Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Creators of English
- 2 From the Great Bible to the Rheims-Douai Bible: arguments about language
- 3 The King James Bible
- 4 Literary implications of Bible presentation
- 5 The struggle for acceptance
- 6 The Psalter in verse and poetry
- 7 ‘The eloquentest books in the world’
- 8 Writers and the Bible 1: Milton and Bunyan
- 9 The early eighteenth century and the King James Bible
- 10 Mid-century
- 11 The critical rise of the King James Bible
- 12 Writers and the Bible 2: the Romantics
- 13 Literary discussion to mid-Victorian times
- 14 The Revised Version
- 15 ‘The Bible as literature’
- 16 The later reputation of the King James Bible
- 17 The New English Bible
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Biblical Index
3 - The King James Bible
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of plates
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Creators of English
- 2 From the Great Bible to the Rheims-Douai Bible: arguments about language
- 3 The King James Bible
- 4 Literary implications of Bible presentation
- 5 The struggle for acceptance
- 6 The Psalter in verse and poetry
- 7 ‘The eloquentest books in the world’
- 8 Writers and the Bible 1: Milton and Bunyan
- 9 The early eighteenth century and the King James Bible
- 10 Mid-century
- 11 The critical rise of the King James Bible
- 12 Writers and the Bible 2: the Romantics
- 13 Literary discussion to mid-Victorian times
- 14 The Revised Version
- 15 ‘The Bible as literature’
- 16 The later reputation of the King James Bible
- 17 The New English Bible
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Biblical Index
Summary
THE EXCLUDED SCHOLAR: HUGH BROUGHTON
Other issues of importance were raised by one of the most eminent English Hebrew scholars of the time, the dogmatic and contentious Hugh Broughton (1549–1612). Although he was not included among the King James translators, he gave them the benefit of his advice; his arguments about translation were as familiar to the KJB translators as anyone's.
He believed in the divinely inspired infallibility and perfection of both Testaments (but not of the Apocrypha). So, writing in connection with the work then being done on the KJB, he declares, ‘the Old Testament is all written in the Jew's tongue, and God's style passing all man's wit, and maketh up one body, having not one word idle or wanting’. This premise, coupled with a refusal to admit any possibility of textual corruption, leads to his entire scholarly effort, which is to ‘clear’ the Scriptures, that is, open their true meaning so that the consistency, the ‘one body, having not one word idle or wanting’, is revealed. Much of this involves reconciliation of apparent conflicts (there can be no real conflicts in a divinely inspired text) of chronology and genealogy. Broughton's first work, A Consent of Scripture (1588), tried to harmonise Scripture chronology, and he continued to hold forth on this subject to the end of his life. Literary questions are necessarily involved, and he is frequently at pains to distinguish literal and figurative language in the text. For instance, he propounds as a principle of interpretation that ‘the first penner of the matter and all writers of it must use all certain and sure plainness, until all doubts be removed’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of the English Bible as Literature , pp. 56 - 75Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000