[Download] "About the Political Dimensions of the Formation of the King James Bible (Essay)" by CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: About the Political Dimensions of the Formation of the King James Bible (Essay)
- Author : CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 92 KB
Description
The King James Bible can be considered the most influential of English language texts. King James I and VI had numerous motives for calling for an updated translation of the Bible. The King James Bible represents politically and spiritually traditional views of hierarchy and ceremony associated more with autocratic societies than with the rugged individualism of the United States. The question arises then, why has this text been so influential and considered the "only true translation" until recent times? The translators and King exhibited a duality of beliefs emblematic of Jacobean society. These dualities of hierarchy and commonness, ceremony and purity, clarity and majesty were instituted in England followed by the Australian, American (US and Canada) cultures. A better understanding of the people who were a part of this translation and the King who commissioned the translation will help literary historians better understand the text's enduring popularity. In the last years of Queen Elizabeth's reign England was a restless place. England in 1603 was ripe with possibilities and eager to move beyond the Elizabethan era. Adam Nicolson opens his book God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible with a chapter discussing the tumultuous undercurrents of English society under a dying Queen Elizabeth I: "The country felt younger and more vital than its queen. Cultural conservatives might have bemoaned the death of old values and the corruption of modern morals ... but these were not the symptoms of decline. England was full of newness and potential: its population burgeoning, its merchant fleets combing the world, London growing like a hothouse plum, the sons of gentlemen crowding as never before into the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, plants and fruits from all over the world arriving in its gardens and on its tables--but the rigid carapace of the Elizabethan court lay like a cast-iron lid above it" (2). The English were ready for change. Queen Elizabeth I's death held in it the prospects of peace with Spain, a new openness to religious toleration, and a resolution of the differences between the established church and both Catholics and Puritans (Nicolson 3). James Stuart carried these heavy burdens upon his regal back and felt them enormously. The man who would become King James I of England--already King James the VI of Scotland--was a complicated mix and representation of burgeoning new perspectives being held down fast by old fears.