A History of the English Bible As Literature

by David Norton

• ISBN13: 9780521771405
• ISBN10: 0521771404
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-06-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Revised and condensed from David Norton's acclaimed A History of the Bible as Literature, this book tells the story of English literary attitudes to the Bible. At first jeered at and mocked as English writing, then denigrated as having 'all the disadvantages of an old prose translation', the King James Bible somehow became 'unsurpassed in the entire range of literature'. How so startling a change happened and how it affected the making of modern translations such as the Revised Version and the New English Bible is at the heart of this exploration of a vast range of religious, literary and cultural ideas. Translators, writers such as Donne, Milton, Bunyan and the Romantics, reactionary Bishops and radical students all help to show the changes in religious ideas and in standards of language and literature that created our sense of the most important book in English.

Table of Contents

List of plates	ix
Preface	xi
List of abbreviations	xii
Creators of English	1	(34)
The challenge to the translators	1	(4)
Literal translation: Rolle's Psalter and the Wyclif Bible	5	(5)
William Tyndale	10	(16)
John Cheke and the inkhorn	26	(3)
Myles Coverdale	29	(6)
From the Great Bible to the Rheims-Douai Bible: arguments about language	35	(21)
Official Bibles	35	(4)
Opposing camps	39	(14)
Does the verbal form matter?	53	(3)
The King James Bible	56	(20)
The excluded scholar: Hugh Broughton	56	(4)
Rules to meet the challenge	60	(3)
The preface	63	(7)
Bois's notes	70	(2)
Conclusion	72	(1)
Epilogue: Broughton's last word	73	(3)
Literary implications of Bible presentation	76	(13)
Presentations of the text, 1525--1625	76	(11)
John Locke's criticism of the presentation of the text	87	(2)
The struggle for acceptance	89	(26)
The defeat of the Geneva Bible	89	(5)
The failure of revision	94	(9)
Quoting the good book	103	(4)
The literary reception	107	(8)
The Psalter in verse and poetry	115	(25)
`Fidelity rather than poetry'	115	(6)
`A great prejudice to the new'	121	(4)
An aside: verse epitomes of the Bible	125	(1)
Ideas of biblical poetry	126	(2)
The Sidney Psalms	128	(3)
George Wither and the Psalter	131	(9)
`The eloquentest books in the world'	140	(34)
The eloquent Bible	140	(7)
Divine inspiration	147	(3)
John Donne	150	(2)
Conquering the classics	152	(4)
Conflict over the Bible as a model for style	156	(9)
The Bible `disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled'	165	(2)
Wit, atheism and the sad case of Thomas Aikenhead	167	(7)
Writers and the Bible 1: Milton and Bunyan	174	(14)
`The best materials in the world for poesy'	174	(1)
John Milton	175	(8)
John Bunyan	183	(5)
The early eighteenth century and the King James Bible	188	(30)
`All the disadvantages of an old prose translation'	188	(14)
John Husbands	202	(5)
Anthony Blackwall	207	(3)
`A kind of standard for language to the common people'	210	(8)
Mid-century	218	(24)
Robert Lowth's De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum	218	(11)
Uncouth, harsh and obsolete	229	(13)
The critical rise of the King James Bible	242	(30)
The influence of popular feeling	242	(3)
Lowth and the English Bible	245	(2)
Myths arise	247	(2)
George Campbell and the KJB as a literary example	249	(2)
The KJB in literary discussions of the Bible	251	(8)
Revision or `superstitious veneration'	259	(3)
Rancorous reason and brouhaha	262	(10)
Writers and the Bible 2: the Romantics	272	(27)
The faker and the madman	272	(3)
William Blake and `the poetic genius'	275	(4)
William Wordsworth and the possibility of a new literary sense of the Bible	279	(2)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and `the living educts of the imagination'	281	(6)
Percy Bysshe Shelley and `Scripture as a composition'	287	(3)
An infidel and the Bible: Lord Byron	290	(2)
A Bible for the romantic reader	292	(3)
Charlotte Bronte and the influence of the KJB	295	(4)
Literary discussion to mid-Victorian times	299	(28)
The pious chorus	299	(10)
An inspired translation	309	(3)
The KJB as a literary influence	312	(7)
Parallelism revisited	319	(4)
George Gilfillan and `the lesson of infinite beauty'	323	(4)
The Revised Version	327	(31)
Rules for the revision	327	(5)
The preface to the New Testament	332	(3)
Evidence from the New Testament revisers	335	(1)
An English account of changes in the New Testament	336	(3)
The New Testament revisers at work	339	(2)
The reception of the New Testament	341	(3)
The preface to the Old Testament	344	(3)
An American account of changes in the Old Testament	347	(2)
Notes from the first revision of Genesis	349	(2)
Conclusion	351	(1)
An aside: dialect versions	352	(6)
`The Bible as literature'	358	(29)
The Bible `as a classic': Le Roy Halsey	358	(5)
The American Constitution and school Bible reading	363	(5)
Matthew Arnold	368	(3)
Richard Moulton and literary morphology	371	(5)
Anthologists	376	(5)
Presenting the text as literature	381	(6)
The later reputation of the King James Bible	387	(43)
Testimonies from writers	387	(10)
Fundamentalists and the God-given translation	397	(3)
Modern AVolatry	400	(4)
The Shakespearean touch	404	(3)
Dissenting voices	407	(13)
The Hebrew inheritance and the virtues of literalism	420	(10)
The New English Bible	430	(26)
Aims	430	(9)
Reception	439	(13)
A princely epilogue	452	(4)
Bibliography	456	(7)
General Index	463	(8)
Biblical Index	471