King James' Bible and the Book of Common Player

The King James' Bible at Litchfield

Having attended a meditation on the life of William Tyndale at Bossington Church recently, I have become even more aware of the place of the King James' Bible in our culture. And when last week I attended an otherwise lovely carol service at St Katherine Cree Church in the City, I was saddened to hear the beautiful and time-honoured phrases in the lessons replaced with modern English.

I realise of course that I have been conditioned to hear the King James' version of the Bible over the past 70 years. Like many of my friends, I have attended school services since the age of five of six and since going regularly to my church at Litchfield for the last thirty years I am steeped both in King James and the Book of Common Prayer and have never heard any other. I love their cadences and phrasing. Any variation, however well-meaning, is a small psychic shock, akin to changing the words of a Beatles song.

The words used at church services make up the major party of the liturgy of worship and as such are imbued with deep significance and energy. It's not fanciful to imagine the words imprinted into the fabric of churches where they have been intoned without change for the past 400 years.  I am afraid that I agree with those who ascribe a fall-off in attendance at traditional church services to the lessening of the use of such glorious language.

See also - Litchfield Church - St Cecilia's Prayer 

See also - William Tyndale - the Translator of the Bible

William Tyndale - the Translator of the Bible

The Authorised Version of King James' Bible, published in 1611, was translated from the Latin and Hebrew by six committees of scholars, and remains, with some later amendments, the most authoritative text of the Bible as far as the Anglican Church is concerned.

However, the original translation of the Bible into English from Latin and Hebrew was undertaken by William Tyndale, who produced the first printed translation of the New Testament in 1526 while being sought and harassed by both the Church and Henry VIII in the form of Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell. Any translation into the vernacular was regarded as heresy, and in particular, Tyndale's translation further aggravated the Church by choosing to translate the Greek 'ekklesia' as 'congregation' rather than 'Church' and 'presbyteros' as 'elder' instead of 'priest'. Working in secrecy in Antwerp, he made over 5000 revisions to the New Testament in the 1534 edition, which became 'the glory of his life's work'. The King James' translators left most of his work (said to be 93%) untouched - though, of course, not the two examples above. He also translated the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) including Genesis and Deuteronomy, but while working on the rest in 1536 he was betrayed and executed.

Melvyn Bragg has written a useful short biography of Tyndale, and he concludes:

Genius Discarded

Yet in this country, the King James Bible has been allowed to fade away over the past few decades. While Shakespeare and all his Elizabethan and Jacobean pageant of language is played, filmed, televised and read more and more and in the original without dissent, it was decided that Tyndale was too complicated! This has proved to be a dreadful mistake, We have discarded a genius and are every day poorer for it. I see it as no accident that Anglican congregations have fallen away since the King James Bible was abandoned.

The Anglican Church has more or less outlawed then King James Version. It pops up now and again but with far less regularity and authority that it deserves. Why not have Tyndale / King James services in every church and every school on the first week of every month. For non-Christians, it would be a feast of language, adventure and argument,. For all who listened it would be to hear and understand the deepest spring of our cultural history through the mind of a unique genius; William Tyndale.

Melvyn Bragg - William Tyndale Postscript

There is also a film of Tyndale's life made in 1986 called 'God's Outlaw'

See also: The King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer

Favourite Paintings - Peter Breughel Netherlandisch Proverbs

Peter Brueghel the Elder - Nederlandisch Proverbs

I am sometimes given to complaining that modern paintings seem to have no meaning or significance. The same can not be said of Brueghel, and this painting - Nederlandisch Proverbs, painted in 1559 - is replete with illusions, some more evident than others. It is said that there are more the 100 proverbs illustrating human foolishness in this scene, the meanings of many of which have been lost. The principal figure of the woman draping her husband with a blue cloak is said to show that she is having an affair. A full list of those that can still be identified can be found on Wikipedia here.

See also Favourite Paintings - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

See also Art and What it Means to Me

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Favourite Paintings - Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - Peter Breughel the Elder

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

W.H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong, 

The old Masters: how well they understood 

Its human position: how it takes place 

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; 

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting 

For the miraculous birth, there always must be 

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating 

On a pond at the edge of the wood: 

They never forgot 

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse 

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. 

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 

See also Favourite Writings - Ovid 

Some Inadequate Words on Grief

I am not able to write with any authority on grief as I have never experienced it. But others have and do. Instead, I often give friends who have lost loved ones Joan Didion's book: 'The Year of Magical Thinking', which seem to capture the condition most truly.

This also seems to be a fine piece

See also Dirge Without Music

Do You Understand Climate Change?

Katrin Juliane Meissner

27 September at 21:49

With so many people hitting the streets for climate strike and all the recent attacks on Greta Thunberg, I would like to make a statement. I am a Professor in Climate Sciences, I have been working in this field for over 20 years.

1. Climate change is a fact, based on data and equations. It’s science (not politics).

2. Humans are causing climate change.

3. CO2 concentrations are rising at a rate that is 10 to 100 times faster than any other time in the past (and we are talking millions of years back).

4. CO2 concentrations are now at levels Earth has not seen since 3 Million years. That’s when Lucy was roaming in Africa.

5. Both speed of change and magnitude of change will have catastrophic consequences for the world we know and rely on.

6. Ecosystems will have (and are already having) a hard time to adapt with these fast changes. Current extinction rates are far above the normal background extinction rates.

7. We rely on ecosystems for our survival. We are part of ecosystems.

8. For example, speed of change is important for ocean acidification. With slower rates of CO2 rise there are geochemical feedbacks that kick in and mitigate acidification. This is not the case now. It is also important for adaptation to new living conditions. Coral reefs for example are our canaries in a coal mine.

9. The climate system is mainly water and therefore has a large heat capacity and is slow to react. The climate is not in equilibrium right now, it is still catching up to current CO2 concentrations. Last time the climate was in equilibrium with today’s CO2 concentrations, sea levels were much higher (order of magnitude of 10 meters), temperatures were well beyond the Paris Agreement. This is what the world will look like if we keep CO2 concentrations constant. If we continue to emit at current rates, then:

10. We will end up in a climate last seen 50 Million years ago. No ice, completely different ecosystems. The transition will be fast and deadly.

11. Climate change is the largest threat humanity has ever faced.

12. We need to act now. 

13. The question is not “do you believe in climate change?”. The question is “do you understand climate change?”. Greta is just a messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger. It does not matter what you or I think about her. What matters is that we stop wasting time. We need to act now.

For the Love of Dogs

I have long been troubled by our attitude to dogs, but it's heresy to question extreme dog-centric behaviour and I content myself with not having one, even though it would seem natural to do so.

Herry and Danny at Stocks c.1953

I had dogs from an early age. The first was Danny, a cocker spaniel that to begin with, I looked after, but when I went to school, of course, he was looked after by my parents, principally my father, who always had dogs, usually several and generally labradors. I remember Fuff coming back from Scotland with Caron (named after Loch Caron where he had found her), and there was Flax, Bonnie and Bosun, Charlie and others that I can't now remember. And we had a sheepdog (a border collie) for as long as we had sheep (ie not in later years) that was actually used to round up the sheep. 

All our dogs lived outside, first in the stables and later in a purpose-built shed with an outside 'run' full of straw. It was next to the farmyard so they could watch all the comings and goings - though in the daytime they were almost always free to run around as they wished.  The first thing my father did when he came down to talk to the men in the morning was to let the dogs out - and they stayed with him as he went around the farm - on horseback, on foot or in a van - all day. If he drove up to the cottages on the down, they would run after the van in both directions. They accompanied my father when shooting and picked up when he shot with others.

The dogs did come in and out of the house, but never went upstairs and weren't allowed on the furniture. Feeding them from the table during meals was discouraged. And at teatime - an unvarying ritual with my mother behind the teapot -  they were given a ginger biscuit. At about 6pm they were fed a simple and unvarying diet of meat from the local butcher, with a handful of dry biscuits with an egg mixed in. Tinned food wasn't used. Bones were always available to gnaw on the lawn and in their shed.

Our dogs were supremely healthy and happy and I don't remember them ever needing the vet - nor did they have fleas (though sometimes they had to have ticks removed). They were perfectly matched to their environment. Few people, of course, have farms and a lifestyle where they are outside all day and their dogs can accompany their master everywhere, and therein lies the problem. People don't always choose dogs for their environment and instead chose them for spurious reasons such as the way they look, or the impression their owners want to portray to others. Highly intelligent breeds like sheepdogs are used as pets when they have been bred for centuries to work, and they suffer if they can't. Gundogs have likewise been bred to pick up birds but few are given the chance and become fat and lazy unless given frequent long walks. As for the many breeds that have been disfigured to create a particular look favoured by their owners, like pugs, their lives have been shortened and their breathing made more difficult. Why this isn't regarded as cruelty, I can't imagine.

Recently, breeding dogs to match modern lifestyles has improved and dogs such as the poodle/spaniel crosses successfully match equable temperament and sociability with ease of looking after, but almost all dogs need two good walks a day and they should never be left alone for long. as they suffer greatly. If owners can't meet their dogs' needs, they shouldn't have them.








  

Favourite Paintings - The Parisian Apartment

“The dark second-floor apartment of the house in Market Square was shot through each day by the naked heat of summer: the silence of the shimmering streaks of air, the squares of brightness dreaming their intense dreams on the floor.” - Bruno Schultz

Luleen Wanklyn nee Handcock - 1946 - 2019

Lu at Nick and Jay Jay's wedding 1975

http://lawfordherry.blogspot.com/2019/07/obituary-lu-wanklyn-1945-2019.html?m=1

Favourite Churches - Sherborne Abbey

I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Sherborne Abbey twice and marvel at its beauty while staying with Charlie Skipwith at Chetnole. We had both been there before - for the funeral of Rosie Jenks in 2005.

It is probably the most beautiful church in England. There are a few photos here