King James Bible and its impact on English

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Something New Under the Sun

The King James Bible, published in the seventeenth century, had an immense
impact on Modern English, expanding the breadth and depth of the language.
Enter the Hebrew idiom.

by Alister McGrath


Have you ever fallen flat on your face? Can you read the writing on the
wall? Do you ever think about escaping, perhaps by the skin of your teeth
before its too late? When things are going well, do you look for the fly
in the ointment? If you answered Yes to these questions, you are in good
company.

Shakespeare, however, never fell flat on his face. He couldnt read the
writing on the wall, never once escaped by the skin of his teeth, and his
ointment was always free of flies. The Bard, that great master of
vocabulary and wordplay, could do none of these things, for these
metaphors did not enter the English language until close to the time of
his death in 1616. Like so much of the English language, these quaint and
timeless expressions were borrowed from another tonguein this case,
Hebrew.

The introduction of classical Hebrew phrases into the languageone of the
most interesting developments in the shaping of Modern Englishdates from
the early seventeenth century with the arrival of the King James Bible.
King James I, anxious to ensure religious stability in England, agreed to
the production of this new English translation of the Bible. It was
expected to be the best ever, drawing on a translation team of about fifty
leading scholars. Six teams were assembled at Oxford, Cambridge, and
Westminster, and each was entrusted with the task of translating part of
the work.

The authors of The Story of English, a companion to the PBS television
series on the history of the English language, point out that, The King
James Bible was published in the year Shakespeare began work on his last
play, The Tempest. Both the play and the Bible are masterpieces of
English, but there is one crucial difference between them. Whereas
Shakespeare ransacked the lexicon, the King James Bible employs a bare
8,000 wordsGods teaching in homely English for everyman.

True, the Bible used plain and common words, but as American Rabbi William
Rosenau observes, it took those words and molded new forms and phrases,
which, while foreign to the English, became with it flesh and bone. Heres
what happened: The translators believed the best way of ensuring accuracy
was to translate each and every word of the original, one by one. This
literal translation of the Old Testaments Hebrew introduced a large number
of new, and somewhat unusual, phrases into the English language.

The [King James Bible] is an almost literal translation of the Masoretic
text, and is thus on every page replete with Hebrew idioms, writes Rosenau
in Hebraisms in the Authorized Version of the Bible, a careful study of
the way in which the King James Bible translated Hebrew expressions. The
fact that Bible English has to a marvellous extent shaped our speech,
giving peculiar connotations to many words and sanctioning strange
constructions, is not any less patent.

Because the Bibles publicly accessible style could be widely imitated, the
new phrases were easily absorbed, often unconsciously, within everyday
language. Soon, without anyone completely appreciating what was happening,
they began to shape written and spoken English.

The [King James Bible] has beenit can be said without any fear of being
charged with exaggerationthe most powerful factor in the history of
English literature, Rosenau claims. Though the constructions encountered
in the [King James Bible] are oftentimes so harsh that they seem almost
barbarous, we should certainly have been the poorer without it.

Initially, the language of the King James Bible might have seemed odd. We
know that some people found it unnatural, artificial, and stilted. John
Selden, a seventeenth-century Hebrew scholar of considerable distinction,
doubted whether the widespread use of Hebrew idioms would make sense to
the unlearned English public. He insisted that translation required
conversion of Hebrew idioms into real English, not Hebraised English.

If I translate a French book into English, I turn it into English phrase
and not into French English. Il fait froid: I say it is cold, not it makes
cold, he explained. But the Bible is translated into English words rather
than English phrases. The Hebraisms are kept and the phrase of that
language is kept. As for example, he uncovered her shame, which is well
enough so long as scholars have to do with it, but when it comes among the
common people, Lord what gear do they make of it. It is interesting to
note that Seldens English makes perfect sense to modern readers until he
lapses into the slang of his period. (Gear is here best translated as
nonsense!)

Seldens fears proved unfounded. Continuity of usage, through private and
public reading of the King James Bible, soon diminished the apparent
strangeness of the translation. Hebraic phrasesinitially regarded with
some amusement became standard parts of the English language.

English is remarkable in its willingness to invent new words and borrow
existing words. Again and again, linguists find changes that reflect
encounters with other cultures, so that studying the history of the
language is a bit like looking into a verbal melting pot. Hebrew idioms,
for example, were easily absorbed into Modern English, even while their
origins lay at the dawn of civilization in the Ancient Near East.

So today, when we remind our colleagues that pride goes before a fall, or
from time to time accuse them of sour grapes, or pour out our hearts to
them about everything under the sun, let us remember that we are using the
vocabulary of ancient Israel, given a new lease on life. Maybe there is
nothing new under the sun after all. Now wouldnt that be a fly in our
ointment.

List of Hebrew idioms welcomed into Modern English

Related stories:
The Tongue Who Would Be King
Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave
Lost In Translation

http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/