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The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of
the Bible and its Influence on Life and Literature

by Cleland Boyd McAfee

January, 1999  [Etext #1592]


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THE GREATEST
ENGLISH CLASSIC

A STUDY OF THE
KING JAMES VERSION OF THE BIBLE
AND ITS INFLUENCE ON LIFE
AND LITERATURE

BY
CLELAND BOYD McAFEE, D.D.




CONTENTS

 LECTURE
 PREFACE
 I.  PREPARING THE WAY--THE ENGLISH BIBLE BEFORE KING JAMES
 II. THE MAKING OF THE KING JAMES VERSION; ITS CHARACTERISTICS
 III. THE KING JAMES VERSION As ENGLISH LITERATURE
 IV. THE INFLUENCE OF THE KING JAMES VERSION ON
     ENGLISH LITERATURE
 V.  THE KING JAMES VERSION--ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH
     AND AMERICAN HISTORY
 VI. THE BIBLE IN THE LIFE OF TO-DAY



PREFACE

THE lectures included in this volume were
prepared at the request of the Brooklyn
Institute of Arts and Sciences, and were delivered
in the early part of 1912, under its
auspices. They were suggested by the tercentenary
of the King James version of the Bible. The
plan adopted led to a restatement of the history
which prepared for the version, and of that which
produced it. It was natural next to point out its
principal characteristics as a piece of literature.
Two lectures followed, noting its influence on
literature and on history. The course closed with
a statement and argument regarding the place
of the Bible in the life of to-day.

The reception accorded the lectures at the time
of their public delivery, and the discussion which
ensued upon some of the points raised, encourage
the hope that they may be more widely useful.

It is a pleasure to assign to Dr. Franklin W.
Hooper, director of the Institute, whatever credit
the work may merit. Certainly it would not
have been undertaken without his kindly urgency.
                    CLELAND BOYD McAFEE.

 Brooklyn, New York, May, 1912.



THE GREATEST
ENGLISH CLASSIC

LECTURE I

PREPARING THE WAY--THE ENGLISH BIBLE BEFORE KING JAMES

THERE are three great Book-religions--
Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism.
Other religions have their sacred writings,
but they do not hold them in the same regard as
do these three. Buddhism and Confucianism
count their books rather records of their faith
than rules for it, history rather than authoritative
sources of belief. The three great Book-religions
yield a measure of authority to their
sacred books which would be utterly foreign to
the thought of other faiths.

Yet among the three named are two very distinct
attitudes. To the Mohammedan the language
as well as the matter of the Koran is
sacred. He will not permit its translation. Its
original Arabic is the only authoritative tongue
in which it can speak. It has been translated
into other tongues, but always by adherents of
other faiths, never by its own believers. The
Hebrew and the Christian, on the other hand,
but notably the Christian, have persistently
sought to make their Bible speak all languages at
all times.

It is a curious fact that a Book written in one
tongue should have come to its largest power in
other languages than its own. The Bible means
more to-day in German and French and English
than it does in Hebrew and Chaldaic and Greek--
more even than it ever meant in those languages.
There is nothing just like that in literary history.
It is as though Shakespeare should after a while
become negligible for most readers in English,
and be a master of thought in Chinese and Hindustani,
or in some language yet unborn.

We owe this persistent effort to make the Bible
speak the language of the times to a conviction
that the particular language used is not the
great thing, that there is something in it which
gives it power and value in any tongue. No book
was ever translated so often. Men who have
known it in its earliest tongues have realized that
their fellows would not learn these earliest
tongues, and they have set out to make it speak
the tongue their fellows did know. Some have
protested that there is impiety in making it
speak the current tongue, and have insisted that
men should learn the earliest speech, or at least
accept their knowledge of the Book from those
who did know it. But they have never stopped
the movement. They have only delayed it.

The first movement to make the Scripture
speak the current tongue appeared nearly three
centuries before Christ. Most of the Old Testament
then existed in Hebrew. But the Jews had
scattered widely. Many had gathered in Egypt
where Alexander the Great had founded the city
that bears his name. At one time a third of the
population of the city was Jewish. Many of
the people were passionately loyal to their old
religion and its Sacred Book. But the current
tongue there and through most of the civilized
world was Greek, and not Hebrew. As always,
there were some who felt that the Book and its
original language were inseparable. Others revealed
the disposition of which we spoke a moment
ago, and set out to make the Book speak
the current tongue. For one hundred and fifty
years the work went on, and what we call the
Septuagint was completed. There is a pretty
little story which tells how the version got its
name, which means the Seventy--that King
Ptolemy Philadelphus, interested in collecting all
sacred books, gathered seventy Hebrew scholars,
sent them to the island of Pharos, shut them up
in seventy rooms for seventy days, each making
a translation from the Hebrew into the Greek.
When they came out, behold, their translations
were all exactly alike! Several difficulties appear
in that story, one of which is that seventy men
should have made the same mistakes without
depending on each other. In addition, it is not
historically supported, and the fact seems to be
that the Septuagint was a long and slow growth,
issuing from the impulse to make the Sacred
Book speak the familiar tongue. And, though
it was a Greek translation, it virtually displaced
the original, as the English Bible has virtually
displaced the Hebrew and Greek to-day. The
Septuagint was the Old Testament which Paul
used. Of one hundred and sixty-eight direct
quotations from the Old Testament in the New
nearly all are from the Greek version--from the
translation, and not from the original.

We owe still more to translation. While there
is accumulating evidence that there was spoken
in Palestine at that time a colloquial Greek, with
which most people would be familiar, it is yet
probable that our Lord spoke neither Greek
nor Hebrew currently, but Aramaic. He knew
the Hebrew Scriptures, of course, as any well-
trained lad did; but most of His words have come
down to us in translation. His name, for example,
to His Hebrew mother, was not