In his book, God's secretaries - the making of the 1611 King James Bible (KJV), Adam Nicholson sets a wonderful historical and political context, bringing to life the characters who not only translated the ancient texts but redefined the English language. The blog author's comments below are really just a 'highlight reel' for themes which in all their subtleties demand hundreds of pages of thoughtful examination.
Amusingly, Adam Nicholson's book describes the 'hidden' agenda of the earlier Geneva Bible where the word King was unfailingly translated as Tyrant, an apt illustration of just how much changing just one word from a work can change its whole meaning, let alone its subtle vibration.
Amusingly, Adam Nicholson's book describes the 'hidden' agenda of the earlier Geneva Bible where the word King was unfailingly translated as Tyrant, an apt illustration of just how much changing just one word from a work can change its whole meaning, let alone its subtle vibration.
The KJV represented the 'authorized version', tempering Dwapara Yuga reformism of the kind found in the Geneva Bible with a conservative Anglicanism characteristic of the waning years of Kali Yuga, as encompassing of divergent opinions as possible while still respectful of the power and wealth in established hierarchies.
This was the English response to the wider battle between the collectivistic, hierarchically oriented Catholicism and more privately and individually oriented Protestantism of the time.
As any reader will know, 1600 was the last 100 year sandhi of rising Kali Yuga.
William Tyndale died a half century before. His wish was that a plough boy reading from an English version of the Bible might know more of scripture than even the Pope. Such a democratizing access to scripture threatened to undermine both priestly and kingly authority and he was sentenced, strangled and burned at the stake for heresy. His last words were prophetic -"Lord! Open the King of England's eyes!" since three quarters of his translation made it into the Bible authorized by King James.
The striking passage below comes from the original preface to the KJV:
As any reader will know, 1600 was the last 100 year sandhi of rising Kali Yuga.
William Tyndale died a half century before. His wish was that a plough boy reading from an English version of the Bible might know more of scripture than even the Pope. Such a democratizing access to scripture threatened to undermine both priestly and kingly authority and he was sentenced, strangled and burned at the stake for heresy. His last words were prophetic -"Lord! Open the King of England's eyes!" since three quarters of his translation made it into the Bible authorized by King James.
The striking passage below comes from the original preface to the KJV:
"It is not an herb, but a tree, or rather a whole paradise of trees of life, which bring forth fruit every month, and the fruit thereof is for meat, and the leaves for medicine. It is not a pot of Manna, or a cruse of oil, which were for memory only, or for a meal's meat or two, but as it were a shower of heavenly bread sufficient for a whole host, be it never so great; and as it were a whole cellar full of oil vessels; whereby all our necessities may be provided for, and our debts discharged. "
The author could not help but think of the Autobiography from 1946 and Yogananda's Gita commentaries - from Kriyananda's the New Path:
“A new scripture has been born!” Master spoke ecstatically. His commentary on the Bhagavad Gita had been finished. In three months of unbroken dictation he had completed 1,500 pages. “I told Miss Taylor the pages numbered that many, but she carefully counted them to make sure I was right!”
Master and I were walking around the compound of his retreat. Having finished his manuscript, he had summoned me at last to help him with the preliminary editing.
“A new scripture has been born!” he repeated. “Millions will find God through this book. Not just thousands. Millions! I have seen it. I know.”
The KJV, the Autobiography and the Gita commentaries are works both of incredible depth and beauty, the words of this blog are no more than mere doodles in the margin.
For the author, like many Church educated Westerners, having closely examined scripture, the key to the inner meaning of the Bible was found through Yogananda's presentation of the Gita, building upon a foundation of comparisons of many different Bible Editions in English and other languages.
Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same as prophets return time after time to refresh the same eternal truths in manners befitting the times, from simple agricultural parables with Jesus in Kali Yuga to the sophisticated Yogic interpretations of Yogananda in Dwapara Yuga, implicitly reiterating the same messages from previous higher ages.
The author could not help but think of the Autobiography from 1946 and Yogananda's Gita commentaries - from Kriyananda's the New Path:
“A new scripture has been born!” Master spoke ecstatically. His commentary on the Bhagavad Gita had been finished. In three months of unbroken dictation he had completed 1,500 pages. “I told Miss Taylor the pages numbered that many, but she carefully counted them to make sure I was right!”
Master and I were walking around the compound of his retreat. Having finished his manuscript, he had summoned me at last to help him with the preliminary editing.
“A new scripture has been born!” he repeated. “Millions will find God through this book. Not just thousands. Millions! I have seen it. I know.”
The KJV, the Autobiography and the Gita commentaries are works both of incredible depth and beauty, the words of this blog are no more than mere doodles in the margin.
For the author, like many Church educated Westerners, having closely examined scripture, the key to the inner meaning of the Bible was found through Yogananda's presentation of the Gita, building upon a foundation of comparisons of many different Bible Editions in English and other languages.
Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same as prophets return time after time to refresh the same eternal truths in manners befitting the times, from simple agricultural parables with Jesus in Kali Yuga to the sophisticated Yogic interpretations of Yogananda in Dwapara Yuga, implicitly reiterating the same messages from previous higher ages.
American Footnote
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The Geneva was the Bible the Puritans took to New England, away from the control of the Bishops and the King. Ironically, as the Puritans themselves gained in wealth and power, the KJV better fitted their needs, linking loyalty to God with loyalty to wealth and power in the established earthly authorities.
Today, in the author's opinion, the best Bible Translation is the 1978 New International Version, based on much stronger scholarship.
Part of the Kali Yuga influence in the KJV can be seen in the translation of the Greek word for congregation as church, emphasizing the role of hierarchies and the money needed for the upkeep of cathedrals, hermitages and priests rather than something that could be accomplished in private or informal gatherings in peoples' own homes.
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