Further to my little piece on the AV – authorized or appointed – I see that the first edition of the 1611 Bible had in its considerable list of preliminaries a woodcut of the coat of arms of James1 and underneath, Cum privilegio Regiae Maiestas. In current AV’s this is reduced to Cum privilegio beneath a different coat of arms, and means nothing to most of us. According to Gordon Campbell (Bible – The Story of the King James Version, Oxford University Press) the full Latin inscription means ‘By the authority of the king’. We might quibble slightly with that translation, but I think there is little doubt that this is its intent; in which case those scholars who say that the AV was never ‘authorized’ are mistaken. Personally, I find any reference to King James inappropriate; all he did was make provision for a new translation of the Bible to take place and he had no authority for doing that anyway. I find it strange that most Bibles have on their cover ‘The Holy Bible’, yet that is the one thing you never hear anyone call it. Why don’t ministers announce the reading thus: ‘Hear the words of the Holy Bible from…’?
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'...this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.'
About Me
- Paul Brown
- Born of missionary parents, after National Service in the RAF I trained at London Bible College. I was an assistant pastor at Spring Road Evangelical Church, Southampton, pastor at Bethel Evangelical Free Church, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, and Dunstable Baptist Church, prior to retiring in 2003.
Books
