1. Church Times（http://churchtimes.co.uk）
Issue 7757
It’s the Bible: don’t expect it to be easy, says Dr Williams, 18 November 2011
by Glyn Paflin
TODAY’s Bible translators should turn to the King James Version (KJV) when they are tempted to try to make the scriptures seem more accessible than they really are, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Wednesday afternoon.
Speaking in Westminster Abbey at the service in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the KJV, Dr Williams warned: “To celebrate the Bible of 1611 is not to genuflect before a timeless masterpiece, to salute a perfect translation; the translators would have been both baffled and embarrassed by any such idea.
“It is to recognise the absolute seriousness with which they sought to find in our language words that would pass on to us hearers and readers in the English tongue the almost unbearable weight of divine and intelligence and love pressing down on those who first en¬countered it and tried to embody it in writing.”
The Archbishop began his sermon by asking what made a good translation. “A good translation”, he suggested, “will be an invitation to read again, and to probe, and reflect, and imagine with the text. Rather than letting me say, ‘Now I understand,’ it prompts the response, “Now the work begins.’”
To translate any work of significance was to reveal, but not exhaust, a range of meanings in the original. “We have all suffered from a mindset in the last couple of centuries that has assumed there is an end to translating and under¬standing, and thus that there is something wrong with any version of a text that fails to settle disputes and to provide an account of the truth that no one could disagree with. But what the 1611 translators grasped was that hearing the Word of God was a lifelong calling that had to be undertaken in the company of other readers, and was never something that left us where we started.”
What made a good translation was that there was no attempt to smooth over the stumbling. “The 1611 translators never let us down in this, never seek to make it easy. It is one of the things that gives this version its abiding importance. It remains an invitation to work, to open up our own language to this weight and presence of gift.”
The English Reformation had often made use of the phrase “God’s Word written” to describe scripture, he said. “We should not take this to mean a mechanical dictation; rather it says that when human language writes what God does and says in all his acts throughout history, the Bible is what it looks like — wax bearing the imprint of . . . the weight of the Word. To read or rather to hear that Word in our reading and hearing of scripture is not to thumb through a volume of records and commands, but to absorb scripture’s language in such a way, at such a depth, that we sense that weight and accept the burden and the joy of labouring at a lifelong response to it.”
2. Bible Society（http://www.biblesociety.org.uk）
The People’s Bible is completed and the UK tour ends at Westeminster Abbey, 18 November 2011
The world’s first digital, handwritten Bible has been completed.
Over the last 5 months, the People’s Bible tour has visited 202 towns, cities and villages across Great Britain, travelled over 17,000 thousand miles, and seen more than 22,000 people write out two verses of the Bible.
The final two verses (Revelation 22:20-1) were written by The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, the Dean of Westminster – completing the first digital handwritten bible which can be viewed at www.thepeoplesbible.org.uk
To celebrate this unique achievement on Wednesday 16/11/11 a bound copy of the book of Genesis was presented at the altar, at Westminster Abbey, during a service of celebration to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible organised by the King James Bible Trust.
HRH The Prince of Wales wrote the first two verses (Genesis 1:1-2) of the People’s Bible. Since then another 31,100 verses of the King James Bible have been written.
The tour has visited the Orkney Islands, the Isle of Man, Jersey, the Occupy London protest outside at St Paul’s Cathedral, Devon; Whitby; London; Glasgow; Swansea and Wrexham – amongst many others.
More than 22,000 people across Great Britain took up the challenge to ‘make your mark in history,’ by completing the first ever digital handwritten Bible – which will remain online for perpetuity.
The project was launched 19th June, at Edinburgh Castle - the anniversary of the birth of King James VI of Scotland there in 1566.
Backers of the project included David Cameron, Prunella Scales, Timothy West and Andrew Lancel (Frank Foster in Corrie); the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams; BBC broadcaster, Jeremy Vine, author/broadcaster Gyles Brandreth and the comedian, Frank Skinner.
Celebrity verses, including the Prime Minister’s and HRH The Prince of Wales’s can be viewed at http://www.thepeoplesbible.org/view-a-verse/celebrity-verses/
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