On Sunday night, April 28, 1935, Meta Chestnutt Sager wrote to her sister-in-law, Clara Dixon Chestnutt, and complained about preachers and the modern translations of the Bible she heard in the Christian Church at Chickasha, Oklahoma:
. . . the New Testaments the preachers read from, that is when they do read a little squib, they have so much of their own stuff to say the Bible has little place, that these new translations do not sound like the Bible. Tonight, I tried not to listen, the blessed words had been so garbled into modern language that I just despise to hear it. When I do listen I say it over to myself in the old New Testament language. The Bible as it was translated by the old masters is beautiful and charming in its old form, but these modern smart "alicks" have made a mess of that wonderfully beautiful book.[1]
Note
[1] Meta C. Sager to Clara, April 28, 1935, box 3, folder 26, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. One notes that Mrs. Sager placed alicks in scare quotes and also underlined the word, suggesting that she perhaps thought and wanted to say something else instead.
Showing posts with label King James Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label King James Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A History Project
Starting in about one month, I plan to dive head-first into one of the following historical studies: Some aspect of . . .
1. Quanah Parker and the Comanches, Texas, and Oklahoma
2. The King James Bible
3. John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and the Sandemanian movement in Great Britain and America
4. Alexander Campbell and his Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch
5. Italian immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth century.
So what sounds interesting to you? Which one would you pick? Is there a certain bit of history you'd love to explore and just haven't yet? Or maybe you're in the middle of something like that right now. Tell us about it.
1. Quanah Parker and the Comanches, Texas, and Oklahoma
2. The King James Bible
3. John Glas, Robert Sandeman, and the Sandemanian movement in Great Britain and America
4. Alexander Campbell and his Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch
5. Italian immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth century.
So what sounds interesting to you? Which one would you pick? Is there a certain bit of history you'd love to explore and just haven't yet? Or maybe you're in the middle of something like that right now. Tell us about it.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A Bit of Bible and Religion News
I saw a notice about this not too long ago, but just recently came across the homepage for the digitized Codex Sinaiticus. Here's a blurb from the website about what this is:Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. . . . The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible's original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.
For the world to be able to see this manuscript is a truly great development.
_______________
The 2011 Trust has been established in order to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, first published in May 1611. I've mentioned this before, but think it bears repeating: next year would be a good time for Christian preachers and teachers to do some teaching on subjects like "How We Got the Bible" and "History of the English Bible" (especially the King James Version). People should know these things. The stories deserve to be told.
_______________
Sixty-five years after his martyrdom, the legacy of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to grow. A large number of books and articles are published every year. I think I'll get a copy of the new biography by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen coming out at the end of this month.
Friday, May 08, 2009
A Lamp Unto My Feet, and a Light Unto My Path
The year 2011 will mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. That would be a good time, I think, for preachers and teachers to tell the story of the Scriptures in English.
People like to hear about "How We Got the Bible." Lessons like that remind us of the incredible distance between the biblical world and our own. Folks come to appreciate that none of the Bible was written in English, that all of the Scriptures were hand-copied for centuries on end, and that people who had first dedicated themselves to the glory of God spent a lifetime learning the biblical languages and translating the Word of God into words that the ordinary person could read and understand.
When that saga is told well (and there are so many fantastic episodes!) people develop a greater respect for those who have gone before them. This is a natural and normally-effective cure for sectarian tendencies.
We also develop a greater humility. When people know the history of the Bible, they never regard that TNIV newly purchased at the local bookstore as a new product. Instead, they see it as a recently-added link in a chain that is very, very long. When we know what it really cost for us to have a Bible in English, we can only give thanks to God.
Okay, so as you might have guessed by now, one of my current reads is a book about English translation of the Bible: In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, by Alister McGrath (Doubleday, 2001).
What a fine book. My copy is a first edition hardcover (without, alas, the dust jacket). I got it at an Amarillo Public Library book sale. I had seen and heard McGrath's name many times and knew he had a great reputation. (He's a scientist and theologian who taught for many years at the University of Oxford. Here's his homepage). So as I was going through the stacks at the sale, upon seeing his name and the title, I instantly put the book in my paper grocery bag that, when completely full, cost me a whopping three dollars. (The one thing that makes a great book even better is getting your own copy dirt cheap). Anyway, on the influence and significance of our best-known English translation, here's McGrath:
The King James Bible was a landmark in the history of the English language, and an inspiration to poets, dramatists, artists, and politicians. The influence of this work has been incalculable. For many years, it was the only English translation of the Bible available. Many families could afford only one book--a Bible, in whose pages parents recorded the births of their children, and found solace at their deaths. Countless youngsters learned to read by mouthing the words they found in the only book their family possessed--the King James Bible. Many learned biblical passages by heart, and found that their written and spoken English was shaped by the language and imagery of this Bible. Without the King James Bible, there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim's Progress, no Handel's Messiah, no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address. These, and innumerable other works, were inspired by the language of the Bible. Without this Bible, the culture of the English-speaking world would have been immeasurably impoverished (pp. 1-2).
Now I'm curious, what would you recommend as the best resources and ideas for teaching about the history of the English Bible? The transmission and preservation of the biblical text? Biographies of people like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale? The history of and different approaches to the task of translation?
Thoughts?
People like to hear about "How We Got the Bible." Lessons like that remind us of the incredible distance between the biblical world and our own. Folks come to appreciate that none of the Bible was written in English, that all of the Scriptures were hand-copied for centuries on end, and that people who had first dedicated themselves to the glory of God spent a lifetime learning the biblical languages and translating the Word of God into words that the ordinary person could read and understand.
When that saga is told well (and there are so many fantastic episodes!) people develop a greater respect for those who have gone before them. This is a natural and normally-effective cure for sectarian tendencies.We also develop a greater humility. When people know the history of the Bible, they never regard that TNIV newly purchased at the local bookstore as a new product. Instead, they see it as a recently-added link in a chain that is very, very long. When we know what it really cost for us to have a Bible in English, we can only give thanks to God.
Okay, so as you might have guessed by now, one of my current reads is a book about English translation of the Bible: In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture, by Alister McGrath (Doubleday, 2001).
What a fine book. My copy is a first edition hardcover (without, alas, the dust jacket). I got it at an Amarillo Public Library book sale. I had seen and heard McGrath's name many times and knew he had a great reputation. (He's a scientist and theologian who taught for many years at the University of Oxford. Here's his homepage). So as I was going through the stacks at the sale, upon seeing his name and the title, I instantly put the book in my paper grocery bag that, when completely full, cost me a whopping three dollars. (The one thing that makes a great book even better is getting your own copy dirt cheap). Anyway, on the influence and significance of our best-known English translation, here's McGrath:The King James Bible was a landmark in the history of the English language, and an inspiration to poets, dramatists, artists, and politicians. The influence of this work has been incalculable. For many years, it was the only English translation of the Bible available. Many families could afford only one book--a Bible, in whose pages parents recorded the births of their children, and found solace at their deaths. Countless youngsters learned to read by mouthing the words they found in the only book their family possessed--the King James Bible. Many learned biblical passages by heart, and found that their written and spoken English was shaped by the language and imagery of this Bible. Without the King James Bible, there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim's Progress, no Handel's Messiah, no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address. These, and innumerable other works, were inspired by the language of the Bible. Without this Bible, the culture of the English-speaking world would have been immeasurably impoverished (pp. 1-2).
Now I'm curious, what would you recommend as the best resources and ideas for teaching about the history of the English Bible? The transmission and preservation of the biblical text? Biographies of people like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale? The history of and different approaches to the task of translation?
Thoughts?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Culture of the King James Bible
While on vacation, I'm reading In the World But Not of It: One Family's Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America, by Brett Grainger. It's a blend of memoir and religious history.
Grainger's well-written memories don't exactly match my own. He grew up in a family who were staunch members of the Plymouth Brethren. (These were F. F. Bruce's people. Their eschatology is dispensational premillennialist. Is this why Bruce, a first-rate New Testament scholar and prolific writer, never did a commentary on the Book of Revelation?) Anyway, here's a taste from one of the more memorable passages in Grainger's book:
However lowly they might be in the eyes of the world, the Brethren had one critical advantage: the King James Bible. When believers gathered to share the Word, they left behind the tedium and disappointment of daily life and became heirs of a great cultural legacy. Their imagination was immersed in Scripture. The hero epics of Genesis, the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the promises of Revelation, the psychology of the Psalms--by turns, hopeful and embittered, imprecatory and magnanimous--lent their hardscrabble lives a beauty and grace they might otherwise have lacked. The Bible compensated for their unpolished manners. It was more important to them than their cheap suits and unfashionable dresses.
When believers spoke with one another, the King James was their lingua franca. They used words long vanished from common speech: yea and nay and verily and whosoever, thee and thou and thine. They called one another brother and sister, as Paul had done in his epistles. Outside in the world, such antiquated habits would have sounded silly or affected. But on Sunday morning, when the plumber with a harelip stood and prayed over bread and wine in seventeenth-century English, it seemed as though he had found his mother tongue.
Grainger's well-written memories don't exactly match my own. He grew up in a family who were staunch members of the Plymouth Brethren. (These were F. F. Bruce's people. Their eschatology is dispensational premillennialist. Is this why Bruce, a first-rate New Testament scholar and prolific writer, never did a commentary on the Book of Revelation?) Anyway, here's a taste from one of the more memorable passages in Grainger's book:
However lowly they might be in the eyes of the world, the Brethren had one critical advantage: the King James Bible. When believers gathered to share the Word, they left behind the tedium and disappointment of daily life and became heirs of a great cultural legacy. Their imagination was immersed in Scripture. The hero epics of Genesis, the wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the promises of Revelation, the psychology of the Psalms--by turns, hopeful and embittered, imprecatory and magnanimous--lent their hardscrabble lives a beauty and grace they might otherwise have lacked. The Bible compensated for their unpolished manners. It was more important to them than their cheap suits and unfashionable dresses.
When believers spoke with one another, the King James was their lingua franca. They used words long vanished from common speech: yea and nay and verily and whosoever, thee and thou and thine. They called one another brother and sister, as Paul had done in his epistles. Outside in the world, such antiquated habits would have sounded silly or affected. But on Sunday morning, when the plumber with a harelip stood and prayed over bread and wine in seventeenth-century English, it seemed as though he had found his mother tongue.
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