Earliest Known Handwritten Draft Of King James Bible Discovers - It Was A Translator's Collaboration

[kpete]

Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found, Scholar Says

The earliest known version of The King James Bible, perhaps one of the most influential and widely read books in history, has been discovered mislabeled inside an archive at the University of Cambridge. The find is being called one of the most significant revelations in decades. It shows that writing is a process of revising, cutting, and then more rewriting. The Bible is no different in this regard, even though some conservative Christians claim it is the divine word of God himself. Perhaps God, then, is a revisionist. This find certainly seems to suggest that.

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“You can actually see the way Greek, Latin and Hebrew are all feeding into what will become the most widely read work of English literature of all time,” Professor Miller said. “It gets you so close to the thought process, it’s incredible.”

The draft, he argues, also complicates one long-cherished aspect of the “mythos,” as he put it, surrounding the King James: that it was a collaborative project through and through.

The companies were charged with doing their work as a group, rather than subdividing it by assigning individual books to individual translators, as was the case with the Bishops’ Bible. But the Ward notebook, Professor Miller said, suggests “beyond a reasonable doubt” that at least some of the companies ignored the instructions and divided up the work among individuals, at least initially.

Further, he said, the notebook contains a complete draft for the book of the Apocrypha known as 1 Esdras, but then, after a run of blank pages, only a partial manuscript for the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, suggesting that Ward picked up the slack for another translator.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/books/earliest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-is-found-scholar-says.html?_r=0
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/28/handwritten-draft-of-king-james-bible-discovered-reveals-no-divine-powers/

[1939]

1. There is a very good book on this

"God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible" by Adam Nicolson.

It is really a good read and he explains how various of the scholars had the lead in different books and how the phrasing changes depending on the lead scholar.

[Logical]

5. Thanks for this! Nt

[asjr]

2. I hope they had enough good proof-readers at the time.

[SoCalDem]

3. Drunk Monks

Lots of wine was consumed..and Monks were often tasked to write..'nuff said

[Retrograde]

4. I doubt many monks were involved in the KJB

as England was officially a Protestant country and the monasteries were dissolved a few reigns back.

[Igel]

6. First off,

it was mostly a revision. Keep it as much as the previous approved version, except when necessary.

That it was sent back to committee after initial revisions and drafts isn't a surprise.

The details are interesting, but all it bashes is the idea that it was always and entirely collaborative. I'm not sure anything I know, however literalist and fundamentalist, would have insisted on that detail as crucial to their exegesis.

(Most also know it's a translation and that the KJV is dated; whether it was a "guided" translation doesn't need to worry about where the guidance occurred. Except to out-splainers.)

[Electric Monk]

7. I cross posted this to the Religion Group and the Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity Group

Religion http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218216271
C&OC http://www.democraticunderground.com/12216431

(k&r)

[hunter]

8. King James' men were so gay...

... I'll say no more.