Authorized or Appointed?

22011 sees the 400^th anniversary of what we know as the Authorized Version of the Bible. However, scholars seem to differ about the accuracy of that title. According to David Daniell it was only in 1842 that this appeared on its title page; previously it was always ‘Appointed to be read in churches’ – Anglican churches, of course. Oddly enough I have a Cambridge AV – whoops! – which sticks with ‘Appointed’, while one printed by Oxford adds ‘Authorized King James Version’, which gets in just about everything that could be. The translation itself was authorized by King James, but that is covered by ‘Translated… by his Majesty’s special command’.

If you look carefully you will see this actually says: ‘Translated out of the original tongues: and with former translations diligently compared and revised.’ In fact the KJV is essentially and intentionally a revision of the earlier Bishops’ Bible. Either by design or good fortune this was a master-stroke. The revision, which was certainly an improvement, lost the earlier name thus making it more acceptable to those who did not believe in episcopacy (though it still had the word ‘bishop’ in the translation).

It is a fact that the KJV was slightly archaic even when it appeared; it did not reflect ordinary English usage of the day. In addition, in those days ‘thou’ was not a term of respect or reverence, but of familiarity. It was equivalent to ‘tu’ in French and in Spanish. To pray ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be THY name’ emphasized the familiarity with which a child would speak to a father. It is surprising, as well as irritating, that people today sometimes plead for the exact opposite of the sense which ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘thy’ once had and which became redundant long ago.

LBC reunion!

Last weekend I was preaching at the Anniversary services of Broughton Evangelical Church. Great Broughton and Little Broughton lie more or less at the centre of the Maryport, Cockermouth and Workington triangle in north-west Cumbria. What is remarkable is that for all the services there were five old students from London Bible College present and six on the Saturday evening: Gordon Taylor, Brian Campbell, Elizabeth Campbell, John Fisher, myself and my wife Mary. Of these all but Elizabeth were at LBC in the late 50’s; she started her course in 1965 just after the death of Dr Kevan. It was a great pleasure to renew old acquaintances and also to be thankful for God’s preserving mercy over the years. I hope to be able to include a picture of five of us later. The small chapel was well-filled on the Saturday evening as friends came from other churches to give thanks and encouragement. I tried to emphasize the importance of the historicity of the Gospels for apologetics and, in particular, apologetic preaching, especially as this leads directly to Jesus Christ himself. In adopting this approach I was influenced by some words of Dr Kevan when was speaking to missionaries in India, in 1960: ‘We have to remember that our Christian faith is historically based. In my short journeys in India I had a number of conversations with educated Indian gentlemen, in the aeroplane and in the train, and one of the hardest things I found in these conversations was to get these men to admit the historical basis of our faith. They would say, “Everybody has his own ideas about religion”. My answer was to confront them with the facts, the historical facts of God incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ, who lived and suffered under Pontius Pilate. I tried to show them that the saving work of Christ is a thing that can be placed geographically, and be pinpointed chronologically. They would then go off again on some philosophical discussion of religious abstractions.’