Of Languages and Letters
A review of “In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language and a Culture” by Alister McGrath
McGrath, A. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001. Print.
Dear Fellow,
Under review today is a book with many attractions for me. First, I was attracted to the book by the author. Primarily influenced by the memory of his biography of C. S. Lewis, I considered Alister McGrath a member of the Inklings, an informal literary circle associated with Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Not until I saw the publication year of this book by McGrath.
Of the scores of the lessons from this book, this despatch dwells intently on the relevance of writing letters.
The Backstory
I was at my friend’s house one day on agreement. We agreed to meet and, among other things, read aloud from and discuss a portion of Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God. We spent an hour doing so—reading only the book’s introduction. The conversation that accompanied the reading was enriching and edifying, my friend, would describe it as a heavenly experience. I’d like to have such experience more regularly.
When we were done reading, I had time to spare. So, I skimmed his collection of hundreds of books, without any initial intention to borrow any book. Then, I stumbled on this book: In the Beginning: The Making of the King James Bible by Alister McGrath. Quickly, I pulled it off the shelf, partly driven by the notion that he was one of C. S. Lewis’s circle of friends. (McGrath is still alive. C. S. Lewis passed on in 1963.) However, I was attracted by the subtitle as well. Then, the content page; then the preliminaries and the blurb. For a while now, I have been hungry for an extensive account of the history of writing and the printing press. Further inspired by a proud mention of Johannes Gutenberg and his invention in McGrath’s book, I borrowed the book from my friend.
The Reading
When asked how long the book will remain with me, I said for the whole of July. My friend’s copy has 316 pages. A fictional piece of the same length will make an easy read (with significant exceptions though). My tenacity for solid history books is yet in formation; so, I felt I needed a month to get through this book. (Currently, on page 294, it took me about 15 hours to get to this point in the book. The longest I have read this year so far is a nonfiction book of 410 pages in about 21.4 hours. By the 16th hour, I should have less than a dozen pages with McGrath’s book.)
The book chronicles the making of the King James Version of the Christian Bible. It tells the story of the events from around the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, spotlighting specifically relevant events related to the making of the King James Bible; and also highlighting its influences and impact. The book nourished my appetite via McGrath’s great storytelling and well-written accounts. In admiration of his attitude towards evidence and documentation, while reading, I feel this enhancement of character for accuracy and truth in research. There are a lot of issues addressed in the book that have been treated as the central theme of other books, but McGrath appears more elegantly in his ability to piece them together into a single fabric—telling the story of the King James Bible. Honestly, I will spare you the details of this book; but with an encouragement for you to check it out. For me, it shaped my outlook on the Bible.
The Lessons
One, I have been thoroughly cured of this:
“. . . failure of many users of the King James Bible to realise that the Bible was originally written in any language other than English” (p. 259).
Two, and very noteworthy:
“One of the unitended functions of the King James Bible was to establish the norms in written and spoken English. Should not the language of the Bible shape the language of the people? The growing acceptance of the King James Bible in shaping public and private religious discourse inevitably had its impact on the language as a whole”(p. 257).
Three, and note the fact that the King James Bible first appeared in print in 1611:
“It is impossible to overlook the fact that the King James tanslators did not begin to translate with blank sheets of paper in front of them. They stood in a long line of translators, and were conscious that their task would be influenced considerably—perhaps more than they cared to admit—by the English translations already in circulation” (p. 176).
For context: “One of those who pressed most vigorously for an English version of the Bible in the fourteenth century was John Wycliffe (c. 1330-84), often seen as a forerunner of the Reformation of the sixteenth century” (p. 19).
Four, a fine detail:
“Yet there is no evidence that the translators of the King James Bible had any great interest in matters of literature or linguistic development. Their concern was primarily to provide an accurate translation of the Bible, on the assumption that accuracy was itself the most aesthetic of the Bible, on the assumption that accuracy was itself the most aesthetic of qualities to be desired. Paradoxically, the king’s translators achieved literary distinction precisely because they were not deliberately pursuing it. Aiming at truth, they achieved what later generations recognized as beauty and elegance. Where later translations deliberately and self-consciously sought after literary merit, the king’s translators achieved it unintentionally, by focusing on what, the king’s translators achieved it unintentionally, by focusing on what, to them, was a greater goal. Elegance was achieved by accident, rather than design” (p. 254).
Now, the major takeaway from the reading. McGrath cited New Testament scholar J. B. Lightfoot (from one of Lightfoot’s 1853 pieces while serving as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge) to discuss the translation issues encountered by the translators of the Bible when translating that portion of it written in Greek—the New Testament:
“If we could only recover letters that ordinary people wrote to each other without any thought of being literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the understanding of the language of the New Testament generally” (p. 236).
More on letter writing.
The Conclusion
Before Lightfoot’s speculation, I had not considered this side of the relevance of letters—that is, in context, to provide “the greatest possible help for the understanding of the language.” I have only experienced the power of letters to enrich friendships and its ability to aid clearer and easy communication, (as this newsletter affords me). To think of a bunch of letters written by laymen at a particular time in history for their very personal purposes as helpful to a scholarly endeavour gives me the understanding that there is really no disconnect between scholars and laymen. Also, I see another side to how human endeavours feed into each other; even those that seem mundane and very unacademic. Our every act matters in the “Great Composition”; we, by our actions and mere existence, are beautiful colour streaks on the Grand Canvas of the Creator.1
Writing letters matter in the scheme of things; write them some more.
Your LetterMan,
Tongjal, W. N.
I got the term “Great Composition” from Jon Bloom’s book: Don’t Follow Your Heart.