The printing press had made it possible to print hundreds of Bibles for
what it used to cost to make one. People got ahold of one copy and they
felt they were immediately Bible Scholars.
King James (before he became king) was upset since people kept
pulling out quotes from new versions of the Holy Bible that he had
never even heard of. The Bibles I felt were a vision
of one persons ideal of what it should be and not what Jesus and the other writers had meant when they wrote it.
One group of ecclesiastic amateurs had the Tyndale Bible and they kept
'using it against him'. Specifically he thought they might be using
either poor or twisted interpretations of passages to curse his very
soul with. He did not really feel that they could do it but on matters
of the soul he always wanted a good second opinion.
Since he kept saying that I knew the English language better than
anyone he came about 20 miles just to find out from me specifically if
what he felt they might be doing was possible. To which I said, 'No.'
'Everyone's corrupting the scripture and I'm thoroughly upset about
it. They change the interpretation the way they want it to be and not
how it is.' He then said.
He had studied the bible for years and had been taught by monks of
a devout order so he had memorized all the New Testament and most of the
rest of the Bible. I could tell that this was a very big thing for him
to have to deal with and he seemed to be at a loss of what to do. So I tried
to think of a man's solution to the problem which was a way that he could
remedy the entire situation. He had a lot of spare time and I realized he could probably do a better job
of interpreting the Bible than most had. I often said 'hire the person
that doesn't want the job to get the fairest person' and not wanting to
do such a thing he would not want it to be anything except accurate. So
I countered with 'Then make a Bible that isn't corrupted.'
'Good idea.' He said, 'Do you think God will mind.'
I had to reply 'Not if it is done fairly.'
He raised up to his full height and stated emphatically, 'I think we can do better than the Catholics did.'
'That's all you need to do.' I said
And with that encouragement James then wandered off to play which made
him another person besides me and my husband who
thought life was for that purpose.
I heard nothing from him on the subject for the longest time. Then he suddenly presented me with the most amazing list of the
very best scholars in England. It was so impressive that it made my head
swim.
I was expecting him to do it with one or two other people as most of
the other interpretations had been done. This was how it was
interpreted:
The King James Version was translated by 54 scholars (although only 51
are known) working in six committees, two based in each of Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Westminster.
They worked on certain parts separately; then the drafts produced by
each committee were compared and revised for harmony with each other.
The scholars were not paid for their translation work, but were
required to support themselves as best they could. Many were supported
by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. Here
This was the list of the men who then wrote the King James Bible.* The
amount of work put into it was more than all the other versions
combined and it immediately replaced every other version of the Good
Book on the
shelves of the bookstores.
*This was how important treaties were written but never with this many
men. Maybe eleven men would be involved. For a fishing treaty they
would divide up the people into two main groups to determine fishing
areas around your country and around the other country. Each of these
might be divided into up to five groups. For the southern area off the
coast of a foreign country you might have a fisherman (who knew where
and when the best fishing was), a wholesaler of fish (who would know
how large the schools of fish actually were), a cartographer (to map it
out) and a barrister (to write it all down in legal terms). Then after
they finished they might have the group that was doing the
north area off the coast of the other country review it. Then they
might present both of these plans to the groups that were
covering their own country to make certain that what they got in return
was going to be fair. This method almost always assure a high degree of
fairness.
Previous
Page
All rights reserved. © J
Pinil, Inc. 2006