THE Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams preached at a Thanksgiving Service for the 400th anniversary of the 1611 Authorized (King James) translation of the Bible and has paid tribute to its “extraordinary” and “abiding importance.”
Her Majesty The Queen accompanied by His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales attended the service on November 16, 2011 at Westminster Abbey where early editions of the Bible were presented at the altar.
Archbishop Rowan holding King James Bible Dr Williams told the congregation that the translators would have been “baffled and embarrassed” by the idea of a perfect translation but had sought instead to convey the “almost unbearable weight of divine intelligence and love” into the English language.
“The temptation is always there for the modern translator to look for strategies that make the text more accessible – and when that temptation comes, it doesn’t hurt to turn for a moment – for some long moments indeed – to this extraordinary text,” he said.
The service was attended by senior clerics including the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, the Bishop of London Dr Richard Chartres and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, former head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Attending the service, along with the Queen, were members of the royal family, including Prince Charles and Prince Philip, and around 2,000 other guests. The churchgoers watched as the 1611 translation was presented to the altar.
The King James Bible represents a significant achievement for England. The version was created by 47 of the country’s brightest scholars, and it was compiled in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster. The King James Bible was published after 7 years of intelligent deliberation and translation, and the translation was eventually read in every Anglican Church in the country.
Dr. Williams commented on the “extraordinary” and “abiding importance” of the King James Bible. Contrary to popular belief, its meaning extends to more than just pastors, priests, and places of worship. The King James Version’s magnitude affects even secular speech today.
The broadcaster of the ceremony, Melvyn Bragg, called the King James Bible the “DNA of the English language,” and the title is quite fitting, considering the various expressions English borrowed from its pages.
Phrases, such as “the powers that be,” “signs of the times,” and “the writing on the wall,” were taken directly from the King James Bible. Other widespread idioms like, “God helps those who help themselves,” and the “Golden Rule” are not exactly biblical canon, but they are based on biblical ideas nonetheless.
The King James Bible was originally translated from two separate languages: the Old Testament from Hebrew, and the New Testament from Greek. It was not the first version of the Bible in English, but by the 1700s, it was widely accepted for use in Anglican and Protestant churches.
The translation was first ordered by James I in 1604 as he attempted to forge unity between England and Scotland.
The Bible was the work of 54 scholars working in six translation committees, or companies, based in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster who argued, intrigued and conspired to produce a text which would be read aloud in Anglican churches, scarcely amended, for most of the next four centuries.
The final editing took place in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey where the translators read their new version of the Bible aloud.
Its most felicitous phrases – ‘the powers that be’, ‘feet of clay’, ‘signs of the times’, ‘reap the whirlwind’, ‘the writing on the wall’, ‘the apple of his eye’ and ‘a law unto themselves’ – have entered the language and its cadences have influenced virtually every significant writer in English since.
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