broughton, had seen that a new translation was needed, but his abrasive manner apparently kept him off the six committees of scholars to whom the work was assigned. He took his revenge in a pamphlet in 1611. The work was so ill done, he wrote, that I had rather be rent in pieces with wilde horses, then any such translation by my consent should bee urged upon poore Churches. He added, I require it be burnt. Later generations clearly thought otherwise. Because Shakespeare was still alive when the translation was published, many came to believe (without any basis in fact) that he was one of its creators. The show even displays publications arguing for his authorship

using arcane analyses of secret allusions to his name in the King James text. (In Psalm 46, for example, the word shake is 46 words from the beginning and speare 46 from the end; Shakespeare was 46 in 1610 as the translation was being completed.) There is, though, something more profound in the translations influence. In many ways its impact resembles the effect of the First Folio of Shakespeare, published just a dozen years later, and the subject of a recent exhibition mounted by the Folger. Both volumes transformed the English language, but also shaped ideas about human nature, freedom and responsibility. The translators were also aware of their projects ramifications. Manifold Greatness, likesome recent books, traces how the very act of translating the Bible was controversial. We see here a 14th-century English version of the Old Testament produced by followers of one of the first translators, John Wyclif; like Wyclifs own work, it was considered heretical and copies were burned. An image here from a late-16th-century Book of Martyrs shows Wyclifs bones disinterred in 1427 and then burned just to emphasize the point. A 16th-century translator, William Tyndale, many of whose phrases evolved into the familiar ones of the King James, recognized that there was no place in all England for Bible translation, so he worked in Worms, Germany, and smuggled copies into England. In 1532 Thomas More said Tyndale had discharged a filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish beastly mouth. In 1536 Tyndale was executed. So much was (literally) at stake because once detached from its origins in a translation, a sacred text, it was believed, could be misunderstood, and break away from authoritative control. Of course, Latin Bibles were already translations, but at least they left interpretations in the hands of the Church rather than with a lay reader.
Blog

ArtsBeat The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more.Join the discussion.

More Arts News

The Reformation, though, shifted emphasis from the religious institution toward the religious text. Translation shifted authority further, leading to dissension, disagreement and a democratization of debate. Differing translations even took opposing positions. The

impact of the King James version was partly unintentional: its success helped strengthen a new culture of the book and weakened the power of the priesthood. But part of that impact may have also come from the nature of the translation. Despite its deliberate archaic sound and its attempt to echo the original texts peculiarities, the King James version was accessible. It told stories; it enticed readers; its rhythms encouraged memory and repetition. (Consider the change from an earlier translation God is my shepherd, therefore I can lose nothing to the King James version: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.) Narratives once heard formally declaimed from pulpits were turned into chronicles of individual lives facing moral decisions. Could this have laid the foundation for the triumphs of the English novel, from Daniel Defoe through George Eliot and Thomas Hardy? Not only did these writers often invoke the biblical text or find inspiration in it; they also embraced its perspective, judging the behavior of their characters and meting out their fates. The writer Cynthia Ozick once referred to 19th-century English fiction as Judaized, and this is what she meant. Writers were concerned with conduct and its consequences. Characters were taught how to assess one another and judge themselves. During World War II Winston Churchill wrote about English-speaking peoples, and their distinctive perspective on the world. Could some of that be traced to the heritage of the King James Bible, including an emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility? Perhaps, but you cannot survey the riches at the Folger without realizing that you are being given a glimpse of a cultures birth.