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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.
