Just to put in a plug for Bart's actual scholarly publications (e.g. the
1996 _Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_) which are a bit more useful for,
well, scholarship. But you have to pay academic book prices for them,
alas. And on related topics, there's Adam Gopnik's essay in this week's
New Yorker ("What Did Jesus Do?"), with the superb sentence
beginning "Ehrman is one of those best-selling authors like Richard
Dawkins and Robert Ludlum and Peter Mayle...."
Beth
"
At 03:29 PM 5/21/2010, you wrote:
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
- George IV Bridge
- Edinburgh
- EH1 1EW
- Scotland
- 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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Beth Quitslund
Associate Professor
Department of English
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: (740) 593-2829
FAX: (740) 593-2818