Why would we, 400 years on and light years ahead, celebrate the creation of the King James Bible? Isn’t it just the Grandpa of the younger, hipper versions we enjoy today? The answer is a resounding no. To understand why the King James Bible is worth celebrating, it is worth knowing just what a miracle it is. Today, I want to tell you the story of a show trial, a man who died with courage on his lips and two Kings.
400 years ago, if you were found with even a scrap of the Bible translated into English, you would likely be destined to spend the rest of your short life in a prison cell facing torture, a spiteful show trial and execution. No easy death, burning at the stake was popular, the thinking being that you would taste the fires of hell and repent.
Let’s be clear about this – in the same Europe that gave us the elegant, compelling English of the King James Bible a few years later – there was no Bible in English. By law and on pain of a lingering death.
Today, you can read your Bible in English when and where you like. You can lie in the park with the sun on your back and read. You can order your favourite coffee, settle into an old leather sofa and read. You can walk around with a Bible verse printed on your T Shirt. No one is going to bat an eyelid.
So how did we get from the threat of a prison cell 400 years ago to the peaceful park of today? To answer that question, I have to take you back, right back to 1535 to a cold, dark prison cell in the castle of Vilvoorde near Brussels. If we peer through the bars into the filthy cell, we may just make out the shadowy form of William Tyndale.
Tyndale is no ordinary criminal and his will be no ordinary trial. Tyndale is accused of heresy and rebellion against the English Crown. A crown that at the time is worn by the famously vengeful Henry VIII. Henry VIII is the type of king who thinks nothing of putting his closest friends and even his wives to death when it suits him. Henry does not tolerate argument, let alone rebellion.
So what is Tyndale’s crime? Is he plotting to assassinate the King or overthrow the rule of law? No, Tyndale is a writer and translator whose one deeply held desire is this – to translate the Bible into English. To translate the Bible so that the stories that hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven can be told – The Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Red Sea, David and Goliath. Tyndale’s quill pen is already scratching out the treasury of all the Kings, the Psalms and the Prophets.
And then there’s Jesus. Tyndale wants us ordinary people to be able to know Jesus. The same Jesus who told everyday stories about fishermen, farmers and women looking for pearls so that people like us could understand the Kingdom of Heaven in our everyday language.
As Tyndale scratches out his words, he is challenged again and again by powerful and proud men –lawmakers and religious rulers who have a vested interest in keeping the Bible in a language only they understand. Tyndale has no time for powerful men who use the Bible for their own ends, he goes so far as to declare;
“They have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture, until he be duped in heathen learning eight or nine years and armed with false principles, with which he is an clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.”
Tyndale continues to write despite the threats to his life, telling those who plot against him;
“If God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”
Eventually, Tyndale is betrayed and handed over to his opponents, and they will not rest until both he and his ideals are dead. In 1536, Tyndale is tried on a charge of heresy and condemned to death. He is strangled to death at the stake while his body is burned.
Tyndale’s final words, spoken “at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice”, were reported as “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes.”
So there we have it, a show trial and a man who died with courage on his lips. So what of the two Kings and the miracle?
We visit our first King, Henry VIII, four short years after Tyndale’s execution. The same King who allowed his ministers to harangue Tyndale, dismiss his work and plot his brutal downfall. Yet within four years this King has decreed the publishing of four English translations of the Bible, including Henry’s official Great Bible. All are based on Tyndale’s work.
That this King goes from persecuting to producing an English Bible in this brief time is miracle enough. But many are of the opinion that this King’s translation fails to do justice to either to the original language or to the people it is supposed to serve. It is overbearing and underwhelming.
It is a victory of sorts, but an empty victory. Or should we say emptiness waiting to be filled? Fast forward 50 years to the court of our second King, James I. This King is desperate to unite the warring political, territorial and religious forces that had torn so many lives apart for so long. Forces that have extracted the personal cost of the life of his mother Mary, beheaded by his predecessor Queen Elizabeth I.
King James knows that the Bible still holds the key to the heart of England, it is preached in every village, every town and city. Under James, a talented writer, literature and drama are flourishing, with William Shakespeare amongst others at the peak of their inspirational powers. James wants a Bible written in this kind of language, language that soars rather than creeps.
The result is a Bible that enraptures people all over the world. 400 years on, the famously unbelieving Chistopher Hitchens will write in Vanity Fair, ‘our language and culture are incomplete’ without it. So dear are the words of this Bible to Hitchens that he will read from the King James Bible at his father’s funereal;
‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.’ Philippians 4 v8, KJV
Why would we, 400 years on and light years ahead, celebrate the creation of the King James Bible? Because the language of the King James vindicates the death of William Tyndale and every other man or woman who has died so that ;
‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’ John 8 v32, KJV.
The King James Bible was the first to throw open the doors to our understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven. Without it we would have no ‘broken heart’, no ‘labour of love’, no ‘faith that moves mountains’, no ‘let there be light’.
Because of the King James Bible there is light. And it is good.
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