In her article on openDemocracy, Lost in Translation: the narrowing of the American mind, Kay Dilday gives sufficient examples of the proof, if proof were needed, that Americans do not read much outside of their culture. Its slightly unfair to single anyone out, because its not just Americans, of course. All nationalities stick to their own kind for the bulk of their reading its what they know, and thus what they sympathise with. That having been said, there may well be a greater problem in the English-speaking world. There are two reasons for this.
One is almost too well-known even to need mentioning Shakespeare. If the English language had never thrown up another genius then the boy from Stratford would more than justify the pre-eminence of the English language. But the other is why, even in these fairly God-less times, the speaker of English today might consider himself somehow permitted to remain Anglocentric in his reading, and it goes back to a committee of around fifty men set up in 1604 to produce a full translation of the Bible.
Apart from being, in my opinion, one of the greatest achievements of the human species, the King James Bible may well also be the only masterpiece ever produced by committee.
In his most recent book (called Gods Secretaries in the US, Power and Glory in Britain), Adam Nicholson has set out to examine the period as well as the people who wrote the work which left generations of English-speakers up to the present day under the impression that God was, if not English, then at least an English-speaker. There could, naturally, be no greater credit in a cultures favour than this. Thus country after country, and language after language has tried to make the language of the deity its own.
Martin Luther famously gave the advice when translating the Bible that:
Youve got to go out and ask the mother in her house, the children in the street, the ordinary man at the market. Watch their mouths move when they talk, and translate that way. Then theyll understand you and realise that you are speaking German to them.
Luther further stated, in a way which seems somewhat sinister with hindsight, that the whole idea was to make Moses so German that no one would suspect he was a Jew.
Luthers style was not that of the teams of translators who worked away under the orders and rules of King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England) , who had ascended the newly-united British throne on the death of Englands Queen Elizabeth in 1603. They created a language which was neither colloquial nor literal. What they did arrive at was a language which, for four centuries, has been for the English-speaker the language of God.
The language of God in poetry
With the exception of Shakespeare, perhaps no single person could have come up with the language which these divines did. They were intent on correct conveyance of meaning, but also on the leaving open, where necessary, of multiple interpretations of certain passages. Time and again, where modern translations give the literal translation, one turns to the King James and finds that what we have is the poetic and the resonant. The language of God contained, through the King James translation, not only the divine message, but the divine message poetically put.
Take the very opening chapters of the Bible Genesis which gives the story of the creation of the world. The Protestant martyr to translation William Tyndale, garrotted and burnt in 1536, wrote earlier that decade:
In the beginning God created heauen and erth. The erth was voyde and emptye, and darcknesse was vpon the depe, & the spirite of God moued upon the water.
The King James translators gave us one of the most stately, basso-profundo passages in the language. None of the meaning is lost, but a depth, in every sense, is added:
In the beginning God created the Heauen, and the Earth. And the earth was without forme, and voyd, and darkenesse was vpon the face of the deepe: and the Spirit of God mooued vpon the face of the waters.
Needless to say, modern translations, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s did away with the resonances one giving us the bland:
In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the power of God was moving over the water.
Compare those phrases: the power of God was moving over the water, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. In the latter King James version we see the reflection of God, the mystery of the divine presence; in the modern version we have simply the power of God. Again, we have the attempt at the descriptively simplistic in the updated version: The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness (how misjudged that total!) while from the first decade of the 17th century we have and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Often, as Nicholson shows, these words and phrases were the result of deliberate compromise. The teams of translators sent their finished work to a meeting of delegate divines, held behind locked doors in Stationers Hall in London, where day after day was spent arguing over the translation of single words.
The importance and the weight of the burden on these mens shoulders could not be overemphasised. A false translation, a false note, and every man, woman and child across the country could have been misled from the true meaning of their religion. Errors could not be permitted, even though they certainly crept in. Perhaps the most notorious mistake was actually a printers error, an omission of the decisive word not in a 1631 edition which became known as the Wicked Bible: its exhortation at Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt commit adultery.
Today, many people believe the King James Bible to be outdated, irrelevant and ambiguous to the needs of the modern faithful. It is not anyones place to tell these people not to worship in the way in which they see fit, but one cant help but see it as regretful that such a text should be supplanted. The King James Bible was archaic even when it was published. It never attempted to be literal, it never attempted to be colloquial. Something of the majesty of the creator was always bound to be lost if he spoke as one of Luthers market-traders.
The religion of the translators (always upper-cased in their day) is far removed from the religion of many of their co-religionists today. It was a world where the harsher side of God was not avoided, a world where mans iniquities were neither covered over nor counted unimportant. It was also a world in which the individual was not God, and therefore God did not speak like an individual.
Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, chief translator, preached in a sermon during the plague in 1602, There is no evill but it is a sparke of Gods wrath. The Latin plaga meant a stroke and indeed Andrewes saw the plague as the very handy-worke of GOD, literally the slap of one of His angels. He knew where to level the blame: new preachers were coming along with, new tricks, opinions and fashions, fresh and newly taken up, which their fathers never knew of. The people of England, he complained, think it a goodly matter to be wittie, and to find out things our selves to make to our selves, to be Authors, and inventors of somewhat, that so we may seem to be as wise as GOD, if not wiser.
In those far-off days novelist was, as Nicholson reminds us, a term of abuse, primitivist of the highest praise.
An imperishable legacy
This may all seem strange to us now, it may even seem unsympathetic to some, but the men who created this work of translation gave to the English language some of its highest moments: moments of relief as well as fear; moments of profound consolation. None of the translators of the King James Bible may be household names today, but it is unlikely that any of them should have wanted to be. Their legacy of scholarship and group-creativity gave the language of God to generations of those who could read and listen to the English language. They also gave an elegance of framework, an example of perfectly balanced prose acknowledged as such by every generation even up to the present of wittie writers and novelists.
No prose or poetry could reach higher than this:
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. (Psalm 139)
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (I Corinthians, 13)
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 12)
