God's secretaries

the making of the King James Bible

1st ed.
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Last edited by ImportBot
August 12, 2011 | History

God's secretaries

the making of the King James Bible

1st ed.
  • 3.0 (1 rating) ·
  • 5 Want to read
  • 1 Have read

A net of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson and Bacon; of the Gunpowder Plot; the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen; Arcadian landscapes; murderous, toxic slums; and, above all, of sometimes overwhelming religious passion. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities.This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment "Englishness" and the English language had come into its first passionate maturity. Boisterous, elegant, subtle, majestic, finely nuanced, sonorous and musical, the English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own reach and scope than any before or since. It is a form of the language that drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book.The sponsor and guide of the whole Bible project was the King himself, the brilliant, ugly and profoundly peace-loving James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England. Trained almost from birth to manage the rivalries of political factions at home, James saw in England the chance for a sort of irenic Eden over which the new translation of the Bible was to preside. It was to be a Bible for everyone, and as God's lieutenant on earth, he would use it to unify his kingdom. The dream of Jacobean peace, guaranteed by an elision of royal power and divine glory, lies behind a Bible of extraordinary grace and everlasting literary power.About fifty scholars from Cambridge, Oxford and London did the work, drawing on many previous versions, and created a text which, for all its failings, has never been equaled. That is the central question of this book: How did this group of near-anonymous divines, muddled, drunk, self-serving, ambitious, ruthless, obsequious, pedantic and flawed as they were, manage to bring off this astonishing translation? How did such ordinary men make such extraordinary prose? In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king; of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible; of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.

Publish Date
Publisher
HarperCollins
Language
English
Pages
280

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: God's Secretaries
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (P.S.)
August 2, 2005, Harper Perennial
in English
Cover of: God's Secretaries
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (P.S.)
August 2, 2005, Harper Perennial
Paperback in English
Cover of: God's Secretaries
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
March 2, 2004, Harper Perennial
in English
Cover of: God's Secretaries
God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
March 2, 2004, Harper Perennial
Paperback in English
Cover of: God's Secretaries
God's Secretaries
2003, HarperCollins
Electronic resource in English
Cover of: God's secretaries
God's secretaries: the making of the King James Bible
2003, HarperCollins
in English
Cover of: God's secretaries
God's secretaries: the making of the King James Bible
2003, HarperCollins
in English - 1st ed.

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-271) and index.
Originally published: Power and glory. Great Britain : HarperCollins, 2003.

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
220.5/2038
Library of Congress
BS186 .N53 2003

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiv, 280 p. :
Number of pages
280

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL3344811M
Internet Archive
godssecretariesm00nico
ISBN 10
0060185163
LCCN
2004351212
OCLC/WorldCat
52142251
Library Thing
42777
Goodreads
850614

Excerpts

Few moments in English history have been more hungry for the future, its mercurial possibilities and its hope of richness, than the spring of 1603.
added anonymously.

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History

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August 12, 2011 Edited by ImportBot add ia_box_id to scanned books
May 9, 2011 Edited by ImportBot Added new cover
May 9, 2011 Edited by ImportBot Found a matching Internet Archive item record
December 16, 2010 Edited by ImportBot Found a matching Library of Congress MARC record
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record