God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

By Adam Nicolson

Book Overview

A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson and Bacon; of the Gunpowder Plot; the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen; Arcadian landscapes; murderous, toxic slums; and, above all, of sometimes overwhelming religious passion. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities. This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment "Englishness" and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book. The sponsor and guide of the whole Bible project was the King himself, the brilliant, ugly and profoundly peace-loving James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England. Trained almost from birth to manage the rivalries of political factions at home, James saw in England the chance for a sort of irenic Eden over which the new translation of the Bible was to preside. It was to be a Bible for everyone, and as God's lieutenant on earth, he would use it to unify his kingdom. The dream of Jacobean peace, guaranteed by an elision of royal power and divine glory, lies behind a Bible of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power. About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions, and created a text which, for all its failings, has never been equaled. That is the central question of this book: How did this group of near-anonymous divines, muddled, drunk, self-serving, ambitious, ruthless, obsequious, pedantic and flawed as they were, manage to bring off this astonishing translation? How did such ordinary men make such extraordinary prose? In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king; of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible; of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060185163
• ISBN13: 9780060185169
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 281 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

I couldn't stop talking about this book to everyone I knew, even when their eyes glazed over in boredom because I have weird, fringe interests that they don't share. I was painstakingly typing out passages to send to the few people who were actually interested in hearing more of my ramblings about it. I learned so much and had such fun doing so.

The making of a masterpiece

"God's Secretaries" is another in a long list of recent histories ("Washington's Crossing," "Paul Revere's Ride," "American Brutus") that uses a single event to shed light on an era. Adam Nicolson does a masterful job of exploring the politics and personalities behind the creation of the King James Bible. I was especially fascinated by the interplay between various early 17th century Protestant sects - Puritans, Episcopalians and Congregationalists. Students of American history will get a better feel for why the Puritans--western Christianity's equivalent of the Taliban--might have been so unwelcome at home. The King James Bible was in part an answer to the Puritan's Geneva Bible, which used deliberately-slanted anti-monarchical translations (e.g., using "tyrant" for "king"!) that made it politically annoying, even subversive. While I enjoy the King James style, Nicolson was weakest when trumpeting the superiority of the King James to other contemporaneous translations. Seeing various versions side by side, it wasn't altogether clear to me that the King James was the obviously better choice. It doesn't hurt that the king is behind your version. That being said, "God's Secretaries" was a terrific read, full of the anecdotal information that brings history alive.

Sermons, sedition and social stability

Nicolson's study of the background and people involved in producing the King James Bible is akin to doing an old jigsaw puzzle where the colours are washed out. You're pretty certain of how it will look when completed. After all, most people have been exposed to the book's purported topic. You have expectations of what you will encounter. Each chapter offers a new piece leading to the assumed final result. Yet each piece is something of a surprise - an unknown character or an obscure event. As the image builds, Nicolson assures you of its relevance. Yet, when the task has been finished, the rendering is almost wholly unexpected. For once, the renaming of a British publication - the original was "Power and Glory" - was appropriate. Nicolson opens with the accession of King James I of England, but the VI of Scotland. This unusual transformation of a monarch brought about a new wave of stresses to a nation that had endured a succession of religious upheavals over the previous century. From Henry VIII's break with Rome, through an unmitigated Protestantism and sudden reversion to Roman Catholicism, to Elizabeth's long, waffling reign, the British welcomed a king they felt promised religious stability. They hadn't counted on James' unhappy years under Scots Presbyterian mentors. Nicolson's depiction of James is of a man almost obsessed with exercising power over religious matters. If not the subtle initiator, James certainly pounced on the idea of creating a "new" English Bible. It was an era of Bible writing. The Douai had been recently produced by English Catholics in exile, while the very Presbyterians James loathed had imported Calvin's Geneva text enthusiastically. Anglicans had struggled with earlier English-language versions, from Tyndale through the half-century old Bishop's Bible. Having been smothered by the heavily annotated Geneva version, James was keen to have a "pure" text. Nicolson convenes, almost one at a time, the Translator committee to produce it. Calling them "a disparate lot" is but mildly descriptive. There were stern theologians, frowning at any challenge to episcopal prerogatives. Others were known to weep while delivering sermons. The Presbyterian presence, no matter how unwelcome in James' view, still had to be tolerated. The Geneva, as Nicolson notes repeatedly, is what came to the Western Hemisphere on the Mayflower. However pedantic this book might have been in another's hands, Nicolson's characterisations elevate it to gripping reading. Lancelot Andrewes, the weeping pastor, takes centre stage as the chief Translator - James insisted on the capitalisation. Andrewes, along with most of the team, was driven by the notion of a monarch closely aligned with the church. No more backsliding to Rome! The Puritans, although not yet granted that appellation, wanted even stronger guarantees - bishops were the banana peels leading to papistry. Get them out! The tenor, ably captured by Nicolson, is a

A highly readable account with many levels of insight

Adam Nicolson's account of the re-translation of the Bible from Latin, Greek and Hebrew texts is a surprisingly riveting tale. The narrative--how more than 50 Translators managed to complete the task on-time and with a surprisingly uniform "voice"--would be an accomplishment in itself.But he adds much more: There's a wonderful social commentary on life at the Jacobean court and the astounding contrasts within King James's personality. Throughout the book, Nicholson weaves in interesting character sketches of the diverse group who came together for this monumental task. He adds concise discussions of the doctrinal issues that were separating the Puritans from the established Church of England, and many protestants will recognize the same issues we see today in discussions of "high church versus low church."For many bible readers, the Christmas story can only be told in the language of the King James. "God's Secretaries" shows how the placement of a single word can change the rhyhthm of a sentence from poetry to prose. Nicholson even dares to show the errors that the Translators made. The King James is beautiful, yes, but imperfect as any Sunday morning lay reader who has tried to make sense of "He who was sin who knew no sin" knows.This book will make a wonderful gift for any Epsicopalian, or someone with an interest in popular history of the British Reformation. Then borrow it to read yourself.

A Riveting Read

Welcome to the astonishing world of Jacobean England...the time of Shakespeare, the time of wild religious division between the Calvinists and the Church of England. Learn just why our Pilgrim Fathers split for the New World...and learn how an amazing group of devoted scholars and frisky bishops put together the extraordinarily beautiful text of the King James Bible. No subsequent version, deemed by many of us to be 'bible lite', can approach the majesty of this work of love & learning from the 1600's. "God's Secretaries" works beautifully for anyone who ever wondered just where did we ever get the bible anyway?

The Committee that Made a Classic

There are a good many churches in America who insist that the use of any Bible other than the King James Version is anathema. The joke goes that one of the members of such a sect declared, "If it was good enough for Saint Paul, it is good enough for me." The truth is that the KJV is good enough for any English speaker, more majestic than any other version, and that it is a foundation of the English-speaking world more than even Shakespeare is. How this astonishing book came to be composed is Adam Nicolson's story in _God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible_ (HarperCollins). It is a successful account of how diverse personalities, European history, and religious fashions produced a timeless classic. There were English Bibles before 1611. The KJV grew out of a conference at Hampton Court where the new king took up grievances of the Puritans; the Bible was a byproduct of the conference. James was heartened by the idea of a new translation. He distrusted the widely used Geneva Bible because it had marginal notes about how people ought to view kings, notes he viewed as seditious. Less self-servingly, he thought an authoritative translation might bring religious peace to his conflicted land. The translation was his personal project. There are plenty of jokes about how committees invariably complicate rather than solve problems, but Nicolson shows that in Jacobean England, individuality was distrusted and "Jointness was the acknowledged virtue of the age." The KJV was a product of 54 translators, broken into teams and organized in a fashion that would befuddle a modern CEO, and they followed general or specific rules laid down by King James. The notes and directives generated by the translators have been largely lost, but Nicolson is able to tell us about a few of the translators themselves, a mixed bunch. A combination of puritans, prudes, drunkards, scholars, libertines, hotheads, and other eccentrics were perhaps just the crew to be involved in translating a work of such breadth. Among the most interesting parts of Nicholson's book are comparative translations. He gives a history of Luke 1:57, for instance, to show how it was rendered as "Now Elizabeths full time came that she should bee delivered, and she brought forth a son." Nicholson points out the richness of "full" meaning plump, perfect, or overbrimming. He also gives us another committee translation, performed over three centuries after the KJV, the New English Bible: "Now the time came for Elizabeth's child to be born, and she gave birth to a son." There is nothing at all remarkable in these flat words; they might have come from a social worker's report. Nicolson says of these translators, "Wanting timelessness, they achieved the language of the memo." Recently we have been treated to gender-free translations of the Bible, or the Ebonics Bible, as attempts to make the book relevant or up to date. There are also "modern" translations into American English tha