Job in the Modern World

The Image of the Biblical Job A History

Volume Three: Job in the Modern World

Stephen J. Vicchio

JOB IN THE MODERN WORLD

The Image of the Biblical Job: A History, Volume Three

Copyright © 2006 Stephen J. Vicchio. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

ISBN: 1-59752-534-0

EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7657-3

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Vicchio, Stephen J.

Job in the modern world / Stephen J. Vicchio.

Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006

x + 248 p.; 23 cm. — (The image of the biblical Job : a history ; v. 3)

ISBN 1-59752-534-0 (alk. paper)

1. Bible. O.T. Job—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Bible. O.T. Job— Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History. 3. Bible. O.T. Job—Theology. I. Title. II. Series.

BS1415.2 V53 2006

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter 21: Job in the King James Version

Introduction

Early English Translations of the Book of Job: Sources for the KJV’s Job

The KJV’s Rules of Interpretation

The Origins of the King James Bible

The Language of the King James Version

The King James Rendering of the Book of Job

Conclusions

Chapter 22: Job in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy

Introduction

Robert Burton’s View of Job

Francis Quarles’ View of Job

Thomas Hobbes’ View of Job

Baruch Spinoza’s View of Job

Conclusions

Chapter 23: John Milton’s View of Job

Introduction

Precursors to Milton: Job as Hexametric Poetry and Short Heroic Epic

The Life of John Milton

Milton’s Uses of the Book of Job

Milton and Job 29:18

Conclusions

Chapter 24: Job in the Enlightenment

Introduction

Kant’s View of Job

Voltaire’s View of Job

Thomas Paine’s View of Job

Job and the Epitaph in the Enlightenment

Conclusions

Chapter 25: Job in Romanticism

Introduction

Job in Herder’s The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry

Goethe’s View of Job

Job and the French Romantics

Alphonse de Lamartine on Job

Job and the English Romantics

Job in Romantic Art

Conclusions

Chapter 26: Job in William Blake

Introduction

The Life of William Blake

Blake’s Treatment of Suffering

Blake’s Early Uses of Job

Blake’s Vision of Job in the Illustrations

Blake’s Influence

Conclusions

Chapter 27: Job in Nineteenth-Century Dialectical Philosophy

Introduction

The Nature of Dialectical Philosophy

Hegel’s View of Job

Kierkegaard’s Exegesis

Kierkegaard’s Uses of Job

Ernest Bloch’s View of Job

Dialectical Philosophy and Job in the Twentieth Century

Conclusions

Chapter 28: Melville, Dostoyevsky, and the Book of Job

Introduction

Melville’s Early Uses of Job

The Acceptance of Moby Dick

Melville and Suffering

Melville’s Uses of Job in Moby Dick

Dostoyevsky’s Early Interest in Job

Dostoyevsky and the Problem of Innocent Suffering

Dostoyevsky’s Uses of Job in The Brothers Karamazov

Conclusions

Chapter 29: Job in Nineteenth-Century Biblical Hermeneutics

Introduction

Job in Early German Scholarship

Job in Nineteenth-Century German Scholarship

Job in Nineteenth-Century French Scholarship

Job among Nineteenth-Century English-Speaking Scholars

Job among Nineteenth-Century Jewish Scholars

Conclusions

Chapter 30: Job in Late Nineteenth-Century Popular Philosophy

Introduction

John Henry Newman on the Book of Job

William James on Job

James Anthony Froude’s View of Job

Josiah Royce’s View of Job

Other Philosophical Essays on Job

Other Nineteenth-Century English Essays on the Book of Job

Nineteenth-Century German and French Essays on the Book of Job

Conclusions

Appendix E: Job in Geography The Search for the Land of Uz

Introduction

The Land of Uz Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible

The Land of Uz: The Contradictory Evidence

Islamic Contradictory Evidence and the Location of Uz

Attempts at Resolving the Contradictory Evidence

An Alternative Theory on the Geography of Job

Appendix F: Job and Zoology The Identities of Behemoth and Leviathan

Introduction

The Uses of Natural Beasts in Job 38–39

History of Interpreting Rahab, Resheph, Behemoth, and Leviathan

Modern Views of Behemoth and Leviathan

Behemoth and Leviathan as Cosmic Beasts

The Bird of Job 29:18-20

Conclusions

Appendix G: The Biblical Book of Job in Film

Introduction

Job in Early Film (1919–1950s)

Old Testament and American Film

Job in Film in the 60s, 70s, and 80s

Job in Film of the 90s and Twenty-First Century

Suffering in Contemporary Film

Conclusions

For John R. Vicchio and G. B. Hall, two of my finest teachers, and two of the greatest

men I have known.

Introduction

Despair over the earthly or over something earthly is really a despair about the Eternal.

—Søren Kierkegaard

This project of interpreting the book of Job in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was begun more than thirty years ago, after enrolling in a course on the problem of evil at Yale Divinity School, taught by Dr. Dean McBride. With this reading of Job with Professor McBride I had my first real exposure to the book of Job and the problem of theodicy. Indeed, with that reading of the book of Job with Dr. McBride, I began collecting notes and materials on the various ways people have interpreted the biblical book in the three religions of the book (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

Volume One began with the Septuagint’s version of the book of Job. This translation, completed in Greek in the fourth or third century BCE, was to have a great impact, particularly in the Christian tradition, for early Church understandings of the biblical book. Volume Two begins with Saint Jerome’s Latin translation of the book from the Hebrew, completed in the fifth century. The principal thinkers in subsequent chapters in Volume Two use the Vulgate’s version of Job as the primary text.

Like Volumes One and Two of this project, Volume Three also begins with the King James Version translation of the book of Job. And like the other volumes, this vernacular translation was to have a profound set of effects on subsequent interpretations of the book of Job. After looking at the KJV’s treatment of Job, we explore the image of Job in seventeenth-century philosophy. More specifically, we look at the uses and understandings of the biblical figure in the writings of Robert Burton, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Blaise Pascal, and other thinkers in the seventeenth century.

The chapter on seventeenth-century philosophy is followed by an analysis of John Milton’s treatment and understandings of the book of Job. Milton continually refers to the Job image in many of his principal works, particularly Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The Milton analysis is followed by a chapter on the Job figure in the Enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Paine, and Voltaire, among others, also have had a great deal to say about the biblical Job.

The next chapter, chapter 24, explores Romanticism’s treatment of the figure of Job, one of the most important biblical figures for Romantic thinkers in France, Germany, and Britain. This chapter is followed by the work of William Blake and the English Romantic’s view of the book of Job. In addition to Blake’s illustrations of the book, he also appears to have had a life-long fascination with the man from Uz and his book.

Blake’s perspectives on the book of Job are followed by an analysis of certain nineteenth-century dialectical philosophers on the book. Both Hegel and Kierkegaard wrote a great deal on the book of Job, as did subsequent early twentieth-century dialectical philosophers. In the following chapter, chapter 28, we explore the points of view on the book of Job by Herman Melville and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Both of these great nineteenth-century writers of fiction use the figure of Job as a central part of their respective novels, Moby Dick and The Brothers Karamazov.

Chapter 29 explores how modern biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century took shape in regard to the book of Job. This chapter examines the new criticism (form-critical, text-critical, and history of religions approaches) brought to bear on the book of Job in German, French, and English scholarship at the end of the nineteenth century.

In the final chapter of this third volume, we examine the role the Job figure has played in various philosophical essays written at the close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth century. John Henry Newman, William James, Josiah Royce, G. K. Chesterton, and others made substantial comments on the biblical book of Job. Most of these essays are from a particular philosophical or theological point of view, depending, of course, on the particular writer.

Above all, what we find in this chapter, as well as the rest of the chapters in this volume, and those of Volumes One and Two as well, is a tendency to see in the man from Uz and his book a kind of mirror. It produces a reflection that tends to look like whoever it is that is looking at the time. Blake, Dostoyevsky, Melville, and many of the other thinkers in this history have tended to find their own attitudes toward suffering when examining the book of Job.

Like the other two volumes, Volume Three contains some appendices to the text. In the first two volumes there were two appendices apiece. In Volume Three, there are three: Job in Geography; Job and Zoology; and Job and Film. The first of these appendices is a history of where Job’s hand of Uz is to be found. The second appendix is principally about the nature and identifications of the beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan, in the book of Job. In the final appendix, we explore the many uses the Job figure has held for many historical and modern filmmakers.

In the course of completing this project, I have incurred many blessings, gratitudes, and debts. Some of these are to biblical scholars, including Dean McBride, Marvin Pope,Robert Gordis, Edvard Dhorme, Lawrence Besserman, Bruce Zuckerman, Harry Orlinski, Len Goodman, Edwin Good, Judith Baskin, Martin Yaffe, Carol Newsom, Leo Perdue, C. S. Rodd, and David J. A. Clines.

I am indebted to various friends who have supported this project over the years, including John Titchener, Tom Benson, Marvin Pope, Dean McBride, Jim Nissen Randy Miller, Bill Shaw, Susan Millar, Peter Coxon, George Hall, Sister Virgina Geiger, Catriona MacLeod, Margaret Steinhagen, Jo Trueschler. Dorothy Brown, Ernie Ragogini, Sister Sharon Kanis, Lucinda Edinberg, Joe DiRienzi, Sister Bridget Marie Englemeyer, Sister Eileen O’Dea, Chris Dreisbach, John Lipsey, Paul McHugh, Leon Gordis, Steve Parker, Terry Waldman, Paul and Nancy Feldman, Gabriel Roth, Bob Leavitt, Mike Gorman, Zenaida Bench, Marc Steiner, Bruce Birch, Tom Dunkel, and Maria Wang, Andy Graham, Adam Gross, Gerald Gross, Mark Neustadt, Richard Macksey, Tom Katana, Tom and Mary Lee Parsons.

Many of my students over the course of this project have aided me greatly. Among these are Milda Devoe, Elizabeth Gardner, Francesca Coviello, Teresa Saunders, Rebecca Shaeffer, Stina Fangmark, Roxanne Smith, Celina Maykrantz, Kristin Luitz, Jennifer Shea, Mary Catherine Sacco, Ashley Simmons, Maureen Robinson, Sister Robin Stratton, Becky Potter, Jennie Boyd, Timothy Craig, Terme Nobary, and Martin Shuster. Some of these students have contributed research to this project, many engaged in conversation with me about the many questions that have arisen in this project, and some aided me in the preparation of the manuscripts. To all of them I am eternally grateful.

I would also like to thank K. C. Hanson, James Stock, Heather Carraher, Jim Tedrick, and the staff at Wipf and Stock for the tenderness and care they have afforded this project. It is not easy these days to find a publisher for an academic book; but from day one, K. C. Hanson and I have been on the same page.

I have also benefited greatly from the care and kindness of the staffs of various libraries throughout the world. These include: The Walters, Baltimore, Maryland; The Vatican Library; the Bodleian Library; Oxford University; the British Library; Cambridge University Library; Musee de Vienne; St. John Patmos Library; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; New York Public Library; Baltimore Museum of Art Library; the St. Catherine’s Monastery Library in Sinai, Egypt; the United States National Gallery of Art; the Jewish Museum in New York City; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Amon Carter Museum; Princeton University Library; Yale University Library; Yale Divinity School Library; Harvard University Library; Harvard Divinity School Library; St. Andrews University Divinity School Library in Scotland; the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin; and Saint Mary’s Seminary and University Library in Baltimore, Maryland. At St. Mary’s, I am particularly indebted to Fr. Robert Leavitt, Sister Ian Stewart, Katie McGowan, Soraya Magalhaes-Wilson, Theresa Federowicz, and Patricia Brown.

Finally, to my family I owe some great debts. For many years my wife Sandra and my two sons, Reed and Jack, have put up with me while Daddy was working on his Job book. Those days are now gone. It is unlikely I will ever write another word on the book of Job.

SJV, Baltimore

Valentine’s Day, 2006

21

Job in the King James Version

Each reading discloses new beauties in Job, even if the book is read in a language other than Hebrew. The wonder is that so much has been captured in the translation, particularly in the magnificent King James Version. The translators of 1611 possessed native literary gifts of the highest order, and an ear for the cadence and sound of the words second to none. Moreover, it was their good fortune to live at the flood tide of the Elizabethan era, when English possessed a richness and plasticity never attained before or since. Finally, translators made themselves captives of the Hebrew original, even when it meant creating new English idioms out of the Semitic turn of phrase. These ultimately became integral to the English language because of the sway held by the Authorized Version over the English speaking peoples.

—Robert Gordis

The Book of God and Man

This picturesque poem composed mostly from the text of the Geneva Bible . . . is one of the telling touches contributed by the King James translators, though nearly the same rendering was to be found in Hugh Broughton’s Iob.

—C. G. Butterworth

The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible

Introduction

The Authorized Version of 1611, often called the King James Version of the Bible, is one of the great literary monuments of modern Western history. C. S. Lewis has pointed out that the KJV bears the same relationship to modern English that Luther’s translation of the Bible has had for modern German. ¹ Many of the standard rules for English grammar, syntax, and spelling were first instituted by the editors of the Authorized Version.

The influence of the King James Version on the modern English language can be seen in the works of John Bunyan, Milton, Byron, Keats, Longfellow, Wordsworth, John Dryden, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Flannery O’Conner.² More specifically, Herman Melville uses the KJV rendering of Job when discussing the Leviathan in various passages of Moby Dick. More is said about the book of Job and Melville in chapter 28 below.

In this chapter, we briefly discuss the major English precursors to the KJV’s rendering of the book of Job. In a second section of this chapter, we discuss the origins of the King James translation of the Bible. In a third section, we discuss the peculiar language of the KJV Bible. In a fourth section, we compare the KJV’s version of the book of Job with the Masoretic text. And at the conclusion of the chapter, we make some very general observations about the theological, historical, and artistic significance of the Authorized Version of the book of Job.

Early English Translations of the Book of Job: Sources for the KJV’s Job

It is a curious fact that although Christianity was established among the Anglo-Saxons in the middle sixth century, the first extant mention of the Bible being translated into English comes in Bede’s History of the Church in the eighth century. Bede was born in the 670s and spent most of his life at the monastery at Jarrow in Northumbria. In his History of the Church he tells us:

All my life I spent in the same monastery, giving my whole attention to the study of scripture.³

None of Bede’s exegetical works are extant, thus we have no idea if he worked on the book of Job. Similarly, Alfred, a West Saxon king in the late ninth century, was the impetus for translating the Bible into English. Alfred assembled a group of scholars to help with the biblical project, but there is no surviving evidence that his group of scholars worked on a translation of the book of Job.

We do have evidence that a few centuries later, Aelfric of Eynsham, in Oxfordshire, produced a long homily and paraphrase of Job briefly after my manner.⁴ Richard Rolle, sometime in the late thirteenth century, produced an English translation of the book of Job in verse, though it is no longer extant.⁵

The first modern English translation of the Old Testament appears to have been John Wycliffe’s Bible in the fourteenth century. Although it was well received by the people, for over one hundred fifty years, Wycliffe’s translation was attacked by clergy and nobility alike. Even after the discovery of printing in the fifteenth century, the Wycliffe Bible remained unpublished. Indeed, the first printed edition of Wycliffe’s Bible was not made until 1731.

A second modern English translation of the Old Testament was the Great Bible, a translation of the entire Bible under the auspices of Henry VIII. It was called the Great Bible because of its great size, a large pulpit folio of the text was fourteen inches tall. Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, hired Miles Coverdale at the behest of Henry VIII. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church in England. Seven editions of the Great Bible were issued between 1539 and the end of 1541.

Prior to the Great Bible, Miles Coverdale completed another English Bible in Antwerp in 1535. His translation was based on the Douche and Latyn,⁶ a reference to the Vulgate and to Luther’s translation of 1529. Coverdale worked with John Rogers, also known as Thomas Matthew. Together they completed the translation of the Old Testament that was published on October 4, 1535.

John Rogers went on to finish another complete English Bible in 1537. He completed it under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew, an assumed name that earlier had been used by John Tyndale. After some emendations, Roger’s translation appeared in a second printing in 1549. This text is known as the Matthew Bible.

The Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims version appeared in English in 1609. It professed to be faithfully translated out of the authentic Latin, diligently conferred with the Hebrew and Greek, and other editions in divers languages.⁷

The sixteenth century, then, saw the production of a number of English translations of the Bible. Among these are the Great Bible, printed in 1539; Geneva Bible, published in 1560; the translation by William Tyndale (1490–1536), completed in 1535; the Matthew Bible, published in 1537; the Bishops’ Bible, completed in 1568; and Hugh Broughton’s production of both the Old and New Testaments into English late in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century.⁸

The Geneva Bible was completed by a group of Puritan exiles who had moved to Geneva, during the reign of Bloody Mary. The making of the Geneva Bible was a substantial undertaking. The translators spent two years, around the clock, to produce their work. Marginal notes were added to the 1599 edition of the Geneva Bible, the most comprehensive study guide of the biblical text in the sixteenth century. The notes for the Geneva Bible were completed by prominent Reformation thinkers of the day, including Miles Coverdale, John Knox, John Calvin, and Theodore Beza.

William Tyndale, who was educated at Oxford, was a proponent of the new humanism. He desired to make an English translation of both the Old and New Testaments, though authorities in England suppressed the attempt. Tyndale moved to Germany in 1524, where he completed his New Testament in 1526. He was hard at work on his translation of the Old Testament when authorities caught up with him at Antwerp. He was executed at Vilvarde a short time later. Thus, he never completed a translation of the book of Job. It is clear that the source for the portions of the Old Testament that Tyndale completed was John Wycliffe’s translation. Indeed, it is clear that Wycliffe’s Bible is a source for most modern English translations. Wycliffe’s Bible is now sometimes referred to as the Wycliffe-Tyndale Bible because Tyndale completed Wycliffe’s translation.

Early in Queen Elizabeth the First’s reign, William Cecil, then Secretary of State, Richard Cox, bishop of Canterbury, and Matthew Parker, bishop of Ely, lobbied the Queen for a new revision of the Bible. She consented to their working on it. Since many of the revisers were later to become bishops in the Anglican Church, this 1568 edition of the English Bible was known as the Bishops’ Bible.⁹

The archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, was himself a scholar, and took the task to organize the translation of the Bishops’ Bible. Portions of the text were assigned to various scholars, most of whom were Anglican bishops.

Roman Catholic English exiles were the source for the Douay-Rheims Bible. The center of these Catholic exiles was the English College at Douay. William Allen, formerly of Queens College, Oxford, and subsequently a Catholic cardinal, organized the Douay-Rheims version. The first installment of the Douay-Rheims appeared in 1582, during a temporary migration of the college to Rheims. Eventually, the translators returned to Douay, where the Old Testament version was completed in 1609, just in time for it to be of some use to the translators of the King James Version.

Hugh Broughton, in his Iob, A Colon-Agrippina of One Moneth For The King Metricall Translation: But of Many Yeres For Ebrew Difficulties, began his translation of the book of Job in 1608.¹⁰ The title suggests Broughton made his translation of Job in Cologne, for Colonia Agrippina was the Roman name for the city. Broughton’s translation of Job was completed in 1609, and published in 1610. A folio from 1662 survives. It is owned by the British Museum.

Hugh Broughton was a Church of England Hebrew scholar and a fellow of St. John’s Cambridge. In 1588, he published Consent of Scripture, in which he set out a controversial theory of biblical chronology. Although he was anxious to assist in the KJV translation, Broughton was not invited to participate in the project. Although a number of contemporary books from the early seventeenth century identify Broughton as one of the KJV’s translators, this view is clearly mistaken.¹¹

The KJV’s Rules of Interpretation

Also among these guidelines were provisions that ecclesiastical language had to be kept. More specifically, the word church should not be translated as congregation (Rule 3.) When a word has diverse meanings, they were to follow the Ancient Fathers, being agreeable to the Propriety of the Place, and the Analogy of the Faith (Rule 4); and, no marginal notes were to be affixed, except for Hebrew or Greek words should have been expressed in the text (Rule 6).

Fifteen rules were advanced to the six committees working on the KJV. The most important of these is that the translators were to work from the ordinary Bible read in the Church,¹² which would have been the Bishops’ Bible of 1568. The Guidelines also suggest at Rule 14 that the translators may also consult the Tyndale’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitechurch’s, and Geneva Bibles.¹³

The Great Bible was a revision of Matthew’s Bible prepared by Miles Coverdale. Thomas Cromwell financed the first edition of the Great Bible. The second edition was issued in 1540, and includes a prologue by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556.) Before the second edition was issued, in 1539, R. Grafton and Edward Whitechurch produced a version of the Great Bible, which was called the Whitechurch Bible. Thus, the Great Bible at various times was called the Cranmer Bible, the Chained Bible, because it was chained to the wall of all English churches, and the Whitechurch Bible.

The KJV’s translators of Job clearly drew from these earlier English Bibles. We can understand the KJV’s debt to them by looking carefully at Job 39:19-25, which the KJV renders this way:

19 Hast Thou given the horse strength? Hast Thou clothed his neck with thunder?

20 Canst Thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? The glory of his nostrils is terrible.

21 He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men.

22 He mocketh at fear, and is not afrightened, neither turned he back from the sword.

23 The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield.

24 He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.

25 He saith among the trumpets, Ha Ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the Captains, and the shouting.¹⁴

Verse 19a and b are a direct use of Hugh Broughton’s translation of Job, though the KJV changes thundering to thunder. The Geneva Bible is probably the source for afraid as a grasshopper. The Masoretic Text uses the verb to jump, which is probably the original reason for the use of grasshopper. The Hebrew noun used in verse 20 is arbeh, which is translated as both grasshopper and locust. Tyndale uses grasshopper, the Douay-Rheims and Bishops Bible use locust. Wycliffe and Tyndale clearly were the source for glory of his nostrils. None of the other early English translations use this term, except the Douay-Rheims.

The use of the word paweth in verse 21 is original in the KJV, though the Hebrew uses ground rather than valley that is being pawed. The translators followed the Coverdale, Hugh Broughton, and the Douay Rheims for the remainder of the verse. The King James rendering of verse 22 is nearly identical to the translation of Hugh Broughton, and verse 23 is a direct borrowing from the Coverdale Bible and the Douay-Rheims. The Hebrew implies the shield is glittering, and not both the sword and the shield, as the KJV has it.¹⁵

Verse 24 is a combination of the translations of Coverdale and Broughton. The KJV’s translators borrowed the Geneva Bible’s and Douay-Rheims’ Ha Ha in verse 25, rather than Wycliffe’s Fye or the Bishops’ Bible’s Tushe, though the Bishops’ Bible is the source for Captaines and the Shouting. The Douay-Rheims has it as captains, and the shouting of the army.¹⁶

It is clear that the KJV’s translators of the book of Job were familiar with all of the earlier modern English translations, and they appear to have used them judiciously and selectively in making their translation.

The Origins of the King James Bible

The King James Version of the Bible, more properly called the Authorized Version, was published in 1611 by King James’ printer, Robert Barker, and under the auspices of the King. There is some disagreement about the impetus for the KJV. One theory suggests that John Reynolds, the Head of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and other scholars, became dissatisfied with available English translations because they followed the Vulgate too closely.

Another theory points to a meeting called by the King at Hampton Court near London in January of 1604. The Puritans had set certain religious demands before King James and the bishops of the Church of England. Among the reforms suggested were a revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and a new vernacular translation of the Bible.¹⁷

At the meeting at Hampton Court, John Reynolds offered three examples with existing translations. "First, Galatians 4:25 the Greek word, susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostles sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, Psalm 105:28, ‘they were obedient,’ the original being ‘They were not obedient.’ Thirdly, Psalm 106:30, Then stood up Phinees and prayed, the Hebrew has ‘executed judgment.’"¹⁸

These Puritans of the day were using the 1560 translation of the Geneva Bible, completed by Reformation thinkers. These translators were English refugees in Geneva who had escaped persecution and death at the hands of Queen Bloody Mary. King James hated the Geneva Bible for its Reformation commentary, and for its popularity among the people. Thus, James was intent on ridding England of the Geneva Bible, which was the last printed in England in 1644. Although James dismissed many of the Puritan demands out of hand, he found much merit in the idea of a new translation of the Bible in English.¹⁹

A few months later, James had assembled the scholars for the task, and in 1611 the translation appeared in two folio editions. Eventually, six other editions of the KJV appeared in 1629, 1632, 1762, 1769, and 1884.

The editions of 1629 and 1638 were the first and second to be printed at Cambridge. The latter was completed by John Bois and Samuel Ward, two of the original translators of the KV. In 1657, Parliament considered another revision, but it came to naught. The two most important revisions were those of 1762 and 1769. The former was completed in Cambridge by Thomas Paris, and the latter at Oxford by Benjamin Blayney. Both contain the first biblical chronologies in English. The source of the chronologies was Bishop James Usher, who in 1611 suggested that the universe was created on October 23, 4004 BC. This date had been carefully calculated by adding the ages of the patriarchs and years of reign for the Jewish monarchs recorded in the Bible. John Lightfoot refined the chronology by suggesting the day was a Monday, and creation began at 9:00 a.m.²⁰

The first English concordance of the Old Testament, composed by John Downham, was affixed to the revision of 1632. In the revision of 1638, thirty thousand marginal references were added to the KJV, including over five hundred on the book of Job.²¹ Of these fifty-four scholars, fifty-two are known by name, and a total of forty-seven took part in the translation.

In July of 1604, James wrote to Bishop Bancroft to inform him that he had invited certain learned men, to the number of four and fifty,²² to take part in the translation. These forty-seven of fifty-four men worked on the translation on six different committees, two each based at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster. Each of the committees was assigned a range of biblical books to translate. At each of the three locations, one group worked on the Old Testament, and the other on the New Testament.