Happy Birthday King James Bible<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today is the official 400th birthday of the single most published English language text in history. It's what has helped make the Bible the biggest\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/05\/happy-birthday-king-james-bible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Birthday King James Bible\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today is the official 400th birthday of the single most published English language text in history. 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{"id":3376,"date":"2011-05-02T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T20:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/05\/happy-birthday-king-james-bible.html"},"modified":"2011-05-02T20:38:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T20:38:00","slug":"happy-birthday-king-james-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/05\/happy-birthday-king-james-bible.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday King James Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Today<\/a> is the official 400th birthday of the single most published English language text in history.\u00a0 It\u2019s what has helped make the Bible the biggest selling book of all time.\u00a0 Few other singular texts can boast the influence over history, culture, civilization, attitude, language, and education that this translation can claim.\u00a0 As a Protestant, I never scoffed at the translation.\u00a0 As a Catholic I still admire its poetry, its beauty and power.\u00a0 Certainly when set in juxtaposition to recent translations that appear to follow our tech age\u2019s flushing of the spoken language down the tubes, the King James translation stands among the greatest translations of the Sacred Scriptures.\u00a0 I won\u2019t even go into comparing it to the New American Bible used exclusively by America\u2019s Roman Catholic Church as the official translation.<\/p>\n

Is it perfect?\u00a0 Is it without problems?\u00a0 Was it a product of its times?\u00a0\u00a0Sure.\u00a0 Why not.\u00a0 As a Catholic, I have no fear in seeing God at work in the history of His Word, not merely in the jots and tittles of a singular written expression of it.\u00a0 If it is all these things, then it probably only puts it in line with every other attempt to wrap the written word around the inscrutable mysteries of God.\u00a0 And if it reflected its time as we often accuse it of doing, all I can say is that there was a beauty and grace in that time\u00a0that has long since been lost from our self-congratulatory generation. <\/p>\n