For my "field trip" for our class's print unit I decided to visit,
"The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible" exhibit in the Harold B. Lee library here at BYU. It was truly an eye opening experience for me to see just how much time, effort, and even controversy went into creating what I thought was just the de facto Bible throughout history (that shows just how much I know). Keep reading after the break!
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| The Vulgate |
After our
last project where we translated ancient text, I got an idea of how much work goes into these translations. We only had to translate a short sentence, rather than the thousands of verses that are found in the Bible, and we still had a fair amount of guess work come into play in trying to find equivalents of some words in English. I can't even begin to imagine what a daunting task it would be to correctly translate something of that magnitude! From the exhibit I learned that one of the earliest iterations of the Bible, the Latin "Vulgate" took St. Jerome 23 years to compile from the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts!
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| The Geneva Bible (look at the margins) |
Another thing that really struck me about these early Bibles, beginning with the Vulgate and even up to the King James version to some degree was the font. Like we talked about in class, early printing was made to emulate the manuscript tradition. This meant it was to be highly ornate and aesthetically pleasing, and not always intended for easy reading. I could hardly get through an entire verse! Maybe that's just how I see it because I'm not used to having to read that type of text, but I can't imagine a population where literacy isn't exactly the norm, or especially when children are first learning to read from this book, being able to read it very easily or efficiently. In one of the more popular early translations, the Geneva Bible, its Calvinist translators put in marginalia that was meant to explain some of the more ambiguous verses with ideas unique to their beliefs. The first thing I noticed upon looking at those annotations was how their font was far less ornate and easy to read than that of the traditional words. I would assume that this was no accident by the translators, rather that they wanted their views to be more easily accessible and prominent. That also made me think this was one of the reasons that this version was so popular, because ordinary people could easily read and understand it. Even once the King James version was first released the Geneva Bible still was the more popular, as the King James version retained the original manuscript style, and its massive size and price tag kept made sure it was mostly read during church services.
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| King James |
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| Martin Luther |
Another observation I made from this exhibit, and maybe this is just me being cynical of human nature, but it seems like the Bible and its numerous translations were often a conduit for gaining power, just as religion often has been for much of the worlds history. I'm sure there were good, righteous men like Wycliffe and Luther who wished to bring people closer to God through their own study His word, but I think the general trend was to be in control of peoples' beliefs. This doesn't only include the Catholic church keeping the Bible in Latin for centuries, but even the English bibles like the Bishops' and Geneva versions appear to be an attempt to popularize their views among the public. The Geneva and King James versions even became dividing factors between the Puritans and the Royalists in the English Civil War just because of who commissioned the translations, and the only reason the King James version ended up as the definitive translation was that the English monarchy declared the others to be heretical.
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| Gettysburg Address |
I also thought the other, non-religious implications of the King James version to be interesting. It taught generations of people how to read and greatly influenced writing styles of many modern authors and artists, as evidenced by the examples in the exhibit of the style of Lincoln's revered Gettysburg address or the works of Steinbeck.
All in all it was really interesting to see just how much printing changed how knowledge was viewed and passed on. It caused for so much more individual interpretation by making the process of book-making incredibly more efficient, which led to competing versions of texts and things like copyright laws that we couldn't imagine our world without today. Despite some of the damage and pain caused by the competition of opposing knowledge, especially with versions of the Bible, I think we are much better for it. Competition breeds progress as far as I can tell.
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| King James Bible |
I think it is really interesting how the original languages that the bible was written is were the most basic and common language of writing and later that language becomes looked at as exalted. I wonder why everyone looks at languages as though those who spoke it in the past were the best and most refined. Does anyone have a good answer for me?
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely an interesting point you brought up Montana. What was a common language during the time it was written, now that language is essentially the most holy. I would think it is because that language was used to write holy things and because of what it is written about, it causes the writing itself to be uplifted.
ReplyDeleteThat's my interpretation at least, any other opinions?
Thanks for your input guys! Those are both really good points that you brought up. I would say it has something to do with the sources we generally learn from. Throughout most of our learning in our life we learn from people of authority over us, and for the most part those people/sources are older and as a result have more experience in a given field. So I think the reason we look to older sources for "more correct" writing goes into that idea that in most cases older sources are more proven and qualified.
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