Dengl 42 Lord Melvyn Bragg Speaks About the King James Bible

I was lucky to have been sent a ticket to attend a talk by Lord (Melvyn) Bragg - novelist and well known broadcaster on cultural matters, over several decades; the event took place in the Nave of Westminster Abbey and one could reflect on (or absorb) one's surroundings if all else failed. Behind Bragg was a reredos (Victorian?) with a memorial to Isaac Newton amongst others.


Unfortunately, for a famous and highly feted talker, Bragg left me behind on much of what he had to say. He was near a mike, and I was even nearer a small loudspeaker AND wore my hearing aids. Volume was not the difficulty; diction was.
Bragg was so enthusiastic about his topic that he talked fast; and not just fast at an even speed - interspersing fast and slow as his whim required - but not the whim of the listener. On three occasions he took a swig of water - bending down (out of mike range) talking into a large tumbler - before resuming refreshed. Important observations missed - and attention transferred to irrelevancies.
I have asked speakers at courses I run (including student questioners) many times to try and help - all to no avail.
That is perhaps because most people I ask are still lucky enough to hear well.
but wait -
thanks to the blessings of walkmen and ipods, a wide age band will arrive sooner at the situation I am now describing. I wont be there to savour their feelings - but I can imagine them.

Now - what did Bragg SAY - since I did hear about 40% of what he said?

He spent a good time on the antecedents of KJB - particularly the great figure of William Tyndale. Tyndale produced the right words - many or most of which are monosyllables - which Bragg said contributed to the rhythm,, comprehensibility and impact of Tyndale's English. Presently, England was blessed with Shakespeare - who thrived in the rhetorical culture so enriched by Tyndale. Soon after, when Elizabeth died the Scottish King James VIth became King in London and set up the great project of creating a definitive translation of the Bible into English.
Bragg is a man of the book (perhaps more so than of the microphone) and spoke of the literary qualities of the KJB. There were statistics - so many phrases introduced into the language - but though he is a fellow of the Royal Society (a scientific institution) - he did not approach the text and its influences in a scientific manner. By this I suggest that he could ask certain questions and look for evidence with which to answer them; some such questions are 'positive' ones - does KJB DO X,Y,Z; others are negative ones - does KJB NOT achieve a,b,c, or some other translation achieve it better?
For example - were there translations into other European vernaculars and if so, did they weave together with their countries' histories in ways which were more, equally or less potent than did the KJB in English (for the Anglophone world)?
When the KJB was followed by a Revised version in 1880 did that renew the mission of those who worked with the KJB - or did that mission miss the strength of the now challenged edition? Lord Bragg spoke a good deal about the long campaigns to eradicate slavery and argued (I think, persuasively) that the KJB gave particular strength to the campaigners (and, to the slaves some of whom came across the text)? But would this impact have been greater with a different translation from King James's committee? Or with one of those to come, subsequently?
There is no way to answer that directly - but there may have been certain passages which impeded the great thrust of moral rectitude that came to the fore in Anglophone society - how may KJB have influenced attitudes towards minorities - such as witches, homosexuals, Jews? Lord Bragg did not (I think) have much if anything to say about any 'downside' to the KJB.
This was, after all, an occasion to celebrate its strengths - but one final assertion of Bragg's remains to be worked out: he pointed out that James' son Charles, like his father, believed in what was called the Divine Right of Kings - a doctrine that authority passed directly into the earthly sovereign (at coronation) from the Divinity; Lord Bragg seemed to indicate that this view was reinforced by a reading of texts in KJB. A powerful text, however, is found in First Chronicles Chapter 29 v 11 onwards in which the young King David explicitly disavows a human refraction of Divine authority - the spectacular difference from the behaviour of Pharaohs and Ceasars (and in a small version, of early Stuart Kings) is surely not supported, but repudiated in a KJB text (which is, incidentally, more resonant and moving than are later translations). Not that it can be diluted either, in later texts - but KJB was probably not a thoroughgoing support for quasi-divine regal behaviour.

One can remember these things when walking down Whitehall, past where Charles I had his head cut off, and past Westminster Hall, fronted with the statue of the regicide Cromwell (who also used the KJB).