Talk:Authorized Version

Origins

May I question the statement about the Bishops' Bible? My information is that the AV was heavily dependent for scholarship and wording on the Geneva Bible, which, unlike its predecessors, made use of both continental and Jewish scholarship. The Geneva Bible in itself was unacceptable because of its marginal glosses, which had an extremely "protestant" turn to them. This made it repugnant to James and his establishment. --Martin Wyatt 13:56, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I've changed it to "main basis" for now. Maybe more detail would be desirable. My understanding is that the translators were very eclectic, making use of all available Bibles in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English and no doubt other languages, including even the Catholic Douai. But the Bishops' Bible was the main basis, being treated as the default. Peter Jackson 15:04, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

While you're here you might want to add a note about Quaker use of 2nd person singular pronouns. Peter Jackson 15:25, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I am probably being dense, but am not sure where it would fit in. Also, I don't know whether I could write anything sensible without saying something about the use of the plural "you" as an honorific, and I do not know how or when that developed. (The Quaker thou and thee addressed to everyone was a statement of egalitarianism.) --Martin Wyatt 21:29, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

It's note 6 at present. I was just thinking you might want to mention the fact, if it still is a fact, that some Quakers still speak this way.

According to Wikipedia, Quakers use(d) "thee" for both subject and object. While that was certainly the idiom in the film called (I think) Thee I Love, it sounds odd to me that the 17th century Quaker founders wouldn't have known the grammatical distinction. And there's a story (apocryphal?) that Penn kept his hat on when coming to see the King. Charles II promptly removed his own hat. "Friend Charles, why dost thou remove thy hat?" "Friend Penn, it is the custom when the King is present that only one man wears a hat."

As I understand it, Tyndale, followed by everyone up to the RV, used the singular pronouns consistently whenever the originals did so, as part of the policy of literal translation, though universal singular use had already ceased to be idiomatic. Peter Jackson 08:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

(I.e. the honorific plural you mention was already standard in some circumstances.) Peter Jackson 08:25, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Now note 7. Peter Jackson 08:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I can confidently say that no British Quakers use thou and thee, these days. Whether there are any left in America I do not know. As for exclusive use of the thee form, the early Quakers used thou and thee correctly, but when and where changes began I am not sure. Correct use continued into the 18th century both in Britain and in America (John Woolman). Looking in a couple of places at random, at the beginning of the 19th century Walter Scott represented a Quaker as using thou and thee appropriately, and at the end of it, "Michael Fairless" represented them as using the exclusive thee form. --Martin Wyatt 16:11, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Religious status: a couple of queries

I am not sure about the statement that "In practice it came to be regarded as the official Bible of the Church of England, and in theory still is." Either it has always been the theory or it has not. As for the practice: given that the C of E was among the churches that commissioned and oversaw both the New English Bible and the Revised English Bible, it seems reasonable to suppose that the REB would be the "official" version, if there is such a thing.

The statement that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer used the RV for its scriptural quotations is incorrect as far as the psalms are concerned. For them the previous (Edward VI) version was retained. I would correct this, but I do not know which version this was. I think it may have been Coverdale. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 20:19, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

On the first point, I'd already realized that my phrasing was unsatisfactory but hadn't thought of an improvement yet. In any case, though, life isn't really unchanging like that. The Quakers may have been the first (major?) Christian movement to make explicit the idea that religion could change, but in practice it always does anyway. Theologians, like lawyers, reinterpret things in ways that might surprise those originally responsible.

As to the NEB, I think it was always explicitly intended as an alternative, not a replacement, and it has in fact been authorized by the C of E along with several others (NIV, NJB &c).

I may be wrong about this, but I think what I said was correct: scriptural quotations in the BCP are AV. The attached Psalter, which I think is from the Bishops' Bible, is not strictly speaking part of the BCP. Peter Jackson (talk) 09:16, 2 May 2015 (UTC)