[The Book Of Common Prayer : With Marginal References To Texts In The Holy Scriptures

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Jun 13, 2024, 1:16:12 AM6/13/24

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The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is a landmark document of the Anglican tradition and the English language. Its unique rites, formulations, and collects are suffused with Biblical quotation and allusion.

The Book of Common Prayer : With Marginal References to Texts in the Holy Scriptures

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This resource is a port of The Book of Common Prayer: With marginal references to texts in the Holy Scriptures published by the Church of England in 1839 (archive.org link), which aims to catalogue each scriptural reference in the text of the 1662 BCP.

Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.[3][4] The King James Version remains the preferred translation of many Christian fundamentalists and religious movements[citation needed], and it is considered one of the important literary accomplishments of early modern England.

The KJV was the third translation into English approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible (1568).[5] In Switzerland the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible[6] which was published in 1560[7] having referred to the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.

James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans,[9] a faction of the Church of England.[10] James gave translators instructions intended to ensure the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.[11][12] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings, and as such was authorized by an Act of Parliament.[13]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the only English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.

The title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Cmandement". The title page carries the words "Appointed to be read in Churches",[14] and F. F. Bruce suggests it was "probably authorised by order in council", but no record of the authorisation survives "because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19".[15]

King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation (on a par with the Genevan Bible or the Rhemish Testament) in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae (first published 1797).[19] Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a "historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible" published in Massachusetts in 1815[20] and in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is "generally known by the name of King James's Bible".[21] This name was also found as King James' Bible (without the final "s"): for example in a book review from 1811.[22] The phrase "King James's Bible" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or merely a description.[23]

The use of Authorized Version, capitalized and used as a name, is found as early as 1814.[24] For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as "our present, and only publicly authorised version" (1783),[25] "our Authorized version" (1731,[26] 1792[27]) and "the authorized version" (1801, uncapitalized)[28] are found. A more common appellation in the 17th and 18th centuries was "our English translation" or "our English version", as can be seen by searching one or other of the major online archives of printed books. In Britain, the 1611 translation is generally known as the "Authorized Version" today. The term is somewhat of a misnomer because the text itself was never formally "authorized", nor were English parish churches ever ordered to procure copies of it.[29]

King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, is found being used as early as 1814.[30] "The King James Version" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855.[31] The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source.[32] In the United States, the "1611 translation" (actually editions following the standard text of 1769, see below) is generally known as the King James Version today.

The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century. These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards.[33] The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but it was circulated very widely in manuscript form, often inscribed with a date which was earlier than 1409 in order to avoid the legal ban. Because the text of the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and because it also contained no heterodox readings, the ecclesiastical authorities had no practical way to distinguish the banned version. Consequently, many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscripts of English Bibles and claimed that they represented an anonymous earlier orthodox translation.

In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament.[34] Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament.[35] Despite some controversial translation choices, and in spite of Tyndale's execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.[36]

With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorised version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII.[5] When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country,[37] some establishing an English-speaking community in the Protestant city of Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.[38]

These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible.[39] This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages.[40] Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, problems with both the Great and Geneva Bibles (namely, that the latter did not "conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy") became apparent to church authorities.[41] In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible, a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.[42]

In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at Saint Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English.[45] Two years later, he ascended to the throne of England as James I.[46]

The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles:

First, Galatians iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 (from the Great Bible), 'They were not obedient;' the original being, 'They were not disobedient.' Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), 'Then stood up Phinees and prayed,' the Hebrew hath, 'executed judgment.'[47]

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use Formal Equivalence and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible).[11] King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy:[48] Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous 'mother', Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa's grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots).[48]