A look at the King James Version in all its iterations
Published Thu, Nov 25, 2010 02:00 AM
Modified Thu, Nov 25, 2010 06:38 AM
BY JOHN MURAWSKI - Staff Writer
It is the most oft-cited and revered English-language Bible, yet few of its admirers can claim to have read this translation in its unadulterated form.
The King James Version was a monumental undertaking in its day, intended to supersede all other English translations of Scripture. The KJV became almost universally accepted as the authorized version throughout English-speaking Christendom, but not without reservations about its accuracy and aesthetic virtues.
Over the past four centuries, the KJV has been endlessly corrected, standardized and modernized, accumulating more than 50,000 textual emendations. Today, the KJV in all its forms remains a work in progress and is available in parallel editions that cater to conservatives, modernists and secular readers.
"The text of the KJV was not fixed in 1611," writes Gordon Campbell, a professor of Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester, in a new history. "There was no master text from which all subsequent editions descended, and later editors, printers and publishers were not always certain which text was the first edition."
The KJV was not intended as a wholly new translation, but more of a compilation of the best practices in earlier English Bibles. Being so indebted to precursors, the conservative vocabulary and grammar of the KJV were already archaic on the day the book was published.
Garbled folios
The first edition of 1611 was marred by about 350 printer's errors, a remarkably low rate compared with some later editions. A 1612 folio garbled the "princes" in Psalm 119 to produce an unintended irony that could well serve as the subtitle of Campbell's history: "Printers have persecuted me without a cause."
Some misprints might have been deliberate. Disputes between rival printers led to suspected sabotage in a 1631 edition known as the Wicked Bible. It's infamous for a commandment in Exodus that exhorts the faithful: "Thou shalt commit adultery." In the same printing, God's "greatnesse" was rendered as God's "great asse."
Early KJV editions were published complete with the Apocrypha, the disputed books that were accepted as canonical by Catholics but rejected by Puritans. The Apocrypha were not excised from the KJV until the 18th century.
The modern version of the KJV is not based on the 1611 printing but on comprehensive revisions prepared by Oxford cleric Benjamin Blayney and published in 1769. Blayney fixed orthography and grammar and replaced archaisms, but along the way he introduced a few errors (such as replacing "and" with "or") that persisted until the 20th century.
Thanks to Blayney, the obsolete "neesed" was replaced by "sneezed," "crudled" by "curdled" and "fourscore" by "eightieth."
Typography tools
Over time, the KJV was shrouded in evermore layers of newfangled clothing. Unbroken blocks of text were set apart with paragraphs and quotation marks. These typographical innovations were not in use in the original Hebrew and Greek, or in 17th century England, so subsequent editors had to decide where quotes began and ended.
Later editors also saw fit to represent scriptural passages as prose and verse, introducing a modern distinction that might not have been apparent to the ancients.
The 20th century gave birth to rival versions of the authorized translation. In the 1950s, following developments in Hebraic scholarship, translators replaced "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 with "young woman." That change in the Revised Standard Version outraged conservative Christians, who deem the Old Testament passage a prophecy for the virgin birth of Jesus.
More controversy ensued in 1989 with the gender-neutral New Revised Standard Version. This edition replaced "man" with "person" or "adult" to reflect contemporary sensibilities about sexual discrimination.
As it was purged of its perceived defects, the KJV came to be regarded as divinely inspired by some and a literary masterpiece by others. "It has been revised and re-revised, and the unintended consequence of that process has been new translations of the Bible," Campbell writes.
.
Published Thu, Nov 25, 2010 02:00 AM
Modified Thu, Nov 25, 2010 06:38 AM
BY JOHN MURAWSKI - Staff Writer
It is the most oft-cited and revered English-language Bible, yet few of its admirers can claim to have read this translation in its unadulterated form.
The King James Version was a monumental undertaking in its day, intended to supersede all other English translations of Scripture. The KJV became almost universally accepted as the authorized version throughout English-speaking Christendom, but not without reservations about its accuracy and aesthetic virtues.
Over the past four centuries, the KJV has been endlessly corrected, standardized and modernized, accumulating more than 50,000 textual emendations. Today, the KJV in all its forms remains a work in progress and is available in parallel editions that cater to conservatives, modernists and secular readers.
"The text of the KJV was not fixed in 1611," writes Gordon Campbell, a professor of Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester, in a new history. "There was no master text from which all subsequent editions descended, and later editors, printers and publishers were not always certain which text was the first edition."
The KJV was not intended as a wholly new translation, but more of a compilation of the best practices in earlier English Bibles. Being so indebted to precursors, the conservative vocabulary and grammar of the KJV were already archaic on the day the book was published.
Garbled folios
The first edition of 1611 was marred by about 350 printer's errors, a remarkably low rate compared with some later editions. A 1612 folio garbled the "princes" in Psalm 119 to produce an unintended irony that could well serve as the subtitle of Campbell's history: "Printers have persecuted me without a cause."
Some misprints might have been deliberate. Disputes between rival printers led to suspected sabotage in a 1631 edition known as the Wicked Bible. It's infamous for a commandment in Exodus that exhorts the faithful: "Thou shalt commit adultery." In the same printing, God's "greatnesse" was rendered as God's "great asse."
Early KJV editions were published complete with the Apocrypha, the disputed books that were accepted as canonical by Catholics but rejected by Puritans. The Apocrypha were not excised from the KJV until the 18th century.
The modern version of the KJV is not based on the 1611 printing but on comprehensive revisions prepared by Oxford cleric Benjamin Blayney and published in 1769. Blayney fixed orthography and grammar and replaced archaisms, but along the way he introduced a few errors (such as replacing "and" with "or") that persisted until the 20th century.
Thanks to Blayney, the obsolete "neesed" was replaced by "sneezed," "crudled" by "curdled" and "fourscore" by "eightieth."
Typography tools
Over time, the KJV was shrouded in evermore layers of newfangled clothing. Unbroken blocks of text were set apart with paragraphs and quotation marks. These typographical innovations were not in use in the original Hebrew and Greek, or in 17th century England, so subsequent editors had to decide where quotes began and ended.
Later editors also saw fit to represent scriptural passages as prose and verse, introducing a modern distinction that might not have been apparent to the ancients.
The 20th century gave birth to rival versions of the authorized translation. In the 1950s, following developments in Hebraic scholarship, translators replaced "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 with "young woman." That change in the Revised Standard Version outraged conservative Christians, who deem the Old Testament passage a prophecy for the virgin birth of Jesus.
More controversy ensued in 1989 with the gender-neutral New Revised Standard Version. This edition replaced "man" with "person" or "adult" to reflect contemporary sensibilities about sexual discrimination.
As it was purged of its perceived defects, the KJV came to be regarded as divinely inspired by some and a literary masterpiece by others. "It has been revised and re-revised, and the unintended consequence of that process has been new translations of the Bible," Campbell writes.
.
