As a society we like to focus on the negative. Why this is I do not know. But if an artist wants to be taken seriously, you need to focus on something ugly or horrifying, work out of a Jungian shadow. Everybody is up to something, everyone’s motives are ulterior. Cynicism is the ultimate virtue. But in doing this we miss a lot of positive things. Life is actually a mix of good bad and indifferent, as is art, history and any other field of human endeavour or study.
Everyone’s favourite whipping boy at present is religion. People like to think they gain instant credibility, intelligence and perspicacity by declaring themselves atheist, and dismissing anyone who thinks otherwise as stupid, ignorant, or dangerous – or all three. Do not misunderstand me here; I know any number of atheists who are intelligent, perspicacious, and for that matter lovely, but I also know a lot of people with belief who I would describe the same way. And as for the stupid, ignorant, and dangerous – well, belief or disbelief in God doesn’t seem to affect those descriptors in any way either. Nor am I going to pretend that bad hasn’t been done either in God’s name or by those who claim to represent him, either on a personal or organisational level. Horrible, evil things have been done, and continue to be done, in God’s name. I don’t have to convince you of that.
But what I would suggest, and what is forgotten, is that much good has been done and continues to be done, in God’s name. (And please don’t direct me to ‘debates’ between celebrities, decided by the acclaim of the audience.) And much of it is forgotten and denigrated, because now of course, we are much smarter and more worldly than any generation that came before us, and can see things from perspectives they did not know. I know we think that, because every generation does. But it’s entirely possible we’re wrong.
Melvyn Bragg’s new book The Book of Books: The radical impact of the King James Bible 1611-2011 is the story of the King James Bible and its impact on its readers and the world. As this was the book of the British Empire, and taken to all corners of the globe, you can imagine its impact has been massive. Rather unusually for a modern writer, Bragg focuses on the positive impact it has had. Crazy, right?
The King James Bible is probably the last effective thing a committee ever devised, and while Shakespeare has given us more words, the King James Bible has given us more phrases. It was written to be read out loud, hence the beauty of its language and its rhythms. And so its impact on our language and our literature has been enormous, right down to the modern day. But Bragg goes much further than that. He suggests modern democracy, wide-spread education, abolition of slavery, female liberation and the war on poverty are all, at least in part, direct results of people being able to read the Bible in their own language, in a beautiful language, and being able to interpret it for themselves. In doing so, they found the intellectual argument and the spiritual strength to right the wrongs they saw around them. It even led to the Enlightenment and the questioning of the veracity of the Bible itself. A classic own-goal you might think. No, the King James Bible has survived all that and more. There is something to it, much more than can be measured or seen.
We often talk about universal human rights and truths. I’m not sure there is anything natural or universal about them. I think they were created and defined by people, many of them driven by their religious beliefs, and the spread of those ideas to the point where we think of them as universal has been difficult and costly. To dismiss those who did so, and the traditions out of which they came, is insulting and frankly ignorant.
The Book of Books is not as compelling a read as I would have liked but it is well-written and makes a good argument. And it is a refreshing change from the gloom we have about our history and our culture. Here are admirable men and women and no matter what you think about their beliefs, as Bragg points out, you have to respect the ideas, the strength and the courage those beliefs gave them. These are people who left the world a better place than they found it. How many of us will be able to say the same thing?
The King James Bible: it’s almost worth going C of E for.
Beautiful books are beautiful books. Hitchens, in his final chapter of God is Not Great (one of the anti-religion books in the recent 'whipping boy' series) calls for a new enlightenment. I agree. And in so doing, it will be necessary once again to source books like the KJV, the Koran etc in order to reject them as benchmarks for a greater human consciousness.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the use of re-evaluating any book if you have decided at the outset to reject them? I don't understand what is being proposed here.
ReplyDeleteThen...let's not re-evaluate it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that the translation should be rejected as a piece of fine literature, but as you know, I cannot accept as any more than that. Those of the Enlightmentt who concentrated on the work as the potential word of God either ended up rejecting the God of the bible...or they broadened immeasurably the concept of a god so as to make the Abrahamic one seem as it is...small, petty, vengeful and a product of its time. In that sense, the KJV served a great purpose. But if we do need a new Enlightenment, as Hitchens says in the closing of his God is Not Great, how reliant need we be on such books?
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