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"A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson and Bacon; of the Gunpowder Plot; the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen; Arcadian landscapes; murderous, toxic slums; and, above all, of sometimes overwhelming religious passion. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities." "This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment "Englishness" and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book." "The sponsor and guide of the whole Bible project was the King himself, the brilliant, ugly and profoundly peace-loving James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England. Trained almost from birth to manage the rivalries of political factions at home, James saw in England the chance for a sort of irenic Eden over which the new translation of the Bible was to preside. It was to be a Bible for everyone, and as God's lieutenant on earth, he would use it to unify his kingdom. The dream of Jacobean peace, guaranteed by an elision of royal power and divine glory, lies behind a Bible of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power." "About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions, and created a text which, for all its failings, has never been equaled. That is the central question of this book: How did this group of near-anonymous divines, muddled, drunk, self-serving, ambitious, ruthless, obsequious, pedantic and flawed as they were, manage to bring off this astonishing translation? How did such ordinary men make such extraordinary prose? In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king; of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible; of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book."--Jacket.… (more)
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Appendices include a brief history of the 16th century English translations, which the King James translators were directed to consult during the translation process; a list of the translators in each of the six companies with as much biographical information as is known about them; a chronology of the translation juxtaposed with significant events in English history; and a selected bibliography. I hadn't thought about the significant historical events that took place while the translators were doing their work, and that tangentially involved some of the translators – the Gunpowder Plot, the settlement in Jamestown, and the persecution of Separatists in Scrooby that drove them to the Netherlands and eventually to the New World on the Mayflower. The 400th anniversary of the KJV has resulted in the publication of several books on the topic. Although Nicolson's book has been out for a few years, it's a good starting point for readers interested in the history of this influential translation.
Here's what I think was most amazing about Nicholson's achievement: He manages to tell the story of Jacobean England through the lens of the King James Bible while simultaneously telling the story of the King James Bible through the lens of Jacobean England. (If that sentence sounds like a tautology, read the section where he compares Hatfield House with the KJV and you'll see what I mean.)
Perhaps most intriguing to me is that I didn't find out until the very final pages of the very last chapter Nicholson's religious leanings which were quite cleverly summarized: " I'm no atheist, but I'm no churchgoer either." I suspected as much; however, that makes this work even more intriguing because of his very evident awe of this translation. This book is a testament to the KJV's cultural power as a shaper of English language and as an expression of English (e.g. British & American) culture.
I think the book's greatest strength is found in Nicholson's comparisons of the KJV with other translations (especially Tyndale's and the NEB). Though he only looks at snippets of text (at most 4-5 verses each), he has chosen well; the passage demonstrate that, in many important ways, the KJV could still claim to be a "superior" translation. In fact, Nicholson's distaste for modern translations I think plays no small part in his "non-churchgoer" status.
I am by no means a "KJV-only" radical...but neither have I ever desired to be seen as one who despises it. Nicholson's approach to the KJV mirrors my own; stunned admiration at its monumental achievement for its time dosed with the reality of its antiquarian nature. And, underneath it all, the yearning that, someday, perhaps we will reach another cultural nexus that will produce a work of the spiritual and cultural magnitude achieved in 1611.
How could our Bible emerge from such a world? But out of this stagnation, through the unlikely cooperation of divergent men, arose a masterpiece. A work meant to be chanted in church, with a rich cadence and a majestic language. Quaint even in its own time, the KJV is nevertheless the language of God, properly aged, in His antiquity and mystery.
Never mind its inaccuracies, and how we have since uncovered more original scriptures to translate. Never mind that the authors have added and subtracted to enhance the beauty of the prose. The ear is the governing organ; if it sounds right, it is right. The end result does indeed rival Shakespeare in its beauty, producing by far the most quotable literary creation in history.
Pity it’s necessary to slog through the first 150 pages of Nicolson’s book in order to appreciate the miracle of the King James Bible, but it is necessary, because that is the story. Each member of the team was to translate all the chapters in his allotted section, alone, without conferring with others. Only then were they to meet together, discuss the text and decide on their final submission. Somehow, inexplicably, it all came together, and the final chapters of Nicolson’s book are glorious. And Nicolson’s rating? A three-star story miraculously transformed into a five-star miracle.
King James, usually portrayed by history as a vain and obstinate ruler, comes across more sympathetically in the telling of this story with his desire to use the new translation of the Bible to bind the country - both Anglican and Puritan together with a new and majestic Bible. Of course, as anyone who knows English history will tell you, he didn't succeed. His committee of translators, however, produced a magnificent work that stands alongside Shakespeare as the foundation of English literature.
Today's religious fundamentalists who insist that the King James Version of the Bible is the inerrant word of God, will probably not like this book with it's story of many people tweaking the language of the holy book. For myself, however, I found it to be a fascinating story.
“Blackness was well-established as a mark of vice", he says. But he gives no support for this observation.
At the very beginning of 1605, the queen had asked Ben Jonson to write a masque, an entertainment-cum-drama-cum-court ball, to be performed in Whitehall on Twelfth Night, and to be called The Masque of Blackness. The queen and ten of her beautiful young English aristocratic companions were to appear as blackamoors, an Aethiop Queen and the Daughters of Niger. Their azure and silver dresses designed by Inigo Jones, all lit by glimmering lantern light, were excitingly transparent, their breasts visible beneath the gauze, 'their hayre thicke, and curled upright in tresses, Iyke Pyramids'. The drama was arranged on 'an artificiall sea ... raysed with waves', which seemed to move, and in some places the billow seemed to break.”
Elsewhere we learn that
“The masque was controversial in its day, in part for the production's use of body paint instead of masks to simulate dark skin. One observer, Sir Dudley Carlteton, expressed a view tinged with the prevailing social biases of the era:
...instead of Vizzards, their Faces and Arms up to the Elbows, were painted black, which was a Disguise sufficient, for they were hard to be known...and you cannot imagine a more ugly sight....”
The masque was expensive, costing £3000, and caused consternation amongst some English observers due to the perceived impropriety of the performance. The King's open-handed attitude to royal display also partly accounts for the style of masque costumes because, although he did not perform in masques himself, lavish expenditure on his clothes set a precedent at court.
Nicholson says this about the plot:
“The whole story of the masque hinged on the expunging of an awful blackness. The Daughters of Niger, it was explained ¬as the queen and her 'black' ladies sat silent in a giant shell where lights shimmered on the upper rim - had always imagined they were beautiful until a poet had revealed to them that their blackness was ugly. Only a message from the Moon had showed them what they could do. If they travelled to a country whose name ended in '-tania', they would find a man 'who formes all beauty with his sight'. So far, they had trecked to Mauritania, Lusitania and Aquitania but to no avail. Now they had heard of a place called 'Britania', also known as 'Albion', which meant 'the white country' and which was
Rul'd by a Sunne, that to this height doth grace it:
Whose beames shine day and night, and are of force
To blanch an Aethiope, and revive a corse.” 107-8
In Nicholson’s words:
“England was the white country, the king a magical miracle worker, a source of light himself who could turn black into white, who could bring happiness and a kind of Protestant truth to the sad, blackened and benighted.”Nicholson,108.
"It was ridiculous, and certainly seemed ridiculous to the sceptical members of the audience at the time. After the show was over, and before the banquet - chaos: the tables collapsed under the weight of sugar-glazed syllabubs and lark-stuffed pasties ¬the Spanish Ambassador bent to kiss the hand of the queen and came away with a black smudge on his face and lips".
'Ridiculous but significant: black was what England was not and the most revealing aspect of the plot was the extent to which the darkness of its origins were exaggerated.'
And just as abruptly, he returns to discussing Guy Fawkes. Nicholson,108
IMHO, this passage is worth the cost of the book. Imagine, at the same time that King James and his boys were translating the Bible, the pregnant Queen and her posse were conducting themselves like a bunch of 17th century hootchee -mamas. . As another writer puts it, "The pregnant Queen not only performs in the masque, but she does so covered in black makeup, presumably making her appearance doubly shocking. Carleton's much-quoted verdict on the masque and its costumes in a letter to Ralph Winwood clearly registers disapproval of the black disguise. It seems remarkable that he doesn't specifically locate his sense of breached decorum in the fact that the blackened Queen was performing while visibly six months pregnant, but this knowledge may underlie his acerbic description of the masquers as "courtesanlike"; Carleton indicts the women as looking whorish, but uses a diplomatic verbal formulation necessitated by the Queen's status" (Andrea 266).
Nicolson does a good job of introducing this world and the translators. At times, he definitely loses the read with all of the historical details related to time and place, but finishes very strongly during the last third of the book and makes a strong case for viewing the KJV, not as the most technically accurate translation of the Bible, but as the translation that is most able to lift each of us beyond this mortal realm.
Adam Nicolson chronicles the great translation and its age in "God's Secretaries." Beginning with the breathless news delivered to King James VI of Scotland that he was now king of all England, Nicolson weaves a story of political intrigue surrounding the King James translation. King James himself, as part of his goal of unifying the kingdom, believed a great new translation of the Bible could foster such unity. The religious leaders charged with overseeing the translation saw an opportunity to reward friends, punish theological enemies, and consolidate their own power.
This contentious environment, however, fostered the creation of an astonishing masterpiece. Six groups of men formed companies responsible for translating different sections of the Bible. Representing the cream of the church and English college system, the translators represented a spectrum of theological beliefs, including moderate Puritanism. Indeed, the quality of the work contradicts the conventional wisdom about committees producing inferior thinking and products, which Nicolson credits both to the translators' diligence and insistence on reaching agreement.
Many of the discussions and drafts of the translating companies are lost to history. But the notes that survive, as well as the final text, point to a unique linguistic instinct which prized the seemingly contradictory aspects of precision, clarity, simplicity and majesty. "The language of the King James Bible is the language of Hatfield, of patriarchy, of an instructed order, of richness as a form of beauty, of authority as a form of good," writes Nicolson. In fact, the language of the King James translation is so unique that it exists fully only in itself: Nicolson argues that the English never really spoke their language the way it appears in the King James version, except in decades following when they consciously or unconsciously modeled their use of language on the tones and rhythms of the iconic translation.
In this book, Nicolson capably explores the context and the personalities behind the King James translation. Well written and consistently interesting, it offers a glimpse into English history at the beginning of the 17th century. Perhaps some will be disappointed that the work of translation is still shrouded in mystery, but even they will be impressed that Nicolson identifies and describes the human personalities that produced the text that almost seems to be the transcribed voice of God.
Nicolson gives us a very readable, if slightly gossipy account of the project and its background. He's rather limited in what he can do because most of the official documentation has been lost, and he obviously doesn't think his readers would be interested in technical discussions of Greek and Hebrew texts, so he tends to fall back a great deal on character sketches of the people involved, which can get a little wearing after a while. There's surprisingly little about the actual English of the translation, but the chapters where he does get into comparing the text of the AV with Tyndale and its other predecessors are some of the most rewarding parts of the book, and also the parts where Nicolson is most willing to intrude himself and give an opinion.
This book tells of the commissioning, translation and publication of the landmark 1611 Authorised Version of the Bible (generally referred to as the King James Bible). This may sound a somewhat dry subject, unlikely to engage the general reader but that
Arising out of the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 which attempted to achieve harmony between the variant forms of Protestantism then prevalent in the only-recently united realms of England and Scotland. As might have been readily predicted no such harmony emerged but King James was persuaded of the value of commissioning an official translation of the Bible, which would be accessible to as broad as possible a section of the population.
Teams of scholars from both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, augmented by ranks of academic clergymen, worked over the translation for seven years, producing what has since come to be immortalised as the King James Bible.
I had a particular interest in reading this book as the section of the Department for Education in England is currently engaged in a project to send a copy of the King James Bible to every state school in the country as part of the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of its publication. However, while I expected to find the book of vague work-related interest, I was amazed to find how gripping and enthralling the story was.
Nicolson gives a lucid and detailed account of the religious dissension holding sway across the country, and of the social and economic strife that was wreaking widespread havoc, yet he never loses the reader's interest.
This book achieved that rare treat of being both improving and entertaining.
It was to be the Bible for everyone. James, the sixth in Scotland and the first in England, viewed it as an opportunity to unify his kingdom.
To create this translation – a project many consider to be the greatest work of English prose – he assembled about 50
Its language drips with potency and sensitivity. The English language had just reached its age of maturity. This translation reflected the times – boisterous, subtle, majestic, nuisanced and musical. King James’ Bible reflects the Jacobean England. This book relates not only the translation’s tale, but also the England of Shakespeare, Bacon, the plague and the Gunpowder plot.
It is insightful read into the greatest monument of those times
James I/VI was an interesting sort; fond of handsome boys yet apparently perfectly happy with his wife; amazed by the wealth of England compared to impoverished Scotland (and quite willing to spend that wealth on his favorites); personally unprepossessing (he had some sort of jaw or mouth defect that caused him to drool continuously); one of the more intelligent English monarchs (admittedly, that’s not saying much, but he is the only one to have his collected works published) yet passionately devoted to hunting. He saw himself as a bringer of peace to both politics – one of his first acts on ascending the throne was a treaty with Spain ending the decades-old war – and religion. The religious divides in England were between Catholics, who didn’t really count, especially after the Gunpowder Plot; Presbyterians, who were willing to remain in The Church of England but with some cavils about the Book of Common Prayer (particularly whether the Greek πρεσβύτεροι meant “priest” or “elder”); Separatists, who were later called Puritans (an insult at the time) and who wanted nothing not sanctioned by the Bible*; and the Church of England. The Catholics were still nominally illegal, as were the Separatists; both were subject to varying degrees of persecution. The King’s new Bible translation was supposed to unite the various groups in harmony. Didn’t, of course, but a noble attempt.
The translators for the King James Bible were divided into “companies”, each charged with a certain section (Old Testament Torah and histories, except Chronicles; Old Testament Chronicles, Psalms and some prophets; Old Testament rest of the prophets; Apocrypha; New Testament Gospels, Acts, and Revelation; New Testament Epistles). The after completing their translations, each company circulated them to all the other companies for further comment and correction. The process seems guaranteed to produce an incomprehensible muddle, if anything at all; it sounds like the government procurement specifications behind some of history’s more unfortunate failed projects. Remarkably, it didn’t turn out that way.
There are few clues to how the process actually worked; some letters and diaries from the translators with comments and a “life” of one of the translators noting that he read aloud to the company; if there were any objections they were noted and discussed; if not he read on. Nicolson makes an important point here; the frontispiece of the King James Bible contains the statement “Appointed to be Read in Churches”, the key being that it was intended to be read aloud and the language and meter were chosen to suit that; Nicholson notes a couple of examples where the words of earlier versions were left intact but punctuation was added to imply pauses and stops in the reading. James used the word “circumlocution” to describe the kind of language he wanted; modern definitions of “circumlocution” imply confusion and unnecessary verbiage but in Jacobean time the word implied “richness” of language. Earlier English Bible versions – most notably the Geneva Bible, put together by English Protestants exiled during the reign of Mary – although read aloud in church, were more intended to be reference works for private study; the Geneva Bible notably had numerous marginal notes on how to interpret Scripture, plus maps of the Holy Land, diagrams of the Temple, and similar aids, while James specifically prohibited marginal notes except to reference other passages or to give precise Hebrew or Greek translations of phrases that had been modified to sound better in English. To my surprise, the King James Bible didn’t catch on right away; published in 1611, it wasn’t made mandatory for church use until 1616 (and even that was done in a roundabout fashion; rather than ban and collect the old Bibles the law simply prohibited printing new editions).
Ironically what was supposed to be a “standard” Bible ended up full of printer’s errors, to the extent that scholars have cataloged better than 25,000 (!) different text versions. (The most famous is probably the “Wicked Bible”, in which a crucial “not” was left out of the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery”). For the initial 1611 edition, it seems that the printer somehow got two “final” manuscripts from the translators and intermingled pages from each.
This is the Bible I grew up with and the language still resonates; updated English versions may be more doctrinally correct but just don’t carry the same majesty of language. Compare:
“Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
”
With
“Lord, I am your servant, and now I can die in peace, because you have kept your promise to me.
With my own eyes I have seen what you have done
To save your people, and foreign nations will also see this
Your mighty power is a light for all nations, and it will bring honor to your people Israel.
It’s Bach versus Barry Manilow.
Nicolson is satisfying on several levels; this a good description of Jacobean England, a good analysis of the religious feeling of the time, and full of capsule biographies of notably people. Highly recommended.
*This was sometimes carried to an extreme extent; one Separatists preacher, assuming that if God wanted an English Bible he would have seen to it that is was written in that language, gave all his sermons in Hebrew or Greek. Since his congregation was almost all illiterate farmers, this must have been singularly trying for them; it was bad enough to have to sit alertly through the traditional three-hour Puritan sermon but listening to it in an alien language must have strained the patience of even the most devout.
I found the history behind the work of creating the KJV pretty fascinating though because of the long periods
Some of these scholars were lyrical in their translations. They often took from the Tyndale translation because of his clarity of prose. The Jacobean period was one of struggles between freedom of conscience and a perceived need for order; between the monarchy and a quest for democracy; between extremism and toleration... much as we are experiencing in the early 21st c. James himself was extremely intelligent, and fruitful when attending to business at hand. His good points were his dignity and a desire for consensus.
On the negative side of his ledger was his profligacy. On the positive side is the grace, stateliness, scale, and power with which he encouraged in his chosen translators.
I continue to be amazed and appalled by the torture and execution of people in the name of a religion that says it is about love and kindness. Nicolson seems to feel that this passion for the right way to worship results in the splendid phrases of this bible; our more tolerant era is bland and uninspiring.
In any case, knowing very little about this time, I learned a lot. Including the value placed on writing: George Abbot, one of the translators, also wrote A briefe Description of the whole worlde, in which he describes native Americans , of whom he has no personal knowledge, as
"without all kinde of learning, hauing no remembrance of historie or writing among them ...."
Nicolson explains "Not only were they not like the English, they were not like the people of the Old World, who, for all their differences, were united from here to China by this one thread: they all wrote and read. . . . the textlessness of the Americans, that was the radical and shocking difference. Abbot could only imagine that it was the work of the devil." [p. 161]