Familiar words: “Let there be light, the powers that be, my brother’s keeper, flowing with milk and honey, filthy lucre, the apple of his eye, signs of the time, ye of little faith, a man after his own heart, broken-hearted, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, the prodigal son ….” These are all phrases from the King James bible (KJB) which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year (indeed there are many more familiar words and phrases besides).  They are all phrases that still pepper our everyday speech even though people aren’t necessarily appreciative of their origin. One bridegroom visiting St Mary’s church to hear his banns of marriage read, came up to me after the service and said that he never realised where the phrase ‘doubting Thomas’ came from until he heard that day’s gospel read aloud from John chapter 20.  Indeed the TV and Radio cultural commentator, Melvyn Bragg, has written, “There is no doubt in my mind that the King James Bible and not Shakespeare set this [the English] language on its path to become a universal language on a scale unprecedented before or since.”

There are many events marking the 400th anniversary of the KJB up and down the country and around the world including a number of TV and radio programmes.  We are marking the anniversary in the parish in a number of ways including the purchase of a new lectern copy of the bible funded by the Friends of St Mary’s church (FOSM).  On 16th October Lord Richard Harries of Pentregarth, the former bishop of Oxford, will be giving a lecture on the impact of the KJB on British culture and I am hoping children will read passages within an act of worship concluding the Calne Music and Arts Festival.

All this is well and good. But there is a caveat. In a recent Radio 4 “Thought for the day” on the “Today Programme”, Giles Frazer (Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s cathedral) linked some approaches to the anniversary of the KJB to some of the ‘little Englander’ attitudes that have surfaced with the recent justification by the writer of Midsomer Murders not to include black characters in the drama.  He said he felt uncomfortable with the way it seemed to be being “turned into some huge expression of cultural nostalgia for a world where it was so much easier to say what it meant to be British; that, in some way, the KJB has become a vehicle for those who yearn after a society that apparently existed before the advent of things like multiculturalism”.

If that were indeed to be the prevailing ethos of the anniversary celebrations it would be a great shame and a betrayal of the original vision of William Tyndale, whose own translation of the bible predominates in the KJ version and who was dedicated to the idea that the word of God should be in and on the English tongue. “I will have every plough boy know the Bible as well as thee”, he said to one supercilious cleric.

Language is important because of the power it has in the shaping of our relationships and in the case of the bible, supremely with God.  But the language can’t be any substitute for the relationship itself.

In actual fact my first real exposure to the enabling power of the language of the KJB was in the prayers of black Pentecostal Christians in Birmingham who had evidently soaked in that language with their mothers’ milk.  I also wonder whether Martin Luther King Jnr would have had so much impact in his speeches, which were as much theological as political, had he not absorbed the language of the KJB with such soaring phrases as “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” This is a powerful quotation from the prophet Isaiah (ch 40: 4-5) in the KJ version.

These same words are used famously again by Handel in his masterpiece oratorio, The Messiah (composed in 1741), which is appropriately sung both at Christmas and Easter proclaiming Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection.   Again the text is from the KJB.

As we approach the end of Lent and the beginning of Holy Week one of the things I look forward to most is on Easter day joining the choir at St Mary’s to sing the incomparable Hallelujah Chorus.  For there in both words and music we sing the glorious truth of God’s love made manifest in Jesus’ death on the cross and in the triumph of his resurrection.

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! …
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
And He shall reign forever and ever,
King of kings! and Lord of lords!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

What words, what music, what reason for hope!

Christ is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!
Hallelujah!
HAPPY EASTER!

Bob Kenway