Ten Fallacies About the King James Version Leland Ryken
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Ten Fallacies about the King James Version Leland Ryken he King James Version of the Bible (KJV) Bible in English and American history. Not all of Thas received well-deserved recognition for the claims are true, and that is the subject of the four hundred years of distinguished service. article that follows. I will explore ten common New books on the KJV, academic conferences claims about the KJV and explain why I think the on it, and exhibitions in museums, libraries, and claims are false. bookstores have made 2011 the Year of the KJV. As the festivities have unfolded, this book of FALLACY #1: WILLIAM books has emerged more clearly than ever as a SHAKESPEARE HELPED TO book of superlatives. It is the best- TRANSLATE THE KJV. Leland Ryken is Professor of selling book of all time. It is the This claim belongs especially (but not only) to English at Wheaton College, where most influential English-language internet sources, where a common formula is that he has served on the faculty for over forty years. He is the author book, the most often reprinted, the Shakespeare “wrote” the KJV! But this is only the or editor of dozens of publications, most quoted, and the most written beginning of wonders. It is commonly claimed including The ESV and the English about. Gordon Campbell offers in some quarters that Shakespeare (or a fellow Bible Legacy (Crossway, 2011), the summary verdict the KJV is translator) in effect signed Shakespeare’s name The Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most “the most important book in the right into the text to signal that he had helped 1 Influential English Translation English language.” with the translation. The claim for a “signature” (Crossway, 2011), and The Word A book with this much visibil- rests on an alleged cryptogram in Psalm 46. of God in English: Criteria for ity naturally elicits a multitude of According to the theory, Shakespeare was forty- Excellence in Bible Translation (Crossway, 2002). In addition, verdicts on it. Especially in this six years-old as the work of translation reached Dr. Ryken served as literary stylist anniversary year, there has been closure. The forty-sixth word from the beginning for the English Standard Version no shortage of claims and coun- of Psalm 46 is the word shake, and the forty-sixth translation committee. terclaims about the most famous word from the end is spear—Shakespeare. 4 SBJT 15.4 (2011): 4-17. How can a theory that ingenious possibly be on the committee. wrong? Let me count the ways. But before I show Although the KJV was conceived in a moment that Shakespeare was not in the running to be of religious contentiousness (see below), when a member of the King James translation com- King James and Archbishop Richard Bancroft mittee, I want to make sure that we understand formulated the list of translators, they rose above that his ineligibility was not due to disinterest in sectarian spirit. The translators were selected the Bible. On the contrary, Shakespeare, whom I solely on the basis of known scholarly ability. They consider to be a Christian writer in the intellec- were the best of the best that England possessed tual allegiance of his plays, was thoroughly con- in regard to biblical knowledge and facility with versant with the Bible.2 There are approximately the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. All of the two thousand biblical allusions in Shakespeare’s translators were ordained members of the Church plays. Additionally, biblical passages often func- of England, and within that parameter they were tion as subtexts for episodes in the plays, as when either ministers with a scholarly bent, like Lance- Lady Macbeth washes her hands as Pontius Pilate lot Andrewes of London, or professors at Oxford did in a futile effort to clear herself of guilt. There University or Cambridge University. Obviously are so many references to the first four chapters Shakespeare, even with his genius for language of Genesis in Shakespeare’s plays that schol- and familiarity with the Bible, did not qualify for ars regularly make statements to the effect that serving on the translation committee, nor would Shakespeare must have known these chapters he have had the time. by heart. The scholars and biographers who have If Shakespeare did not help to produce the studied the matter most thoroughly tend toward KJV or allude to it in his plays, did he have any the opinion not only that Shakespeare was a contact with the new translation that came into reader of the English Bible during his adult years existence during the last phase of his career as but also that he owned a copy. a playwright? We cannot know with certainty, This is entirely plausible (after all, Shakespeare but an intriguing possibility exists. When Shake- was a thoroughly “bookish” person and must have speare retired from his active career in London had a personal library), but if true, it was not the and moved home to his native Stratford around KJV that Shakespeare read. Surprise of surprises, 1611 (note the year), he became a lay rector, also it was the Geneva Bible—the so-called Puritan called lay reader, in Holy Trinity Church, the translation—that Shakespeare primarily used in local Anglican church. The author of a literary his plays starting in 1598, having used the Bish- pilgrim’s guide to England waxes eloquent about ops’ Bible before that point. One scholar finds a how thrilling it must have been for Shakespeare biographical cause for this shift, namely, Shake- to stand in church on Sunday mornings and read speare’s renting a room in a Huguenot household from the Bible in the English language that he on Silver Street in London.3 himself had elevated and influenced. I was ini- Nonetheless, in spite of Shakespeare’s skill tially skeptical of this claim, but upon reflection with the English language and interest in the I think it possible. When the KJV was published English Bible, he was not in the running to serve in 1611, it “immediately superseded the Bishops’ on the translation committee of the KJV. If being Bible for use in [English] churches.”4 Shakespeare the greatest master of the English language did might, in fact, have read from it in church as a lay not qualify a person to serve on the translation reader until his death in 1616. committee of the KJV, what did qualify a person? Another interesting sidelight exists in regard We can answer that question on the basis of what to the connection between Shakespeare’s plays we know about the forty-seven men who served and the KJV. According to oral history, when 5 American pioneers journeyed westward in their surprised everyone by granting the request. But covered wagons, they sometimes carried two he granted the request with a sneering put-down books—Shakespeare’s collected works and the of the Geneva Bible. He is reported to have said King James Bible. What meaning can we extract that he “could never yet see a Bible well trans- from this pairing of books? Shakespeare repre- lated in English, but the worst of all his Majesty sented human culture at its best, and the KJV thought the Geneva to be.” represented the authoritative word of God. But Nonetheless, it is possible to make a case for the two books had something important in com- there being an important Puritan component in mon: they were the greatest examples of the Eng- the formation and reception history of the KJV. lish language that existed, and the pioneers who To begin, the event that initiated the new trans- carried them were guardians of a standard of lan- lation was a request from the Puritans, so in a guage amidst circumstances that might seem to sense the KJV owes its origin to the Puritans. threaten it. Approximately a fourth of the forty-seven trans- lators were men of Puritan sympathies.6 One of FALLACY #2: THE KJV WAS AN ANTI- the committee chairmen was the Puritan John PURITAN BIBLE, DESIGNED TO Reynolds, who in a demoralized mood had made DETHRONE THE GENEVA BIBLE. the request for a new translation at the Hamp- There is a kernel of truth in this claim, but the ton Court Conference. Furthermore, we hear so KJV is not an anti-Puritan Bible. It is true that much about how 80-90 percent of the King James the King James Bible was conceived in a moment Bible was carried over from William Tyndale’s of spite toward the Puritans. The background is translation that we have been lulled into believ- as follows. Upon being named king to succeed ing it. Those figures are true for the parts of the Queen Elizabeth after her death in 1603, King Bible that Tyndale translated, but he translated James I of Scotland processed southward toward no more than two-thirds of the Bible before his London. He was intercepted at one point by Puri- martyrdom. In the final analysis, the Geneva tans bearing the Millenary Petition, so-called Bible contributed most to the KJV, with one because it had allegedly been signed by a thousand source claiming that the Geneva Bible “is textu- Anglican clerics with Puritan leanings. The peti- ally 95% the same as the King James Version.”7 tion was a list of Puritan grievances and requests. If we turn from the origins of the KJV to The Puritans had hopes that the new king might its reception history, we again find that the be sympathetic to their viewpoint.