1611

That is the number of this post – and also a good reminder that it is 400 years this year since the publication of the King James’ Version of the Bible. Our local Parish Church are having some special commemorative events later on this summer to mark the anniversary.

This is the version I first read as a child, and so many of its phrases are buried deep in my memory.

 

I am planning to write a longer post about why I love the KJV later – but one of the books on my reading list this summer [well, my RE-reading list, to be strictly accurate] is Adam Nicolson’s “Power and Glory” – Jacobean England and the making of the KJV, which I first read when it came out in 2003. AN is the grandson of Vita Sackville West, and lives at Sissinghurst Castle, with those fabulous gardens.[btw in the USA, this book has the title “God’s Secretaries”]

 

As this picture says “It has stood the test of time” – in the last hundred years we have seen dozens of translations and paraphrases of Scripture – but for much of the English–speaking world, it is the phrases in this one which continue to resonate with power and glory.

…out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength…