Adam Clarke, 1810: “Those who have compared most of the ...



KJV ENGLISH

LECTURE 9

Literary Masterpiece

Adam Clarke, 1810 “The translators have seized the very spirit and soul of the original and expressed this almost everywhere with pathos and energy. Our translators have not only made a standard translation, but they have made their translation the standard of our language. ... This is an opinion in which my heart, my judgment, and my conscience coincide” (Adam Clarke, General Introduction to his Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1810-26).

Joseph Philpot, (was known as “The Seceder”. He resigned from the Church of England in 1835 and became a Strict & Particular Baptist), 1861: “They [the KJV translators] were deeply penetrated with a reverence for the word of God, and, therefore, they felt themselves bound by a holy constraint to discharge their trust in the most faithful way. Under this divine constraint they were led to give us a translation unequalled for faithfulness to the original, and yet at the same time clothed in the purest and simplest English. ... No one can read, with an enlightened eye, the discourses of our Lord without seeing what a divine simplicity ran through all His words; and our translators were favoured with heavenly wisdom to translate these words of the Lord into language as simple as that in which they first fell from His lips.

“It has the divine touch, even in its diction, which lifts it above the limitations of locality and time, and makes it valid and living for all the ages. Like a rare jewel fitly set, the sacred truths of Scripture have found such suitable expression in it, that we can hardly doubt that they filled those who made it with reverence and awe, so that they walked softly in the Holy Presence.”

Arthur Clutton-Brock, essayist, critic, and journalist, 1938, said: “The Authorized Version of the Bible is a piece of literature without any parallel in modern times. Other countries of course, have their translations of the Bible, but they are not great works of art” (Vernon Storr, editor, The English Bible: Essays by Various Writers,Clutton-Brock, “The English Bible,” 1938).

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, critic, scholar, and educational reformer, 1913

“Were this University to limit me to three texts on which to preach English Literature to you, I should choose the Bible in our Authorised Version, Shakespeare, and Homer.”

“That a committee of forty-seven should have captured (or even, let us say, should have retained and improved) a rhythm so personal, so constant, that our Bible has the voice of one author speaking through its many mouths: that, gentlemen, is a wonder before which I can only stand humble and aghast.”

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