WHAT GOOD CAN IT DO US to know more about the men who made the King James Bible and about their work on it? Just how did these chosen men revise the Bible from 1604 to 16 11? Who were these men and what were their careers? Were they happy in their labour? Did they live with success after they finished it? How did it affect them? How does the King James Bible differ from Bibles before and after it?
Could a group or groups turn out better writing than a single person? These are some of the questions I aim to answer in this volume. The King James men were minor writers, though great scholars, doing superb writing. Their task lifted them above themselves, while they leaned firmly on their subjects. Many have written in wonder about what they achieved. I quote here only from one ardent man with Bible learning, and from one who admired the product while he scorned ways of worship.
Dr. F. William Faber: “It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it.
The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible.”