The annual BibleTech Conference – where bible study enters the cyber cafe – is to be held in Seattle this March. In between consultations about the latest Bible apps, one wonders how much attention will be paid to the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible.
Steadily, Anglicans have put aside the King James Bible in favour of modern translations: many prefer to use the New Revised Standard Version which, according to its supporters, combines the poeticism of the AV with the familiarity of contemporary language. More recently, in 2002, former Presbyterian pastor Eugene Peterson brought out The Message; and Rob Lacey’s Word on the Street came out the year after. The latter cannot be described as a translation, but rather a paraphrase which remoulds the Bible’s stories into parables for a street-wise 21st century audience.
Accessibility is the watchword behind these revisions of the Bible; but what has this word come to mean in a culture of 140 word tweets and 24 hour news? No doubt they’ll have all the answers at BibleTech. And it’s no surprise that the Bible Society is celebrating this year’s anniversary with a host of up-to-date initiatives including the Biblefresh campaign, designed to introduce the Bible’s contents in a wider range of formats. The hub of the campaign is its website, where you’re encouraged to ‘experience’ the Bible through a multitude of web-based media.
Bishops Nick Baines and Alan Wilson, both prolific and successful bloggers, would no doubt understand this revitalised approach. Nick Baines, Bishop of Croyden, started a blog two years ago with a degree of trepidation; he’s now a regular online correspondent: his blog, he says, enables him to write freely and colloquially and to cast his glance beyond the church. He carries his theology very lightly and accommodates his writings to all readers.
Bishop Baines believes that the audience must dictate the tone of services and, for this reason, he generally favours the New Revised Standard Version. Andrew Nunn, Acting Dean of Southwark Cathedral, agrees: he has always inclined towards the NRSV because of its open and inclusive language. Despite the literary beauties of the KJV, these clergymen consider that clarity and comprehension must come first.
But accessibility and availability are by no means new concepts in the history of the Bible; it was John Wyclif’s aim, in the 14th century, to see the Bible translated into the vernacular so that ordinary men and women might read it. The King James Bible was prefaced with a note from its translators advocating the vernacular rendering of scripture: for unless ‘we openeth the window’ and ‘putteth aside the curtain’ our senses remain darkened to the word of God.
Yet, despite the aims of the translators, the King James Bible was initially disregarded by many readers. Its turn of phrase was archaic and uncolloquial and failed to engage its early audience. There is no record of its original print run or its cost but it is unlikely that many could afford an edition of their own; even those with sufficient resources to buy a Bible were often attracted to the Geneva translation before the AV: author Adam Nicolson argues that the Authorised Version failed to achieve the popularity of the Geneva Bible until after the Civil War.
The Victorian era brought a marked phase of popularity for the AV bible and it was at this time – in the mid-19th century – that the mechanisation of the printing press first brought cheap bibles to the literate masses. Historian Leslie Howsam explains how the Bible Society added momentum to the modernisation of the book trade by campaigning for the provision of cheap bibles.
When the Society first started work in 1804, it elicited subscriptions from the wealthy in order to fund cheap bibles for the poor. It soon found that consumer demand for cheap bibles outstripped the pace of production. Thus, when steam technology provided a means to mechanise book production, the Bible Society instantly recognised its opportunity to realise its mission more fully. The same principle motivates the current drive towards digitalisation. If the Bible is to remain integral to people’s lives, it is essential to communicate it through new media. To download the Bible might seem to degrade it, but this is surely just a matter of intellectual snobbery.
That said, in the anniversary year of the Authorised Version, it is heartening to find that the Bible Society still retains its book-making roots: in 1988 the United Bible Societies combined with the Amity foundation to set up the Amity Printing Company in China. Its production facility is located in Nanjing but its presses come from Timsons Ltd in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Today, the Amity Printing Company is capable of producing 12 million bibles in a year; it exports them to 60 countries – including the United Kingdom. So, for all of the changes that the internet must bring, it seems that the dead tree edition of the Bible isn’t dead yet.
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