Prickett Stephen - The Bible: Authorized King James Version

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Introduction Stephen Prickett 1997
Select Bibliography, Notes, Glossary Robert Carroll 1997

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First published as a Worlds Classics paperback 1997
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998
Reissued 2008

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bible, English. Authorized. 1997.
The Bible: Authorized King James Version / edited with an
introduction and notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett.
p. cm.(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Carroll, Robert P. II. Prickett, Stephen. III. Title. IV. Series.
BS185 1997.094 1997 220.52043dc20 9628858

ISBN 9780199535941

Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

With an Introduction and Notes by
ROBERT CARROLL
and
STEPHEN PRICKETT

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THE BIBLE

ROBERT CARROLL was Professor of Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies at the University of Glasgow. Among his many publications are When Prophecy Failed (1979), From Chaos to Covenant (1981), Jeremiah: A Commentary (1986), and Wolf in the Sheepfold (1991).

STEPHEN PRICKETT is Margaret Root Brown Professor of Victorian Studies and Director of the Armstrong-Browning Library at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. Previous appointments include the Chair of English Literature at the University of Glasgow, the Chair of English at the Australian National University in Canberra, and teaching posts at the Universities of Sussex, Minnesota, and Smith College, Massachusetts. His other books on literature and theology include Romanticism and Religion: The Tradition of Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Victorian Church (1976), Words and the Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (1986), (ed.), Reading the Text: Biblical Criticism and Literary Theory (1991), and Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible (1996).

BIBLES are, by their very nature, partisan. As that plural suggests, there are many bibles, even in English, and each is the product of a particular interest groupwhether religious, commercial, or, increasingly nowadays, both. This edition is no exception. The editors of this Worlds Classics version have chosen for their text the 1611, King James translationalso more familiarly called the Authorized Versionnot because of any presumed impartiality, but because historically it has had greater influence on the development of the cultures and literatures of the English-speaking world than any other translation of the Bible. As the Introduction should make clear, however, that version itself represents not merely a particular historical compromise, but has a quite specific and polemical bias of its own.

Nor can the present editors be themselves exempted from this general rule. Though this edition, unlike almost every other on the market, is not sponsored by a particular religious group, the mere fact that we have chosen to use a translation that is, in places, more than four hundred years old, indicates an initial historical bias to our approach. Bias is not confined to the choice of text. As the Introduction, Notes, and the rest of the critical apparatus should make very plain, we have throughout been interested in showing not merely how this particular translation came into being, but also how it relates to the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin versions from which it was made. We have also written our comments taking into account post-Enlightenment, modern, naturalistic (as opposed to supernaturalistic) knowledge and thinking about the Bible. Such a modern historical approach highlights another quality of this edition. So far from being the rock of ages in a sea of flux, as some devout Christian readers of the Bible have maintained in the past, it should be clear to any impartial reader of this edition that the history of biblical interpretation is one of continuous and, at times, quite startling change. The eighteenth-century shift from typological to narrative reading of the scriptures, for example, represents a far more fundamental interpretative shift than any changes that have occurred in the production or interpretation of Shakespeares plays over the same period. To Jews, long used to a tradition of midrashic commentary, this fluidity comes as no surprise; to those with a stronger belief in the stability of scriptureeven that appropriated from another religionit may seem strange. The fact remains, however, that one reason for the Bibles continuing attraction to a wide range of readersto painters, philosophers, poets, playwrights, songwriters and writers of all descriptions, as well as to religious practitionersis the amazing dynamism of the text itself, and its continued capacity to present itself in a new light to every generation. In an important sense, this edition is a celebration of that historical, transformative dynamic aspect of the Bible.