THE DEFEAT OF THE GENEVA BIBLE

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, lecturing at Cambridge during the First World War, asked his audience to assent with him ‘that the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible is, as a literary achievement, one of the greatest in our language; nay, with the possible exception of the complete works of Shakespeare, the very greatest’. He was confident of agreement – ‘you will certainly not deny this’ – for he was enunciating a generally-held belief. The English Bible, embodiment of the world's greatest collection of literature, matched the originals for quality of language, even if it did not convey their truth with the utmost accuracy; it was the creation of masters of the English language whose work was perfected through the artistry of the King James translators; such was its quality of language that it was instantly acclaimed and given due supremacy over all other versions.

A present-day reader might well assent to the literary judgement, but the historical aspect is a myth. However fine the English of the translators from Tyndale on now seems, no one in their time appreciated it. It was all too obviously poor, if it was worth considering at all. And that was the way it continued to appear to most people until well into the eighteenth century. Must one therefore conclude that the English Bible was the proverbial pearl cast before swine? And that the swine at some point in the eighteenth century received an illumination, that they were suddenly dazzled by the pearl? Or is the truth that the English Bible was less of a pearl and the English people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much less swine-like than they might seem?