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Yes, indeed. For a popular but scholary grounded take on the text, Bart Ehrman's books are excellent. More sophisticated is Robin Lane Fox's Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible.
 
 
 
 
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:27 PM, JD Fleming <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

A hermeneutic perspective: let's note that the concept of the original text, expressing terminal intensions, is much more mercurial than it at first appears. In the last analysis, it is a transcendent (or metaphysical) concept -- which is precisely why it was so hermeneutically and culturally powerful when it began systematically to be deployed in Reformation biblical exegesis and philology. Against the idea of the Word as the Church understood it, the Reformers brought the idea of _the Word as it was first spoken_. An intoxicating banner. Yet anybody who has ever spoken a word (that is, anybody) can attest that doing so _puts something in play_, rather than terminating playing.

In other words, to think of the original text as the place where interpretation stops is, arguably, to think something both erroneous and interminable. For it will always be possible to draw closer to, or suppose that it is possible to draw closer to, the posited transcendence. Very good on this dialectic in late-period Protestantism are the essays by Mandelbrote, Keene, and Snobelen in Hessayon and Keene (eds), _Scripture and Scholarship in Early-Modern England_ (Ashgate, 2006). And in the wider world, just think of the extraordinary interpretative authoritarianism of "originalist" constitutional jurisprudence, which is empowered by the idea of the original intension _precisely because the latter is not really available_.

What's the alternative? A long and difficult inquiry begins from that question. But I think it's an inquiry worth opening ourselves to; and I think it will have something to do with the recognition that the judgment of rightness or fittingness -- of having understood -- that somebody like the KJV parishioner has had is not necessarily or neatly outflanked by the method of originalist historicism.

JD Fleming

----- Original Message -----

From: "Helen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]>

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 1:12:43 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific

Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible

I have come across people who seem in all honesty incapable of understanding what 'the KJB is a *translation*, we need to look at the original text' means. They simply refer to the book they have in their hands and say 'but it says here...'. Sometimes showing them an actual Greek or Hebrew testament helps change their minds, because they have often never seen one and have no real conception of the Bible as anything other than the fixed text they have heard and read all their lives.

Helen

Helen Vincent

Senior Curator

Rare Book Collections

Tel: +44 (0) 131 623 3894

Fax: +44 (0) 131 623 3888

Email: [log in to unmask]

National Library of Scotland

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From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Herman

Sent: 21 May 2010 00:16

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: CFP The King James Bible

Anne, that’s what happens with sensible people. I meant what happens when those who burn any and all translations of the Bible other than the KJV are confronted with a difference between what’s in the KJV and the original language.

pch

On 5/20/10 3:16 PM, "Anne Prescott" < [log in to unmask] > wrote:

Seriously, Peter, and I hope I'm not misreading you, what happened in later years was either a set of new translations (The Anchor Bible, e.g.) or a King James revised according to some better Hebrew and Greek scholarship so that you get the "Revised Standard Version" that many of us have in church. Some discrepancies may be too hard to resolve--e.g., "the valley of the shadow of death," I read somewhere, just says "shadow," although I could be mistaken. So just to say "what happens" is later revised editions after even more years of Hebrew scholarship. Often the rhythms aren't as good and the wording can grate on a traditionalist ear, but there is more accuracy. Even Congregationalists and Presbyterians, nowadays, use modernized and emended translations--at least in the northeast of the USA. Nobody I know complains about the content, only the tin ear of the translators. It may be different in more fundamentalist circles, but in my part of the States using the revised version(s) is standard and the Hebrew comes first. Then there's the 1928 prayerbook etc., but that's another story. Anne.

PS: pity my poor grandfather, K. Lake, who as I recall translated Paul for the Loeb (I think--I know he did some Loeb Church Fathers). Think of the competition!

On May 20, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Peter Herman wrote:

I’m serious about this question: what happens (assuming someone on this list knows) if there is a contradiction between the KJV and the original original, i.e., the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek? pch

On 5/20/10 2:19 PM, "Ryan Paul" < [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/[log in to unmask] > > wrote:

Re: KJV-centrism.

I read an article (in a New York Review of Books-style publication) that had a number of quotes from some American fundamentalists about the KJV. I wish I could find it, but there were numerous statements that the KJ translation is the true word of God, to be consulted as the definitive edition, and that if there exist contradictions between it and original texts, then the original texts are wrong.

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Hannibal Hamlin < [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/ [log in to unmask] > > wrote:

Hi Anne (an all -- to clarify),

Yes, there is one at York in July, but it will be strictly 17th c., while the OSU one ranges from the Reformation to the contemporary. I talked to Kevin Killeen (organizer at York) while at the Folger, and I don't think we'll be treading on each others' toes too much. Of course, we'll be only two of scads of KJV events that year. I might give a plug to the site of the British 2011 Trust. http://www.2011trust.org/ Quite impressive, and where else to see Richard Dawkins reading The Song of Songs!!

There is a lively (or deadly) KJV-only movement in the US, which seems a bizarre offshoot of fundamentalism. A colleague sent me a clipping about an evangelical church that hosts an annual book burning -- of Bibles! Apparently all translations other than KJV are consigned to the flames. Truly weird.

Hope you're well.

Hannibal

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 4:41 PM, anne prescott < [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/[log in to unmask] > > wrote:

Hi, Hannibal. Isn't there also a KJV conference in Britain later in 2011? No reason not to have two, of course. As I think I've mentioned before, several of my students referred on their exams or papers to the "Hebrew translation." A colleague suggests that they think "translation" means "version," but it took me aback anyway. And apparently some Americans do believe the KJV is the original. Anyway, the conference sounds terrific. Anne.

On May 20, 2010, at 3:48 PM, Hannibal Hamlin wrote:

[Apologies for cross-posting]

KJV Conference CFP

Conference Name: “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife”

Date and Location: May 5-7, 2011, at The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH).

Contact: [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/[log in to unmask] > < mailto:[log in to unmask] > , see also http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu < http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/ > < http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/ > .

The English Department at The Ohio State University will host an international conference in 2011 on the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James (or Authorized) Version of the Bible. Held in Columbus, Ohio from May 5-7, 2011 , the conference will focus on the making of the KJV in the context of Reformation Bible translation and printing as well as on the KJV’s long literary and cultural influence from Milton and Bunyan to Faulkner, Woolf, and Toni Morrison. Events will include plenary lectures and discussions, scholarly panels, and readings by contemporary writers. An accompanying exhibit will be mounted by the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.

Unlike traditional conference panels in which each participant delivers his or her entire paper at the conference, these seminars will focus on guided roundtable discussions of the issues raised in a group of 8-12 position papers. To that end, participants must submit materials well in advance of the conference , so seminar leaders can read them, formulate discussion questions, and circulate the papers and questions to participants. Individual seminar leaders will determine more precise schedules and seminar requirements, once enrollments have been reviewed and approved.

Possible seminar topics include (but are not limited to) the Bible and particular authors/works (Milton, Melville, Morrison, et al), the Bible and periods or genres (e.g., Reformation, 19 th century, 20th century, African-American Lit, American literature, postcolonial studies), the Bible and narrative/poetic style, biblical allusion, and the Bible in popular culture (film, graphic versions, music).

Please submit questions or project titles & statements of interest to [log in to unmask] <x-msg: //428/[log in to unmask] > < mailto:[log in to unmask] > by July 1, 2010 .

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--

James Dougal Fleming

Associate Professor

Department of English

Simon Fraser University

"to see what is questionable"

--
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
Editor, Reformation
Organizer, The King James Bible and its Cultural Afterlife
http://kingjamesbible.osu.edu/
The Ohio State University
164 West 17th Ave., 421 Denney Hall
Columbus, OH 43210-1340
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