“If everything else in the English language should perish, the English [KJV] Bible would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.” (Thomas B. Macaulay)
With thanks to Judith –
BBC: The Story of the King James Bible
link (three programmes lasting 45 minutes each. The third was the one I found the most interesting.)
The link is to the first of three programmes on BBC Radio 4, exploring the genesis and legacy of the KJV – if you are interested, listen soon, because it is only online for a few more days.
In the third part, the narrator and his guests explore the legacy of the King James Version and its place at the center of the English language down almost to the present day – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's “I have a dream” speech is excerpted as an example, with many of its most powerful phrases straight from the KJV.
“Almost,” that is. Nowadays, the KJV is but one among many, “serving a consumerist society.” The programme discusses the revisions from the RSV onward. By now, few people attend church or encounter the Bible in any form, so none of the revisions has had much influence on the wider culture. What remains is the poetry of the KJV: “It lives on in the ear like a music that can never be forgotten.” Phrases of the KJV “tumble out in the most unexpected places” in popular culture to this day.
One of the guests spoke of his work with teenagers encountering the KJV as literature. He said that their response is most often that the language “is difficult, but it is beautiful.” A Jamaican poet and novelist, guest on the programme, finds it to be full of “fabulous, fresh imagery and rhythms” to inspire one's own work.
“The very best of literature is written to be spoken.” No book embodies this more than the KJV.
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1 comment:
Thanks! A big surprise tied into the 400th anniversary of the 1611 King James Version Bible:
Two scholars have compiled the first worldwide census of extant copies of the original first printing of the 1611 King James Version (sometimes referred to as the "He" Bible). For decades, authorities from the British Museum, et al., have estimated that “around 50 copies” of that first printing still exist. The real number is quite different.
For more information, you're invited to contact Donald L. Brake, Sr., PhD, at dbrake1611@q.com or his associate David Sanford at drsanford@earthlink.net.
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