Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible [Paperback]

A thorough and engaging history of the making of the King James Bible (Authorised Version) of 1611. Nicolson does a splendid job of setting the social and religious context in which this most beautiful of (English) translations was conceived and carried forward.

The virtues and foibles of King James himself and the team of translators he commissioned are chronicled in honest detail. But between them these scholars produced a masterpiece of prose and poetry that worked lasting and profound changes in Britain and the English-speaking world.

The author's use of some technical words sent me to the dictionary frequently; he knows his stuff and he puts the reader to work, no doubt about it. But for anyone who loves the majesty and power of the KJV, this book is a worthy companion.

This is a beautifully told and dazzlingly interpreted story of what went into the writing of King James' Bible. It begins with a a superb account of James' succession and of the England to which he succeeded; and we have a really rounded portrayal of the King himself, bringing out his considerable virtues as well as his failings. Nicolson gives a spirited description of the proceedings of the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, out of which the idea of a new translation of the Bible emerged. The Puritans were unhappy with the Bishops' Bible of 1568 and asked for a new translation which should be `the one only translation of ye byble to be authenticall and read in ye churche.' James apparently also found the Bishops' Bible poorly translated (in what respect is not made clear by James; Nicolson calls it `cloth-eared', `pompous' and `obscure'), but he liked the idea that only one translation should be allowed once it had been approved by the Privy Council and by the King himself, because that would exclude the use made by Puritans in their churches of the Geneva Bible which had been produced by the exiled Calvinists in the 1550s. This had frequently translated `king' as `tyrant' and included marginal notations that were clearly anti-royalist. The new Authorized Version should be purged of all such subversion. Bishop Bancroft was put in overall charge, and fulfilled the wishes of the King when he issued the sixteen rules he gave to the six groups or `companies' of Translators, two based in Westminster, two in Oxford and two in Cambridge, each made up of nine scholars: there were to be no tendentious marginalia (yet explanatory annotations there were, as to the apparently erotic passages of Song of Songs); `ecclesia' was to be translated as `church' and not as `congregation', `presbyteros' as `priest' and not as `elder', etc.

On the other hand, James wanted the Bible to an eirenic book which he hoped would be acceptable to all but the extreme Puritans or `separatists'. To that end, moderate Puritans like John Reynolds and Laurence Chaderton, from among those to whom he had listened, albeit with irritation, at the Hampton Court Conference, were to be included among the Translators, alongside intolerant Anglicans like Richard Bancroft and Launcelot Andrewes. The new Bible was not intended to be a revolutionary translation: it drew on and paid tribute to the earlier translations which it aimed to improve. It was originally printed in heavy antique Gothic type instead of in modern Roman type.

One instruction was that the scholars in each company were each to make his own translations and then meet with his colleagues to work out the best of them; and at the end the work of each company was to be submitted to all the others (with the Privy Council and then the King giving the final approval.)

On pp.152 to 154 there is a superb example of how just one sentence (Luke 1:57) was proposed, shaped and reshaped into what we have today. This comes from the, alas, only working manuscript that has survived. But we have the analysis of other verses: on pp.192 to 194 the first two verses of Genesis, for example. And each time Nicolson comments acidly and aptly on the philistinism of modern versions, which lack all resonance and majesty. He gives us a few other such gems of his sensitivities to sound, metaphor and meaning: I could wish for a whole book of them!

The personalities of some of the Translators are richly described. Some of these men were unpleasant, some were corrupt pluralists, some ambitious courtiers; others sweet-natured or unworldly: there is a gem of a description of one John Bois, whose notes on the final meetings of the heads of the companies have been preserved (and Nicolson notes that the various versions were READ OUT there: here one final test was: did they SOUND right?)

The subtitle of the book is `Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible', so it deals with much material that is either marginally or actually not at all connected with the King James' Bible. We read of the heedless extravagance of the James' court; the orgiastic festivities at court when King Christian IV of Denmark was on a visit and both kings were revoltingly drunk; details of tortures inflicted on separatists and on Catholics who were innocent of the Gunpowder Plot; the story of the departure for the Low Countries, successful on the second attempt, of those who would be called the Pilgrim Fathers.

Nicolson takes the richly encrusted decoration of Cecil's Hatfield House, illuminated by the light from its huge windows as characteristic of the new Bible: the light of truth, so stressed by Puritans, playing over the gorgeous texture of the text.

Nicolson's own text is worthy of its theme: it too combines elegant simplicity with richness of meaning, and the last three pages are just wonderful.

(Since this review was written, the book has been republished under the title "When God Spoke English".)

"Power and Glory" is not always the easiest of reads, because it requires one to return to olde England and to feel the atmosphere that existed there. That said, it is perfectly possible go get past the atmosphere and to read a book that is almost a mystery. I myself am an Anglican churchgoer who sometimes yearns for the magical cadence of the King James Bible. Modern translations somehow seem to have missed the beat. This is a wonderful telling of the way in which the King James Bible was created. Anyone who is interested in the history of Christianity, I'm sure, will find it a thrill.