King James Bible: revelation or doorstop?

[Cartoonist]

Here's a story I missed because I don't live in the UK. It's about a religious nut who led a campaign to put a copy of the KJ Bible in every primary school.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/31/king-james-bible-revelation-doorstop

To me this underlines how ignorant the education secretary is about the reality of life in contemporary primary schools. I would urge him to spend some time personally in one of today's primary schools so that he has a better informed perspective as to what resources would prove useful. I do not mean a 15-minute meet and greet, I mean sustained and regular attendance at a school. As a student teacher, I am required to spend 18 weeks in schools as part of my training. How many weeks should the secretary of state for education be required to spend in school, given that the future of the country's education policy rests in his hands?

Enter, Richard Dawkins

Why I want all our children to read the King James Bible

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/may/19/richard-dawkins-king-james-bible

In the week after the 2011 census, my UK Foundation commissioned Ipsos MORI to poll those who had ticked the Christian box. Among other things, we asked them to identify the first book of the New Testament from a choice of Matthew, Genesis, Acts of the Apostles, Psalms, "Don't know" and "Prefer not to say". Only 35% chose Matthew and 39% chose "Don't know" (and 1%, mysteriously, chose "Prefer not to say&quot .
---

Ah, yes. There is nothing like ignorance among the faithful who claim to know "The Answer"

[peacebird]

1. Option 3: the place I store the little cards given out at funerals.....

[Mariana]

9. My aunt gave me my grandmother's bible when my grandmother died.

Inside I found this:

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That's my grandmother, taken about 1910. The bible isn't that old, but my grandmother, or possibly her father, who gave her the bible in 1937, had put that photo in it.

[DetlefK]

2. How many translations and editors is this version removed from the original version?

From aramaic to greek to latin to french to english. And who knows how many editors and translators doctored and tweaked the text.

[edhopper]

3. Your point is valid

but the OT was written in Hebrew and the NT written in common Greek I believe.

Still the English Bible, especially the KJV is heavily edited.

The strange part of all this is 80 years before this official translation, people were put to death for the Tyndale Bible, the first English translation.

[struggle4progress]

6. KJV New Testament is very often almost purely Tyndale's translation

[edhopper]

7. True

from 75% to 90% depending on who's analysis you look at.

Yet Tyndale was killed because of it.

Funny how God wants you to kill someone for something and then changes his mind a few decades later.

Very capricious, this God.

[struggle4progress]

8. It might be more accurate to say that Henry VIII was capricious:

Tyndale incurred his wrath, by opposing his divorce from Catherine of Arago, whereupon Henry Phillips set forth forth to track him down, being in need of any associated patronage and reward. Having made sure Tyndale burned, the King promptly appropriated the translation, making it the basis of various translations he himself authorized as King and as the head of the new Church of England

[edhopper]

11. Except

it was also a capitol crime to possess the Tyndale Bible, even after Tyndale's death. And it was the Church that demanded this.
Unless you don't think any of the clergy cared about what God wanted and just did the politically expedient thing.
I don't disavow the political components to the English Bible. But to dismiss the theological ones is just more apologetics.

[Act_of_Reparation]

12. Never mind that the Wycliffe Bibles had already been banned for more than a century.

The Catholic Church and the political authorities in England had a demonstrated interest in controlling peasants' ability to access scripture. The notion this was something Henry VIII decided on a vindictive whim is patently absurd.

[struggle4progress]

15. The official condemnation of the Wycliffe bible occurred at the Council of Constance

in the early 1400s: this Council resolved the Western schism, dating from the 1370s, which had produced multiple claimants to papal office. And Tyndale's first publications occur in the first decade of the Protestant Reformation, which was followed within twenty years by Henry VIII's split from Rome. So the matter seems to me inseparable from the international politics of the time

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. I agree the matter is political.

I just do not agree that it is entirely related to Henry VIII. By the time he had Tyndale killed and his work appropriated, there had already been longstanding religious and political opposition to English translations of the Bible.

The Council of Constance might have officially listed Wycliffe's translation heretical, but the assault on the man and this reputation began 35 years earlier, when the Archbishop of Canterbury accused Wycliffe of encouraging the Peasant's Revolt. True or not, the accusation stuck, and from that point forward, the English Crown and their allies in the Church came to see unregulated access to scripture as a threat to national security. With all that stuff Jesus said about the wealthy and helping the poor, the peasants simply couldn't be trusted to read the Bible without supervision, or so the thinking went.

[struggle4progress]

14. Tyndale worked from Greek texts discovered in Constantinople

[Lordquinton]

19. So, was Tyndale working under the inspiration of God

Of was the church enforcing God's will? Or both? more mysterious ways?

[trotsky]

4. I doubt there is a better version of the bible for creating FORMER Christians.

Even though the NIV did fine for me.

[Yorktown]

5. Doorstop; but not a very good one.

Besides: the Bible? In Primary Schools?

Wow, that should provide for interesting questions from kids to parents about scripture:

And in case men struggle together (in a fight) with one another, and the wife of the one has come near to deliver her husband out of the striking one (to save her husband), and she has thrust out her hand and grabbed hold of his private (the other man's groin), she must then get both her hands cut off, and the eyes of the men must feel no sorrow."

Or about morality among Biblical families:

Genesis 38:12-30New International Version (NIV)

12 After a long time Judah’s wife, the daughter of Shua, died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went up to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep, and his friend Hirah the Adullamite went with him.

13 When Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep,” 14 she took off her widow’s clothes, covered herself with a veil to disguise herself, and then sat down at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that, though Shelah had now grown up, she had not been given to him as his wife.

15 When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. 16 Not realizing that she was his daughter-in-law, he went over to her by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.”

“And what will you give me to sleep with you?” she asked.

17 “I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said.

“Will you give me something as a pledge until you send it?” she asked.

18 He said, “What pledge should I give you?”

“Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand,” she answered. So he gave them to her and slept with her, and she became pregnant by him. 19 After she left, she took off her veil and put on her widow’s clothes again.

[Iggo]

10. Porn.

And not the good kind.

[mr blur]

13. King James Bible? Easy -

[edhopper]

16. Well

When you put it that way....

[cleanhippie]

17. "That's not faith, that's insanity"