The King James Bible, 1611

857 Pages·3.271 MB·English

The King James Bible
About the Bible
The Holy Bible is the sacred book or Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. The Bible of
Judaism and the Bible of Christianity are different in some important ways. The Jewish
Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures, 39 books originally written in Hebrew, except for a few
sections in Aramaic. The Christian Bible is in two parts, the Old Testament and the 27
books of the New Testament. The Old Testament is structured in two slightly different
forms by the two principal divisions of Christendom. The version of the Old Testament
used by Roman Catholics is the Bible of Judaism plus 7 other books and additions to
books; some of the additional books were originally written in Greek, as was the New
Testament. The version of the Old Testament used by Protestants is limited to the 39
books of the Jewish Bible. The other books and additions to books are called the
Apocrypha by Protestants; they are generally referred to as deuterocanonical books by
Roman Catholics.
The term Bible is derived through Latin from the Greek biblia, or “books,” the
diminutive form of byblos, the word for “papyrus” or “paper,” which was exported from
the ancient Phoenician port city of Biblos. By the time of the Middle Ages the books of
the Bible were considered a unified entity.

Order of the Books
The order as well as the number of books differs between the Jewish Bible and the
Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Bible. The Bible of Judaism is in three
distinct parts: the Torah, or Law, also called the books of Moses; the Nebiim, or
Prophets, divided into the Earlier and Latter Prophets; and the Ketubim, or Writings,
including Psalms, wisdom books, and other diverse literature. The Christian Old
Testament organizes the books according to their type of literature: the Pentateuch,
corresponding to the Torah; historical books; poetical or wisdom books; and prophetical
books. Some have perceived in this table of contents a sensitivity to the historical
perspective of the books: first those that concern the past; then, the present; and then, the
future. The Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Old Testament place the books
in the same sequence, but the Protestant version includes only those books found in the
Bible of Judaism. The New Testament includes the four Gospels; the Acts of the
Apostles, a history of early Christianity; Epistles, or letters, of Paul and other writers; and
an apocalypse, or book of revelation. Some books identified as letters, particularly the
Book of Hebrews, are theological treatises.

Use
The Bible is a religious book, not only by virtue of its contents but also in terms of its use
by Christians and Jews. It is read in practically all services of public worship, its words
form the basis for preaching and instruction, and it is used in private devotion and study.
The language of the Bible has informed and shaped the prayers, liturgy, and hymnody of
Judaism and Christianity. Without the Bible these two religions would have been
virtually speechless. Both the confessed and actual importance of the Bible differ
considerably among the various subdivisions of Judaism and Christianity, but all
adherents ascribe some degree of authority to it. Many confess that the Bible is the full
and sufficient guide in all matters of faith and practice; others view the authority of the
Bible in the light of tradition, or the continuous belief and practice of the church since
apostolic times.

Biblical Inspiration
Early Christianity inherited from Judaism and took for granted a view of the Scriptures as
authoritative. No formal doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture was initially propounded,
as was the case in Islam, which held that the Koran was handed down from heaven.
Christians generally believed, however, that the Bible contained the word of God as
communicated by his Spirit—first through the patriarchs and prophets and then through
the apostles. The writers of the New Testament books, in fact, appealed to the authority
of the Hebrew Scriptures to support their claims concerning Jesus Christ. The actual
doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of its words
arose during the 19th century in response to the development of biblical criticism,
scholarly studies that seemed to challenge the divine origin of the Bible. This doctrine
holds that God is the author of the Bible in such a way that the Bible is his word. Many
theories explaining the doctrine have been suggested by biblical scholars and theologians.
The theories range from a direct, divine, verbal dictation of the Scriptures to an
illumination aiding the inspired writer to understand the truth he expressed, whether this
truth was revealed or learned by experience.

Importance and Influence
The importance and influence of the Bible among Christians and Jews may be explained
broadly in both external and internal terms. The external explanation is the power of
tradition, custom, and creed: Religious groups confess that they are guided by the Bible.
In one sense the religious community is the author of Scripture, having developed it,
cherished it, used it, and eventually canonized it (that is, developed lists of officially
recognized biblical books). The internal explanation, however, is what many Christians
and Jews continue to experience as the power of the contents of the biblical books
themselves. Ancient Israel and the early church knew of many more religious books than
the ones that constitute the Bible. The biblical books, however, were cherished and used
because of what they said and how they said it; they were officially canonized because
they had come to be used and believed so widely. The Bible truly is the foundation
document of Judaism and Christianity. It is commonly known that the Bible, in its
hundreds of different translations, is the most widely distributed book in human history.
Moreover, in all its forms, the Bible has been enormously influential, and not only among
the religious communities that hold it sacred. The literature, art, and music of Western
culture in particular are deeply indebted to biblical themes, motifs, and images.
Translations of the Bible, such as the Authorized Version (or King James Version, 1611)
and Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German (first completed in 1534) not
only influenced literature but also shaped the development of languages. Such effects
continue to be felt in emerging nations, where translations of the Bible into the vernacular
help to shape language traditions.
The Old Testament
It is remarkable that Christianity includes within its Bible the entire scriptures of another
religion, Judaism. The term Old Testament (from the Latin word for “covenant”) came to
be applied to those Scriptures on the basis of the writings of Paul and other early
Christians who distinguished between the “Old Covenant” that God made with Israel and
the “New Covenant” established through Jesus Christ. Because the early church believed
in the continuity of history and of divine activity, it included in the Christian Bible the
written records of both the Old and the New covenants. Old Testament Literature The
Old Testament may be viewed from many different perspectives. From the viewpoint of
literature, the Old Testament—indeed, the entire Bible—is an anthology, a collection of
many different books. The Old Testament is by no means a unified book in terms of
authorship, date of composition, or literary type; it is instead a veritable library. Generally
speaking, the books of the Old Testament and their component parts may be identified as
narratives, poetic works, prophetic works, law, or apocalypses. Most of these are broad
categories that include various distinct types or genres of literature and oral tradition.
None of these categories is limited to the Old Testament; all are found in other ancient
literature, especially that of the Near East. It is noteworthy, however, that certain types
did not find their way into the Old Testament. Letters, or epistles, so important in the
New Testament, are not found as separate books (except for the Letter of Jeremiah in
some manuscript traditions). Autobiography, drama, and satire are not found at all. It is
particularly striking that most Old Testament books contain several literary genres.
Exodus, for example, contains narrative, laws, and poetry; most prophetic books include
narratives and poetry in addition to prophetic genres as such. Narratives In both outline
and content, a great many Old Testament books are narratives; that is, they report the
events of the past. If they have, as most do, a plot (or at least the development of tension
and its resolution), characterization of the participants, and a description of the setting
where the events occurred, then they are stories. On the other hand, a great many
narrative works of the Old Testament are histories—although they would not fit a
scholarly definition of the term. A history is a written narrative of the past that is guided
by the facts, as far as the writer can determine and interpret them, and not by some
aesthetic, religious, or other consideration. The historical narratives of the Old Testament
are popular rather than critical works, because the writers often used oral traditions, some
of them unreliable, to write their accounts. Moreover, all these narratives were written for
a religious purpose; they may therefore be called salvation histories, because they are
concerned with showing how God was active in human events. Examples of such works
are the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy through 2 Kings; see below), the
Tetrateuch (Genesis through Numbers), and the Chronicler’s History (1 and 2 Chronicles,
Ezra, and Nehemiah). The so-called Throne Succession History of David (see 2 Samuel
9-20, 1 Kings 1-2) comes closer to the modern understanding of history than does any
other biblical narrative. The writer was sensitive to the details of historical events and
characters, and he interpreted the course of affairs in the light of human motivations.
Nonetheless, he could see the hand of God moving behind the scenes. Other narrative
books are Ruth, a short story; Jonah, a didactic, or teaching, story; and Esther, a historical
romance or a festival legend. It is likely that such books developed from folktales or
legends. Several didactic stories are found in the deuterocanonical books of the Bible and
in the Apocrypha: Tobit, Judith, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. Many of these and
other narrative genres are found within the books of the Old Testament.
The Book of Genesis is composed, as are most of the other narrative works, of numerous
individual stories, most of which originally circulated independently and orally. The
patriarchal stories in Genesis 11-50 have been called legends, sagas, and—more
accurately—family stories. Many of them are etiological; that is, they explain some
place, practice, or name in terms of its origin.

Poetic Works
The poetic books of the Old Testament may be taken to include Psalms, Job, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (Songs), and in the deuterocanonical books and the
Apocrypha, Sirach and the Prayer of Manasseh. The Book of Wisdom has much in
common with the poetic wisdom books, but it is not poetry. Most of the prophetic books
are written in Hebrew poetry, but they are sufficiently distinctive to be considered
separately.

General Characteristics
Hebrew poetry has two major characteristics, one relatively easy to recognize even in
translation and the other difficult to discern. The more obvious characteristic is the use of
parallelismus membrorum, or parallelism of lines or other parts. For example, the
meaning of one line may be restated or paralleled by a second line, as in Psalms 6:1: “O
Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy wrath.” These two lines are
synonymous. On the other hand, the second line in the unit may state the negative side of
the first line’s point, as in Proverbs 15:1: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh
word stirs up anger.” In other cases, the second line may extend or explain the first, and
in still others, the parallelism is merely formal. Parallelism can in some instances extend
to three or more lines. One major advantage of most modern English translations of the
Bible is that they retain the poetic form of the Hebrew, enabling the reader to enjoy and
understand the structure of the original. The other major feature of Hebrew poetry is
rhythm, which seems to have been based on the number of accents in each line. One of
the more easily recognized meters is that of the qina, or dirge, in which the first line has
three beats or accented syllables and the second line has two. The poetic books include a
great many diverse genres. The most widespread types are the various songs of worship
(Psalms) and wisdom poetry. In addition, the Bible contains one book of love poetry, the
Song of Solomon (Songs).

Lyrical Poetry
Israel’s worship literature was lyrical poetry, that is, poetry meant to be sung. Most, but
not all, of these songs are collected in the books of Psalms. Many are hymns—songs in
praise of God himself, his works on behalf of Israel, or his creation. Others are communal
laments or complaint songs, which were, in effect, prayers of petition sung by the people
when they were faced with trouble. Approximately one-third of the Psalms are individual
laments or complaints, songs used by or on behalf of individuals facing death or disaster.
When the nation or the individual has been saved from trouble, thanksgiving songs would
be sung. A few Psalms, such as 2, 45, and 110, celebrate the coronation of a king in Israel
as God’s special servant.

Wisdom Poetry
The wisdom poetry includes collections of wisdom sayings and short poems, as in the
Book of Proverbs, and long compositions such as Job, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach. The
shorter wisdom materials are proverbs, sayings, and admonitions, commonly only two
lines long. Some were undoubtedly traditional or popular sayings; others bear the marks
of thoughtful and creative composition. Proverbs 1-9 contains a collection of poems on
the nature of wisdom itself, but the Book of Job is a lengthy poetic composition in the
form of a dialogue framed by a folktale. Ecclesiastes is a somewhat disjointed work;
Sirach is a book written by a Jewish teacher and later translated by his grandson. The
subject matter of the wisdom sayings ranges from practical advice for living a good and
successful life to reflections on the relationship between following the wise path and
obedience to the divinely revealed law. Job, at least on one level, agonizes over the
question of the suffering of the righteous, and Ecclesiastes meditates sadly on the
meaning of life in the face of death.

Prophetic Materials
Prophets were known elsewhere in the ancient Near East, but no other culture developed
a body of prophetic literature comparable to that of Israel. Ancient Egyptian writers
produced literary works called “prophecies,” for example, but these writings are different
in both form and content from the biblical prophetic books. Most Hebrew prophetic
books contain three kinds of literature: narratives, prayers, and prophetic speeches. The
narratives generally are stories or reports of prophetic activity, either attributed to the
prophet himself or told by some third person. They include vision reports, reports of
symbolic actions, accounts of prophetic activities such as conflicts between the prophets
and their opponents, and historical narratives or notes. One book in the prophetic
collection, Jonah, is actually a story about a prophet, including only one line of prophetic
address (see Jonah 3:4). The prayers include hymns and petitions such as Jeremiah’s
complaints (for example, Jeremiah 15:10-21). Speeches predominate in the prophetic
literature, for the essence of prophetic activity was to announce the word of God
concerning the immediate future. The most common addresses are prophecies of
punishment or of salvation. Both of these are framed, as are most prophetic speeches, by
formulas that identify the words as revealed by God; for example, “thus says the Lord.”
The prophecy of punishment usually gives reasons for the punishment in terms of social
injustice, religious arrogance, or apostasy and spells out the nature of the disaster—
military or otherwise—to be visited upon the nation, group, or individual addressed. The
prophecies of salvation announce God’s impending intervention to rescue Israel. Other
speeches include prophecies against foreign nations, woe speeches enumerating the sins
of the people, and admonitions or warnings.
Law
Legal materials are sufficiently prominent in the Hebrew Scriptures that the term Torah
(Law) came to be applied in Judaism to the first five books, and in early Christianity to
the entire Old Testament. Legal writings dominate in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers. The fifth book of the Bible was called Deuteronomy (“second law”) by its
Greek translators, although the book is primarily a report of the last words and deeds of
Moses. It does, however, contain numerous laws, often in the context of interpretation
and preaching. According to biblical tradition, the will of God was revealed to Israel
through Moses when the covenant was made at Mount Sinai. Consequently, all the
laws—except those in Deuteronomy—are found in Exodus 20 through Numbers 10,
where the events at Mount Sinai are reported. Scholars have recognized in the Hebrew
laws two major types, the apodictic and the casuistic. Apodictic law is represented by, but
not limited to, the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:1-21, 34:14-26; Deuteronomy
5:6-21). These laws, usually found in collections of five or more, are short, unambiguous,
and unequivocal statements of the will of God for human behavior. They are either
commands (positive) or prohibitions (negative). The casuistic laws, on the other hand,
each consist of two parts. The first part states a condition (“If a man steals an ox or a
sheep, and kills it or sells it …”) and the second part the legal consequences (”… he shall
pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep,” Exodus 22:1). These laws generally
concern problems that arise in agricultural and town life. The casuistic laws are parallel
in form, and frequently in content, to laws found in the Code of Hammurabi and other
ancient Near Eastern law codes.

Apocalyptic Writings
The apocalypse as a distinctive genre arose in Israel in the postexilic period, that is, after
the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews from 586 to 538 BC. An apocalypse, or revelation,
contains the disclosure of future events by means of a lengthy and detailed dream or
vision report. It makes use of highly symbolic and often bizarre images, which in turn are
explained and interpreted. Apocalyptic writings generally reflect the author’s historical
view of his own era as a time when the powers of evil are gathering to make their final
struggle against God, after which a new age will be established. Daniel is the only
apocalyptic book as such in the Hebrew Scriptures, and its first half (chap. 1-6) is
actually a series of legendary stories. Sections of other books, however, are similar in
many respects to apocalyptic literature (see Isaiah 24-27; Zechariah 9-14; and some parts
of Ezekiel). In the Apocrypha, 2 Esdras is an apocalypse. Judaism in the last two
centuries BC and the first century AD produced numerous other apocalyptic works that
were never considered canonical. These include Enoch, the War of the Sons of Light and
the Sons of Darkness, and the Apocalypse of Moses. Until recently, most scholars argued
that the development of apocalyptic literature and thought was strongly influenced by
Persian religion. That view is being challenged by the recognition of the roots of
apocalyptic literature in Israelite thought itself, especially the prophetic understanding of
the future, and in older Near Eastern traditions.
The Development of the Old Testament
By no means did all the books of the Old Testament originate at the same time and in the
same place; rather, they are the product of Israelite faith and culture over a thousand
years or more. Consequently, another literary perspective examines the books and their
component parts in terms of their authorship and their literary and preliterary history.
Virtually all the books went through a long history of transmission and development
before they were collected and canonized. Moreover, it is necessary to distinguish
between traditional Jewish and Christian views concerning the authorship and date of the
books and their actual literary history as it has been reconstructed by modern scholarship
from the evidence in the biblical books and elsewhere. It is not the aim of this survey to
present a detailed account of the literary history of the Old Testament. Many of the facts
are not known, the history is long and often complicated, and older conclusions regularly
are being revised under the weight of new evidence and methods. The general contours of
that history can, however, be summarized. For most Old Testament books it was a long
journey from the time the first words were spoken or written to the work in its final form.
That journey usually involved many people, such as storytellers, authors, editors,
listeners, and readers. Not only individuals but different communities of faith played their
parts. See the individual entries for each book of the Old Testament. Behind many of the
present literary works stand oral traditions. Most of the stories in Genesis, for example,
circulated orally before they were written down. Prophetic speeches, now encountered in
written form, were first delivered orally. Virtually all the Psalms, whether originally
written down or not, were composed to be sung or chanted aloud in worship. It is not safe
to infer, however, that oral transmission was merely the precursor of written literature
and ceased once books came into being. In fact, oral traditions existed side by side with
written materials for centuries.

The Pentateuch
According to Jewish and Christian tradition, Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, the
first five books of the Bible. Nowhere in the books themselves, however, is this claim
made; tradition stemmed in part from the Hebrew designation of them as the books of
Moses, but that meant concerning Moses. As early as the Middle Ages, Jewish scholars
recognized a problem with the tradition: Deuteronomy (the last book of the Pentateuch)
reports the death of Moses. The books are actually anonymous and composite works. On
the basis of numerous duplications and repetitions, including two different designations
of the deity, two separate accounts of creation, two intertwined stories of the flood, two
versions of the Egyptian plagues, and many others, modern scholars have concluded that
the writers of the Pentateuch drew upon several different sources, each from a different
writer and period. The sources differ in vocabulary, literary style, and theological
perspective. The oldest source is the Jehovistic, or Yahwist (J, from its use of the divine
name Jahwe—modern Jehovah—or Yahweh), commonly dated in the 10th or 9th century
BC. The second is the Elohist (E, from its use of the general name Elohim for God),
usually dated in the 8th century BC. Next is Deuteronomy (D, limited to that book and a
few other passages), dated in the late 7th century BC. Last is the Priestly Writer (P, for its
emphasis on cultic law and priestly concerns), dated in the 6th or 5th century BC. J
includes a full narrative account from creation to the conquest of Canaan by Israel. E is
no longer a complete narrative, if it ever was; its earliest material concerns Abraham. P
concentrates on the covenant and the revelation of the law at Mount Sinai, but sets that
into a narrative that begins with creation. None of the writers of these documents—if they
were individuals and not groups—was a creative author in the modern sense. Rather, they
worked as editors who collected, organized, and interpreted older traditions, both oral and
written. Therefore, most of the contents of the sources are much older than the sources
themselves. Some of the oldest written elements are parts of poetic works such as the
Song of the Sea (see Exodus 15), and some of the legal material was derived from ancient
legal codes. One recent view suggests that the individual stories of the Pentateuch were
collected under the heading of several major themes (Promise to the Patriarchs, Exodus,
Wandering in the Wilderness, Sinai, and Taking of the Land) and took their basic shape
by about 1100 BC. In any case, the story of Israel’s roots was formed in and under the
influence of the community of faith.

Deuteronomistic History
In recent years the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2
Kings have been recognized as a unified account of the history of Israel from the time of
Moses (13th century BC) to the Babylonian exile (the period from the fall of Jerusalem in
586 BC to the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state after 538 BC). Because
the literary style and theological perspective are similar to those of Deuteronomy, this
account is called the Deuteronomistic History. On the basis of the last events it reports,
among other evidence, it seems to have been written about 560 BC, during the exile. It is
possible, however, that at least one edition was written earlier. The writer (or writers) of
the work set out to record Israel’s history and also to account for the disaster that befell
the nation at the hands of the Babylonians. On the one hand, he worked as any other
historian would, by collecting and organizing older sources, both written and oral. He
used materials of many kinds, including stories of the prophets, lists of various sorts,
earlier histories, and even court records. In fact, he often refers the reader to his sources
(for example, see Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18; 2 Kings 15:6). On the other hand,
however, he worked as a theologian—and one who already had firm convictions about
the course and meaning of the events he recorded. He expressed those convictions by the
way he organized the material and by placing speeches, which he had written, into the
mouths of the major characters (for example, see Joshua 1). He believed that Israel had
fallen to the Babylonians because of disobedience to the law of Moses (as in
Deuteronomy), especially in its worship of false gods in false places of worship; he also
believed that the prophets had warned of the exile long before it happened.

The Poetic Books
Both the cultic and wisdom poetry of the Old Testament are difficult to date or to
attribute to particular authorship, primarily because they contain so few historical
allusions. David is regarded as the author of the Psalms because of the tradition that he
was a singer and composer; in fact, only 70 of the 150 Psalms are specifically identified
with David, and far fewer than that originated during his era. The attributions to David
and to others are found in the superscriptions, which were added long after the Psalms
were written. The identification of Proverbs and other wisdom books with Solomon
stems from the tradition of that king’s great wisdom, and is reliable to the extent that
Solomon did encourage institutions that developed such literature. Wisdom poetry
contains in the sayings some of the oldest material in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in
compositions such as Ecclesiastes and Sirach some of the latest. The Book of Psalms
became the hymn and prayer book of Israel’s second temple, but many of the songs
predate the second temple. They contain motifs, themes, and expressions that Israel
inherited from its Canaanite predecessors in the land. Many voices speak in and through
the Psalms, but above all they are the voices of the community at worship.

The Prophetic Books
Few if any of the prophetic books were written entirely by the person whose name serves
as the title. Moreover, in most instances even the words of the original prophet were
recorded by others. The story of Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch (see Jeremiah 36; see also
Isaiah 8:16) illustrates one of the ways the spoken prophetic words became books. The
various utterances of the prophets would have been remembered and collected by their
followers and eventually written down. Later, most of the books were edited and
expanded. For example, when the Book of Amos (circa 755 BC) was used in the time of
the exile, it was given a new and hopeful ending (Amos 9:8-15). The Book of Isaiah
reflects centuries of Israelite history and the work of several prophets and other figures:
Isaiah 1-39 stems primarily from the original prophet (742-700 BC); chapters 40-55 come
from an unknown prophet of the Exile, called Second Isaiah (539 BC); and chapters 56-
66, identified as Third Isaiah, come from various writers of the period after the exile. The
Canon The Hebrew Bible and the Christian versions of the Old Testament were
canonized in different times and places, but the development of the Christian canons must
be understood in terms of the Jewish Scriptures.

The Hebrew Canon
The idea in Israel of a sacred book dates at least from 621 BC. During the reform of
Josiah, king of Judah, when the temple was being repaired, the high priest Hilkiah
discovered “the book of the law” (see 2 Kings 22). The scroll was probably the central
part of the present Book of Deuteronomy, but what is important is the authority that was
ascribed to it. More reverence was paid to the text read by Ezra, the Hebrew priest and
scribe, to the community at the end of the 5th century BC (see Nehemiah 8). The Hebrew
Bible became Holy Scripture in three stages. The sequence corresponds to the three parts
of the Hebrew canon: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. On the basis of external
evidence it seems clear that the Torah, or Law, became Scripture between the end of the
Babylonian exile (538 BC) and the separation of the Samaritans from Judaism, probably
by 300 BC. The Samaritans recognized only the Torah as their Bible. The second stage
was the canonization of the Nebiim (Prophets). As the superscriptions to the prophetic
books indicate, the recorded words of the prophets came to be considered the word of
God. For all practical purposes the second part of the Hebrew canon was closed by the
end of the 3rd century, not long before 200 BC. In the meantime other books were being
compiled, written, and used in worship and study. By the time the Book of Sirach was
written (circa 180 BC), an idea of a tripartite Bible had developed. The contents of the
third part, the Ketubim (Writings), remained somewhat fluid in Judaism until after the
fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. By the end of the 1st century AD the rabbis in
Palestine had established the final list. Both positive and negative forces were at work in