12. Triumph: The Final Acclamation Of The King James Bible
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TRIUMPH: THE FINAL ACCLAMATION OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE
By 1850, the King James translation had triumphed. What was once a curiosity had become a classic. The nineteenth century showered praise on the King James Bible, viewing it as one of the high points of English literary achievements and perhaps the greatest contribution to the spiritual ennobling of the human race. Such judgments are inevitably projected onto earlier generations, giving the impression that the genius and brilliance of the translation were universally recognized from the outset. It is thus tempting to believe that the new translation was rapturously received on publication, being acclaimed immediately as a lasting monument of English literature as much as hailed as a superb new translation of the word of God.
Yet history gives us no warrant for any such extravagant opinions. Indeed, the evidence at our disposal suggests that many saw the final appearance of the new translation as something of an anticlimax. There were those who would indeed speak of the King James Bible in the highest possible terms—but such a judgment lay over a century away. The irrefutable evidence is that, far from rushing out to buy or make use of this new translation, people preferred to use an English translation from fifty years earlier—the Geneva Bible.
The simple truth is that the “new Bible” was initially regarded with polite disinterest. Nobody at the time really liked the new translation very much. Even some of those who were prominently involved in the translation of the King James Bible seemed hesitant to use it, preferring to cite from the Geneva Bible instead—hardly a commendation for their work. The King James Bible might be the Bible of the English religious and political establishment; it had a long way to go before it became the Bible of the English people.
This chapter aims to tell the story of how an ugly duckling became a swan; how a translation that at first singularly failed to excite the popular imagination went on to be acclaimed as “the noblest monument of English prose”—to use the phrase of Robert Lowth (1710–87), sometime Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. It is a long and fascinating story which can here only be told in part.