We've had a spot of discussion here the past few days about the King James Bible, and how well the translation has withstood the tides of time (my position was that it has done so very well).
Obviously, King James didn't do the translating himself. So who did? Ever wondered? Most of it, it turns out, was the work of a fellow named William Tyndale - but that's only the briefest synopsis of the tale. It's worth digging deeper.
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unfortunately the economist title is only for subscribers
but I remember this as having been a great one hour long lecture about the enterprise of getting the translation done
- it is as audio as well as as video available
Silke
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible with Adam Nicolson.
http://mediaplayer.group.cam.ac.uk/component/option,com_mediadb/Itemid,26/?search=king+james+bible&x=0&y=0
The translation of the Bible into English by Tyndale is a very interesting story covered well by Melvyn Bragg in The Adventure in English. It was both revolutionary and subversive, think the ordinary person could read it for themselves the Roman Catholic Church fought it with book burnings and martyr burnings
I think the internet enables the ordinary person to garner information that hasnt been filtered by the MSM. I find it depressing though how so few people take advantage of it
THANK YOU YAACOV FOR YOUR GOOD WORK
The King James Bible is certainly a great work of literature in itself.
However, the 400 year old language is often obscure to modern readers, who speak a different kind of English; and there have been many discoveries of older or alternative manuscripts of parts of the Bible, which together make this old translation not very accurate.
Lynn e-mails in a comment, so I"m posting it:
Tyndale is one of my heroes and someone
England should be enormously proud of. The best biography is David
Daniell's - William Tyndale a Biography - published by Yale. Daniell
also edited an edition of the Tyndale bible. I personally think the
release of the "Old Testament" into the English venacular fed the creative democratic impulse that influenced the English Civil War and the foundations of the American Constitution. It is a very interesting subject that needs to be explored far more deeply.
if you are interested in how a translated bible, the printing press and literacy for more and more "simple" folks meant
- browse the archive of this website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/
- for those who have never come across "In Our Time" before:
it is always 3 academics who have to talk without manuscript on the subject moderated by Melvyn Bragg - and no mention of books on the subject by participants allowed :-))
I don't remember any title but they talk about the before, during and after of the execution of Charles quite often, for example by concentrating on game changing events and what created the "compost" for them.
Overall it seems to me that they, the Brits, refer to that period about as much as US-stuff I imbibe refers to the founding fathers.
Silke
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