I am currently trying to finish up the book coming out of our festival last fall, KJV400: Legacy & Impact. As I have been thinking about the impact and influence of the KJV, I have appreciated the King James Bible Trust in London, who also helped to advertise our event as well as others around the world. The Prince of Wales is the Patron of the KJB Trust and this past year gave a brief speech at a reception for the trust where he commented on the value of the King James Bible.
I resonated with much of what he said, so here are a couple of excerpts:
I don’t know about you, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’ve never really understood who it was that decided that for people who aren’t very good at reading, the best things to read are those written by people who aren’t very good at writing! Poetry, I have always thought, is for everybody – even if it’s only a few phrases – but banality is for nobody. It might be accessible for all but so, at the end of the day, is a desert!
So, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are so blessed, I think, really with the King James Version, when you think what trouble King James I took to assemble such a group of learned scholars to ensure that the very best translation was produced and we have benefitted ever since. But one of the things I’ve always felt has been so sad is losing that sense of continuity that we were able to share, many of us, with our predecessors in having this access to such a great translation. And I’ve always felt that, one of the things as I get older, I find, is although I didn’t really understand everything I was hearing, over the years in Church, or wherever, school, in endless Chapel services, you know, as I get older and older and life can sometimes become more challenging here and there, or when particular moments of difficulty confront you, then all these wonderful passages come back, to provide such a degree of comfort and security when you think perhaps there is no hope.