ADAM NICOLSON. GOD'S SECRETARIES: THE MAKING OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.2003. Some reflections by Henk Smidstra.
This book is about the creation of the King James Bible, but has some interesting insights on authority, ecclesiology, and history. The King James Bible, also known as the Authorized Version was begun soon after King James IV of Scotland assumed the British throne as James I in 1603. The author profiles the translators and describes the Jacobean world in which the translation was made. I wish to highlight an item, and focus on an important justice issue that caught my attention; justice, though, is not a central topic in the book, the main theme is that of English translators creating a Bible, balancing opposite world views and combining majesty and simplicity.
Begun in 1604, the translation arose and was influenced by a culture in change and conflict; “It is the product of its time and bears the marks of its making.” “It is a deeply political book,” the author notes in the introduction. There existed antagonistic divisions between Catholics and the Church of England; there were the disputes of radical separatists and the Puritans within the Church of England; there was a new sense of rationalism challenging the traditional and ceremonial in the church, as well as competing with its authority; there arose new ideas of the relationship of the individual and the community to the state and church. It was an era that began to assert the sovereignty of the individual over the sovereignty of the state or church. One could say that sovereignty was moving toward being primarily a matter between the believer and his (or her?) Bible. "The Jacobean period [1603- 1625] was held in the grip of an immense struggle: Between the demands for freedom of the individual conscience and the need for order and an imposed inheritance: between monarchy and democracy; between extremism and toleration"(p. xiii).
It has been said that the reformers dethroned the pope and enthroned the Bible. Perhaps so in Europe, but it was a slower and different process in England, Nicolson suggests. The English protestant monarch as head of the church had assumed wholesale many of the powers previously held by the pope. This Jacobean era also illustrated the ambiguities of the time in its literary works such as Othello, King Lear, Volpone, and the Tempest. All centred on the ambivalences of power, the rights of the individual, the claims of authority and the question of liberty of conscience. The KJ Bible was not a kind of propaganda for an absolutist king, nor was it a preface to the civil war. Its purpose was to unite the people and bring harmony through a middle way, and its focus was on Majesty, not tyranny. It, “…. wished to bring unity by eliding the kingliness of God with the godliness of kings, to make royal power and divine glory into one indivisible garment which could be wrapped around the nation as a whole” (xiv).
The author traces the history of the making of the King James Bible, and describes the human failings, as well as the strengths, of the King and the translators commissioned by the king. The translators are described as all fully human, with deep failures and sin as well as being gifted and passionately devoted to their task of faithfully transcribing the scriptures using the Greek texts as well as existing translations such as William Tyndale’s translation and the Bishops’ Bible. The translators worked from within their own unique Jacobean mental frameworks, influenced by the turbulent times. The 50 or so translators worked out a balanced text, a balance between the mystery and majesty of Revelation as favoured by the Episcopalian translators, and the simplicity and literalness as favoured by the Reformist and moderate Puritan translators. The finished work reflects the balance of both, but perhaps majors on the majesty and mystery of God and His creation; it was meant to be heard read. In the extreme, the two tendencies reflected two diverging world views reflecting the changing times, resulting, at the extremes most tragically, in state oppression and the elimination of the radical puritans, the separatists, and the activist non-conformists. There were two opposing worldviews and ways of regarding human nature, creating conflict, suggests Nicolson (pp. 36-37). One view, enlightenment influenced, regarded human beings as essentially rationalistically spiritual; the other view regarded human beings not as irrational, but as contemplative, inspired by mystery and ritual involvement. The depth of the mysteries of God’s revelation lay not merely in simple, private, subjective, rational, apprehension, but in a deep listening to the teachings and traditions of the early church fathers and being open to the sacred wonder of liturgical worship. The extremes, on each side however, often led the devout and obsessive to brutality or suffering. Many separatist Puritans left for America or the Netherlands for safety from oppression and reprisal.
Nicolson addresses the question of why, what may seem to us minor religious differences to modern sensibilities, such as how to pray, or the use of liturgical crosses and vestments, were considered so absolutely irreligious by the more radical Puritans. What drove the officials of the official Church of England to, prosecute, persecute, and incarcerate the separatists so severely. One conflated answer is that each side believed that the very divine order of God’s creation was being disrespected and threatened in one way or another. The puritan insistence that the church and its bishops and structures were a hindrance to acquiring the pure word of God, which they believed was received subjectively, rationally, almost “intravenously”; ritual and ceremony were considered obstructions to the Word and to personal freedom, a basic right. The episcopal Divines regarded the Puritan extremists as impious, irreverent, and disloyal to the point of sedition, breaking and threatening God’s sacred order for life; national security was at stake. Both sides at the extremes became rigid in their aggressiveness. Both had a very different view of the proper order for life, worship and authority. The depth of their feelings of led to sacred duty on which they put life on the line. In this regard primal cosmological schemas come into play; as one might say today, erupt in an amygdalin, involuntary, way taping into the shadow side of our collective unconscious. An event that shocked the nation at the turn of the 17th century as much as 9-11 shocked the collective sensibilities of our century is explored here by the author to help us understand the extreme violent reaction to perceived threats to individual rights and national security.
Nicolson discusses an act of sedition known as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and describes its impact then, as that of 9-11-2001 for us today. He notes that, "November 5, 1605 changed the world in which the translation was made, but also confirmed the Translators in some of their most deeply held beliefs" (p. 107). The plot reinforced upon them their view of an imperfect world. "The plot acted on their imagination as a drama of everything that should not be, the theatre of the wrong." (p. 107). This wrong was of an ominous primal kind, from the depths of the human shadow…ignited by the darkness of the dark dimension of the cosmos they inhabited… their cosmology; "it seemed to emerge from dark, ominous shadows of a subterranean place, threatening the well-being of the world above it" (p.107). This primal fear of things that go bump in the night, stimulated by the imagined Spector of evil of cosmological scope, triggered exaggerated, paranoid, violent, response, and, as they understood things then, demanded the necessary justice process, as antidote. Much as the 9-11 tragedy elicited a national paranoia regarding a suspected “axis of evil,” the perceived ominous mysterious Spector elicited by the Gunpowder Plot was instrumental in justifying violent retaliation of shock and awe proportions. The Jacobean court responded with its standard protocol of torture for confession, and then to draw, execute, and quarter those beings that were perceived to threaten the very order of existence.
The gunpowder plot had been a planned by a group of Catholic extremists to attempt to assassinate the King by blowing up the House of Lords. The plot was discovered and thus failed, there was no explosion, and no one died; but the event was exploited by the powers that be, suggests Nicolson, and public paranoia united the vision of the need for strong authority and action by state and church, which brought a desperate kind of unity to England in support of King James, more support than he had before. Fear-based response to what was then seen as sedition, threatening the very wellbeing of the state, required the ultimate “punishment.” The plotters received what was sanctioned as justice as fitting the crime according to an ancient code for such crimes: to be tortured for confession, on the feared rack in the Tower of London if necessary, then to be drawn executed and quartered. Nicolson narrates the basic sanctioned procedures performed on, and suffered by, Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit priest who had been accused of knowing about the plot. The details, horrible to our ears, highlights an implicit primal schema of justice that lies deeply imbedded in, not only the souls of the Translators of the King James Bible, but also at the shadows of our modern public opinion about justice for criminals today.
Reflected within the Jacobean conception of justice and primal cosmology is the idea that execution is more a ritual of appeasement of the spirits of the departed dead and to satisfy the anger of an aggrieved god; as well to vindicate the relatives of the victim, and bring purification and peace to the land. Seen this way, justice was a metaphor or morality play acted out here below, in public, upon the body of the condemned. Confession was so important so that the condemned would appear before his or her maker and judge with an unburdened soul, and thus avoid the awful eternal fires of hell’; thus, as such logic might conclude, there would be one less aggrieved and angry spirit to take vengeance here on earth. Torture would begin with light pain, and then increase in severity. The King had instructed, notes Nicolson, “‘If he will not in other ways confesse….the gentle torturs are to be first used unto him, & sic per gradus ad ima tenditur’…. going on to the worst”(p. 109). The rack (racked by pain) was so feared that many “confessed” at the suggestion. We do not know if Father Garret was racked, but, Nicolson describes him as a good man, a godly Jesuit who would consider no untruth, and yet he could not conger up any facts consistent with the imagined cellar and tunnel images of dark surreptitious imagined subversive evil activities, nor convert to the “true faith.” He had counselled no violence against the state or church. He was nevertheless condemned, and drawn, dragged face down through the streets to St. Paul’s Church for execution. In the event of being drawn, a reversal of status of being human was being played out upon the body, a status-degradation of someone from a high place of office being subjected to the lowest position on earth, “….not worthy any more to tread upon the Face the Earth whereof he was made….retrograde to nature…unfit to take benefit of the common air” (p.114). Nicolson continues to quote from original sources the sanctions for the execution according to the standard judicial process of the day:
He shall be strangled, being hanged up by the neck between Heaven and Earth, as deemed unworthy of both, or either; as likewise, that the Eyes of Men may behold, and their Hearts contemn him. Then he is to be cut down alive, and have his Privy Parts cut off and burnt before his Face, as being unworthily begotten, and unfit to leave any Generation after him. His Bowels and inlay’d parts taken out and burnt, who inwardly had conceived and harboured in his heart such horrible Treason. After to have his Head cut off, which had imagined the Mischief. And lastly, his Body to be quartered, and the Quarters set up in some high and eminent Place, to the View and Detestation of Men, and to become a Prey for the Fowls of the Air (p. 115).
Such was the justice served at that time for sedition, murder and papistry. Later, in 1606, the actual convicted plotters also suffered such justice before St. Paul’s church. Seen in context of the political paranoia of the time, and from the ancient notion of justice rooted in animism and mythological lore, it seems to make sense: crimes seen to be a threat to human existence require ritual justice that reverses the crime and cancels the evil curse on the land. The actions of desecration acted out on the body of the condemned seem to metaphorically reverse the value of his/her humanity and make a statement between heaven and earth of vengeance and appeasement. A few centuries later, such public brutality was “civilized” and rationalized by enlightenment criminologists. Punishment was moved behind the wall, out of public sight, and now played out not on the body of the condemned, but now on his/her life- time. As the early criminologists noted, a life sentence behind bars was a more severe punishment than execution, it was in fact a “civil death.” But it met the new social sensitivities arising out of Enlightenment thought. However, if you look closely between the lines at criminal justice policy today, and listen closely to the modern cries for justice by public opinion as channelled to us by the media, you may still see and hear traces from the shadows of that ancient cosmology.
The translators, and Jacobean society, were truly creatures of that time, overlooking the emphasis of Christ's victory and His unmasking of the powers (And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly. Col.2:15 KJ). The King James Bible was written with an implicit eye to the cosmological aspect of evil and darkness, needing the heavy hand of justice to ensure civic peace. The Jacobeans did not seem to contemplate the depth of the effects of Christ’s death and resurrection on the powers of darkness. The translators, however, were under orders not to place marginal notes in the script as had been done in the Geneva Bible. That Bible, popular with the Puritans, had placed explicit marginal notes favouring anti-monarchial, anarchic, protestant, interpretations regarding the absolutely separate roles of the individual, the church, and state. The translators of the King James Bible though, brought their Jacobean sense of organic unity of church state and society to their task. The King James Bible reflects the mystery and miracle of the Word at work in creation and history, as well as the regal majesty of God’s authority in its translation, suggests Nicolson. There is an organic, holistic, unity of creation enmeshed in divine authority, not conditioned by Cartesian rational dualism and emerging bifurcations. The translation contained a balance in fact and metaphor, Nicolson notes (p. 196). Regarding the Majesty and the organic unity of life, Nicolson notes that there is a “….belief in the enormous and overwhelming divine authority, of which royal authority, ‘the powers that be’ as they translated the words of St. Paul [Rom. 13:1], was an adjunct and extension” (p.189).
I find this organic and holistic sense of revelation-in-history still so important and necessary for us today in the 21st century with all its social and categorical divisions, and its functional separations. The Incarnation of Christ demonstrates in majesty and miracle an organic unity of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling humbly, incognito, among us; but it is there, as a spirit of love, not fear! Our 21st century generation must, as did the Jacobean’s, live and move in the context of our times. We live with some clarity in some areas, in others we see through a glass darkly. The arenas of governance and justice are still contentious, and I will say, greatly misunderstood; darkly, still quests for power. Remnants of ancient myths and unconscious apprehensions still erupt into calls for justice today, calls reflecting still the echoes of ancient torture such as, put the screws to em, hold their feet to the fire, string them up, etc. But we must walk humbly here, and be open to recognizing the mind of Christ who is truly our Rex Pacificus, and His way alone will lead us to Shalom. The words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer come to mind here: The voice of the heart is not to be confused with the will of God, nor is any kind of inspiration or any general principal, for the will of God discloses itself ever anew only to him [sic] who proves it ever anew” (Ethics, p. 38).
Lewis B. Smedes, influenced by Anglican theologians, suggests that the Church is mystically entwined with the Life of Christ sacramentally, and thus the incarnation continues through history (All Things Made New, 1970, Eerdmans). The sacrament is sacrificial, and in union with Christ, the Church offers itself sacramentally for the world. In other words human aspirations for power and justice are done in the service of God’s Good rule, sacrificially. The historical, mystical union of the Word-become-Flesh, in continued sacrificial service of the Body of Christ, does not wage a war on crime, but instead wages Peace in self-giving unconditional love.