Why do I like to talk about the Bible and Bible translations? Because it digs into history and is a confortable respite from pressing business and the latest bad news at home and abroad. Harmless academic inquiry, but still occasion for a good argument! Here's the latest installment.
The craving for an unchanging translation, a single book that once and for all answers all questions, moral and scientific, is one reason many turn to religion in the first place.
In my opinion, the Bible is not such a book. It is filled more with questions and contradictions than answers. Study Euclidian geometry if you want a logical, self-contained system. Many disagree with me, and that is all right.
Was Elizabethan English the most perfect form of English? Well, it was the language of Shakespeare and Milton. But compared to the English of George Orwell or scores of other modern writers, how can one say it is more nearly perfect?
Actually much of the English of the "King James" or Authorized Version was not that of the translators. It is said that nearly 100% of the sentence structure of the New Testament and 60% of the Old was that of John Tyndale, who was executed around 1535. Basically, the translators plagiarized earlier translations. Wycliffe borrowed from Tyndale and the Geneva and Bishop's Bible from Wycliffe.
Ironic, wasn't it, that the English sovereign killed Tyndale for making and publishing an English translation of the scriptures, and then less than a hundred years later, a later sovereign declared that a new translation ought to be made and that one was based on the one by the man who was murdered by a predecessor king. But so it goes.
Actually it was Elizabeth who first urged that a big new Bible be made, and that turned out to be what came to be called "The Bishop's Bible."
James did, at a conference on improving the church, order that a Bible translation be made. But he didn't pay for it, and neither Parliament nor a convocation of bishops joined in authorizing a new Bible. James himself was a bit of a scholar, far more than most kings, and had done some Bible translating himself. But he had nothing else to do with the "King James" Bible.
I suspect James' reasons had to do with the fact that the Roman Catholic Church published a new English translation, the Douay-Rheims, in France just a few years before. National pride, or vanity, since James knew he would be mentioned on the title page?
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