Happy Birthday KJV!

     As a youngster in a Southern Baptist Church, I attended Vacation Bible School.   We had memory cards and were required to memorize verses for each day.   I hated memorization!  All the verses that I memorized were from the King James Version of the Bible-- with all the "Thee's" and "Thou's."
     This year, the year of our Lord 2011, marks the 400th year since the publication of the King James Version.  We certainly are not required to use the KJV only.  (After all, the church made it approximately 1600 years without this version!)  However, the KJV does deserve respect for its impact on language, literature, and faith.  It has been said that without the prose of the King James Version there would be no PARADISE LOST by John Milton, no PILGRIM'S PROGRESS by John Bunyan, no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address.
     On this birthday year it is a good time for us to appreciate what a version of scripture means.  A "version" is essentially a group project in which several scholars get together and translate the Old Testament from Herbrew and the New Tesstament from Greek.   In 1611, 54 scholars were commmissioned for the project of translating the Bible into the English of that time.  "Versions" are usually regarded as more accurate and as better study Bibles because they are from a "group."  In other words, "many heads are better than one."  More contemporary versions are the New International Version (NIV), the American Standard Version (ASV), the New English Bible (NEB), and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
     The word "translation" is perhaps better applied to single person efforts to translate the scxriptures from Hebrew and Greek into Engllish.  Some of these include: the Beck translation, the J. B. Philips Translation, or the Williams Translation.  Efforts to put the scripture in easy to read, almost like newspaper language have been called "paraphrases" of the Bible.  They have the advantage of being very readable but are not considered the more accurate for study or proclamation.  Paraphrases have been the Today's English Version (TEV) and more recently The Message.
     On this birthday year it is also a time for us to understand the historical signficance of the KJV.  Unlike today when one can walk into a bookstore and find various versions, translations, and paraphrases of the Bible that was not true before 1611.  John Wycliff, who lived in the latter part of the 14th century, believed scripture should be translated into the vernacular of the common people.  Wycliffe died before completing a translation and after he died, he was deemed a heretic.  William Tyndale completed a translation of the scriptures into English and for doing that he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.  Tyndale's dying prayer was, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."  In 1611 his prayer was answered when King James commissioned 54 scholars to complete a translation.
     It is hard for us to understand how the Bible was quarantined from commoners!  We can now access the Bible by computer.  However on this 400th birthyear it gives us pause to appreciate the accessibility we have to Holy Scripture, for us to read and study the Bible and to reaffirm the Bible as our authority for both faith and practice.  Happy 400th Birthday, King James Version!