Edited by Helen Moore and Julian Reid

Synopsis:

Manifold Greatness: the Making of the King James Bible tells the story of the commissioning and translation of the King James version of the Bible, first published in 1611. It is richly illustrated with early printed books, manuscripts, artifacts and archival material, such as an annotated Bishops’ Bible of 1602, notes taken at a meeting of one of the translating committees, pages from the Wycliffite and Tyndale translations of the Bible and an edition of the Bishops’ Bible owned by Elizabeth I. Through detailed chapters written by leading scholars in the field, the narrative explores the cultural, religious and material contexts for the translation, its impact in England and the reception of the King James Bible in America. The collection also features a chapter on the King James Bible and other treasures at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC.

Marking the first collaboration of two of the world’s leading libraries, this book brings together key research and documentation to provide a lively and meticulous account of a publishing phenomenon.

Review:

This book was produced to co-incide with an exhibition at the Bodleian and the Folger Shakespearean Libraries. The book charts the genesis and development of the King James Bible into the literary work that it became. The book covers the origins of the project, the translators and the materials and methods used. The book also provides the cultural and political backdrop to the making of the King James Bible.

The book is  informative with lavish illustrations and comes complete with notes and suggested further reading.

Anthony Wood has given us, along with a detailed description of the carvings, the sad story of the shabby treatment which this magnificent spectacle received at the King’s hands.” ‘The effigies of King James’ he writes’ was cut very curiously in stone, sitting in a throne and giving with his right hand a book to the picture or emblem of Fame, with this prescription on the cm·er: Haec habeo, quae scripsi’, with his left hand he reachetll out another book to our mother, the University of Oxford, represented in effigy kne.ling to the King with this inscription’ Haec haebo quae dedi’, On the verge of the canopy over the throne and the King’s head, which is also most admirably cut in stone, is his motto • Beati pacifici ” over that also are the emblems of Justice, Peace and Plenty and underneath all this an inscription in golden letters: Regnante D. Jacobo, regum doctissimo, munificentissimo, optimo hae musis extractae moles, congesta bibliotheca et quaecumque adhuc deerant ad splendorem Academicae felicita tentata, coepta, absoluta, soli deo gloria, all which pictures and emblems were at first with great cost and splendour double gilt, but when King James came from Woodstock to see the quadrangular pile he commanded them (being so glorious and splendid that none, especially when the sun shined, could behold them) to be whitened over and adorned with ordinary colours, which hath since so continued’ .4′

It was indeed unfortunate that His Majesty first saw the statues in the dazzling brightness of an August afternoon, but it is doubtful if such gaudy city taste would have proved acceptable to him, even in more favourable circumstances, for John de Critz, the King’s painter, had some years previously set on foot a fashion for the more sober hues which were then current in fashionable Court circles.4′*

*The Building of the Tower of Five Orders III the Schools’ quadrangle at Oxford

• Oxoniensia