The Authorized
Version is not, of course, a purely seventeenth century work. Though the
scholars[3] who wrote and compiled it had before them all the previous
vernacular texts and chose the best readings where they found them or
devised new ones in accordance with the original, the basis is
undoubtedly the Tudor version of Tindall. It has, none the less, the
qualities of the time of its publication. It could hardly have been done
earlier; had it been so, it would not have been done half so well. In it
English has lost both its roughness and its affectation and retained its
strength; the Bible is the supreme example of early English prose style.
The reason is not far to seek. Of all recipes for good or noble writing
that which enjoins the writer to be careful about the matter and never
mind the manner, is the most sure. The translators had the handling of
matter of the gravest dignity and momentousness, and their sense of
reverence kept them right in their treatment of it. They cared
passionately for the truth; they were virtually anonymous and not
ambitious of originality or literary fame; they had no desire to stand
between the book and its readers. It followed that they cultivated that
naked plainness and spareness which makes their work supreme.
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