Richard Major

GUNPOWDER, SPITTLE & PARCHMENT:

The curious origins of the greatest English Bible

a talk given at the four hundredth anniversary commemoration of the King James Bible at Faculty of Teacher Education, Zagreb, Croatia, on 10 November 2011

organised by the Anglican Chaplaincy of Zagreb (www.anglican.hr) and Hravatsko Biblijsko Drutvo (www.hbd.hr)

richard@richardmajor.com

Its a great privilege to be here before you. And its a pleasure to be here to praise something as splendid and beautiful as the King James Bible. Were come together this evening to commemorate the greatest of all modern bibles. Youll be hearing from Janet Berkovic about its literary beauty, and from Jutta Henner about the principles of its translation. Its my job to tell you why, humanly speaking, the King James Bible came into existence. Im here to discuss the politics and history. If you came expecting an edifying story youll be disappointed. Its a matter of intrigue, perversion, menace, and above all of violence: of gunpowder, spittle and grubby old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times. And that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that. Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.

Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible:
King James himself.y ol
d parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that. Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.

1. SPITTLE:
King James and his Bible

In spring of 1603 a curious little Scot travelled south to England, a country he had never seen before. James had been King of Scotland for 33 years.

.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that.

Now at last, after a lifetime of waiting, he had become King of the much larger and richer realm of England.

.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that. Lets begin with the man behind the King James Bible: King James himself.

It is difficult to like James. Of course hed had a wretched life. His mother was the infamous

.
y old parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times:

Mary, Queen of Scots, the most notorious woman of the age.

His father was

the pitiful Henry, Lord Darnley,

a diseased and dimwitted teenager. In March 1566, when Mary was heavily pregnant, Darnleys cronies broke into her bedroom, put a gun to her head,

and stabbed to death David Rizzio,

her Italian secretary. Very soon afterward later James was born; then the house where Darnley was staying was blown up with gunpowder,

and Darnley was found in the orchard,

dead.

Everyone thought Mary was guilty of her husbands assassination. She was forced to abdicate, and fled to England, where she plotted to murder Queen Elizabeth. In the end, Elizabeth had to have her

beheaded.

Meanwhile her son, little James Stuart was, from the age of one,

James VI, King of Scots.

He grew up ugly and furtive. He stammered. His tongue was too big for his mouth he had the unfortunate habit of spitting, which everyone noticed, which annoyed everyone,

and which somehow seemed to define him.

James was, in a way, clever, an intellectual but without being, in any sensible direction, intelligent. He was bookish and foolish. His nickname was the wisest fool in Christendom. He was a pedant, a bigot and a bore. His mind was full of bent, bitter, nightmarish notions,

and so were his books.

The book King James was proudest of was not the King James Bible, but a treatise he wrote as King of Scots called

Dmonologie (1597), which was all about witches: how to detect if they had got through a keyhole; how to track them down; how to prosecute and kill them.

Such he was, for many decades: King of Scotland; scribbler of treasties; witch-hunter; red-headed, arrogant, sneaky, full of spit.

He was waiting, waiting for a death, waiting for his splendid cousin

Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland,

to die; and

when she did, early in 1603,

James came south to

London,

the greatest metropolis of Christendom,

to be crowned

king. Great though Elizabeth had been, England was tired of her, and expectations were high for

King James.

All those expectations were

disappointed. His reign was a failure and a scandal.

England has never before or since known

a morass of intrigue, corruption and depravity. of almost unthinkable wickedness, of poisoning, assassination and debauch.

James himself was grossly fond of a succession of

beautiful young men,

of whom the very worst,

Steenie, created by James Duke of Buckingham, was allowed to dominate the government.
James was notorious everywhere. About the time he was having the King James Bible printed, this

filthy poem was being circulated in France

James was despised throughout Europe, and under the mismanagement of Buckingham the prestige of the kingdom sank low. More seriously, the king abused the English constitution, and bequeathed a civil war to his saintly son and successor. James was, surely,

the worst king we have ever had. He left our history defiled with his spittle.

But one very good thing came out of James reign. James I commissioned a revised translation of the Bible; and the beauty and dignity of its English dazzled everyone then, and ever since. As long as the language lasts, people, religious or not, will read the King James Version with delight. The very phrase King James has come to mean, most often, not the ghastly little monarch, but the glorious book he ordered into existence. Did King James commission the King James Bible out of virtue or poetry or good taste? No; not a bit of it. He commissioned it out of fear. His fear was the origin of its beauty.
y old

parchment. The production of the King James Bible was a desparate act, made in desparate times: and that, I will argue, is why it sounds so sublime and so peaceful. It had to sound like that.

2. GUNPOWDER:
The explosive nature of translating the Bible

A mediaeval manuscript of the Vulgate Bible

Gutenbergs printed Vulgate Bible of 1454

The Louvain printing of the Vulgate Bible of 1583

William Tyndale,

executed 1536

Tyndales New Testament (1525)

Coverdales Bible 1535

The Great Bible 1539

VIVAT REX!

GOD SAVE THE KING!

The Bishops Bible 1568

The Bishops Bible 1568

The Geneva Bible, 1560, 1576

Ephesians i3-4

headers, defining the subject

interpolated essays

the actual text marginal commentary, setting out Calvinist doctrine

Douai-Rheims Bible 1582

A crash-test dummy mock-up of the House of Lords in The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend (ITV, 2005).

A crash-test dummy mock-up of King James opening parliament in The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend (ITV, 2005).

The peers of the realm seconds before the blast

3. PARCHMENT:
The creation of a new Bible

Hampton Court

The Hampton Court conference, 1604

Psalm xci5
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night

(King James Bible)

Psalm xci5
Thou shall not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night.

The Coverdale Bible (popularly known as the Bug Bible)

Jeremiah viii22
Is there no balm in Gilead?

(King James Bible)

Jeremiah viii22
Is there no tryacle in Gilead?

The Great Bible (henceforth known as the Treacle Bible)

Genesis iii7
they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

(King James Bible)

Genesis iii7
they sowed figge-tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches.

The Geneva Bible (generally known as the Breeches Bible)

Lancelot Andrewes, general editor of the King James Bible, Bishop of Chichester and then Ely

Richard Bancroft,
Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1610)

George Abbot,
Archbishop of Canterbury after 1610

The translators present their work to King James

The King James Bible 1611

A title-page that avoids looking like mere royalist government propanda

(showing the Twelve Apostles, rather than the English monarch!)

no doctrinal commentary,

no doctrinal commentary

just a few marginal notes to explain Greek and Hebrew terms;

elegantly printed,

elegantly printed

with modest, uncontroversial headnotes.

The there was, alas, a nasty Preface, dedicating the whole Bible :

and continuing:

Its unpleasantly aggressive toward Roman Catholics and Puritans:

But what does that matter? We can skip the fawning Dedication to King James;
we can forget what King James himself was like.

The King James Bible will always be the greatest English Bible
not because it was a fresh translation (it wasnt; 70% of the KJB New Testament is simply Tyndale),

but because it was the final perfection of nine decades of development in English Bible translation.

The first decade of King James reign saw the mature perfection of the English language.

It was the age of Shakespeares

final plays, for instance.

The political background of the King James Bible is sordid. King James himself is an obscene figure.

And his revised translation did not fulfil his political goals.

For although its literary excellence drove all competitors from the market; although it soon became the English Bible. although Papists and Puritans embraced it the Roman Catholics were never reconciled to the Church of England.

And, as for the Puritans, they rebelled against King James son, the saintly Charles Stuart,

defeated him, and martyred him.

The English dynasty King James founded was overthrown, its place eventually usurped by princes from Germany.

But the English Bible King James sponsored has never been overthrown, nor had its place usurped.

The glory of King James Bible has outlasted the disgraces and scandals of his reign the gunpowder and the spittle. In the end no one could resist it. It has dominated English literature and the English language ever since 1611, unaltered

except for printers errors! beginning with the so-called Printers Bible of 1612, its second year of publication:

Psalm cxix161 Princes have persecuted me without a cause

was misprinted as

Psalm cxix161 Printers have persecuted me without a cause

(Printers Bible of 1612)

Exodus xx14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

(King James Bible)

Exodus xx14 Thou shalt commit adultery.

(The Adulterous Bible of 1631; printers fined 300; only 11 copies survive)

John viii11 Go and sin no more

(King James Bible)

John viii11 Go and sin on more

(Sin On Bible of 1716)

Psalm xiv1 the fool hath said in his heart there is no God

(King James Bible)

Psalm xiv1 the fool hath said in his heart there is a God

(The Fools Bible of 1763; printers fined 3000; all copies ordered destroyed)

Marko Antun Domniani[ (or de Dominis) Archbishop of Split 1602, Dean of Windsor 1618; died a prisoner of the Inquisition in Rome 1624

St Georges Chapel, Windsor

Title-page, 1611