The King James Bible was written not only to transmit God's words to future generations, but also in an attempt to bind together the people of England during the 17th century, Adam Nicolson, author of "God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible," said in a lecture celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Bible's creation. Approximately 200 people attended the lecture in Filene Auditorium on Wednesday.
"It was the translation to end all translations," Nicolson said. "It could very well be one of the greatest things that England has ever produced and the best book ever written in English."
Nicolson elicited laughter from the audience by joking that James I of England formerly James VI of Scotland was "blessed with some of the most magnificent trousers anyone in the English world had ever seen." The king, however, proved that there was more to him as a leader than just a "red-faced stuff-bag," Nicolson said.
The King James Bible, commissioned in 1604, is widely heralded as the most printed and sold book of all time, according to Nicolson.
"The King James Bible is a cathedral of words designed to be good to and to accommodate all of the people," he said.
The previous attempt at an English translation of the Bible, the Great Bible, had not been well-executed and paled in comparison to the King James version, Nicolson said. The success of the King James Bible was founded upon the fact that it drew "a lot of its juice" from the reality of the 17th century English world, Nicolson said.
One little-known fact of the King James Bible is that a committee of 54 different individuals contributed to its creation, Nicolson explained, prompting audible astonishment among audience members. Each contributor translated a specific section, which was then presented to a subcommittee working on the same section, according to Nicolson. The subcommittee chose a single version of the translation which would make its way through various revisions before finally reaching King James I for approval, he said.
No one knows if the king actually made edits, but he was most likely involved, Nicolson said.
"The king once said, Can you not see that I am coated in sparkles of divinity?' So I think he would have been in there," Nicolson said with a smile.
The Bible's editorial process was done "by ear," Nicolson said. One person would read aloud the suggested text and editors listened to it without ever actually seeing the written text, he said.
"In our lives today, we look at screens, read text," Nicolson said. "We lose out on some of the magic and uses of auditory such as pauses and intonation."
The King James Bible also served a political purpose as King James I was careful to primarily select royalists as his translators, Nicolson said. The Bible therefore served to both confirm the church and bring together the country, he said.
Later translations lack the "clarity, directness and communication" of the original King James Bible, Nicolson said. Other biblical translations, which aim to use more complex language, often lose "the Jacobean amalgam of the simple and the rich," he said.
"I don't think a really great translation of these texts could ever occur again," Nicolson said when an audience member asked his opinion of a possible modern translation of the Bible.
One reason the King James translation is so successful is its writers' lack of desire to please readers, which allowed the Bible to maintain an air of authority, Nicolson said. Such characteristics would be lacking in a modern version due to our more "liberal world" and the need to appease a wide range of parties, he said.
Nicolson concluded the talk with the same lighthearted attitude with which he began.
"Somebody once said to me that the nearest thing he could imagine to the King James Bible was the Manhattan Project," he said. "It was very intelligent people tinkering with a very, very powerful thing."
The lecture, "God's Secretaries: The Making Of The King James Bible," was this year's annual James and David Orr Memorial Lecture on Culture and Religion. The presentation was sponsored by the religion department.
