What turns 400 years old this Sunday?

Come Sunday, millions of Americans young and old will pay tribute to those who brought them into this world: Their mothers.

Mothers, indeed, are an important part of our lives, and it is fitting for us to honor them with a day of their own. But for all its fanfare, this day has only been in the national spotlight for about the last 100 years. While the roots of Mother’s Day can be traced back into antiquity, it took our country more than 130 years before we decided to do the same.

But this Sunday marks another special day, likely to go unnoticed by much who profess Christianity because, as a people, we do not seem to understand our roots. It was on this day in 1611 that the King James Bible was first published.

For those of you caught unaware of this momentous occasion, it is no doubt due to all the hoopla of the last 130 years with an almost continuous parade of modern versions since 1881 and the Revised Standard Version. In fact, I just heard that there is yet another new version on the market, the name of which the person who told me could not remember. There are so many versions out there we cannot keep up with all their names, let alone that Sunday will be the birthday of the greatest English translation of all time.

As I said, we need to understand our roots.

What the King James Bible represents is the cumulative efforts of 16th century reformers to get God’s word into the hands of the common people. Until this time, Europe had been ruled by Roman Catholicism. For some 1,000 years they had ruled with an iron hand, and the Bible had been outlawed. Rome had held that only the church could interpret the Bible, and to maintain its monopoly on it, only the clergy could read it — in Latin. The people were at the mercy of the religious hierarchy.

But along came reformers like William Tyndale, who promised to make the plowboy more versed in the scriptures than the average priest. Thus began the race to translate the Bible into English. Were it not for his untimely death being burned at the stake, Tyndale would have completely translated the Bible single-handedly. Yet even in death he left his mark on history, and before being silenced he would pray, “Lord, open the eyes of the king of England.”

God would hear his prayer from that stake and open the eyes of King Henry. Though the English crown would seemingly go through convulsions as Rome would attempt to wrest the throne away from the Protestants, wave after wave of Protestant translation would hit the shores of England until at last Protestantism was firmly established.

For those of you history buffs out there, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was Rome’s final attempt to regain the English crown. Had it been successful, there would have been no King James Version, as work on that translation, which had been started in 1604, would have been immediately halted and Bible burnings, no doubt, would have resumed.

Have you ever wondered why after the King James Bible was translated that there were no other Protestant translations? Why was it that for 270 years people not only came to love the King James Bible, but were also content with it?

If there is one blessing the modern versions do not have, it is that no one is completely satisfied with what has been produced. Even their own translators believe their work is far from perfect. As for their detractors, mistake after mistake is catalogued and put on display.

Not so with the King James Bible. While it is clear this version has had its share of detractors, it is significant that it took so long to produce a new translation, the English Revised Version of 1881. And even then, translators had to fraudulently claim it to be a revision of the King James, such was the attachment of the common people.

Today, if you have no appreciation for the King James Version, and you are a Christian, you really do not understand your own roots.

For English-speaking people, the King James Bible is that silver that has been purified seven times in a furnace of earth. Without it, Christianity would have continued as it had for the 1,000 years previous. And to give it up today is to abandon a heritage that is akin to our own beloved Constitution of the United States.

Ron Hamman is pastor of Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla; contact him at 357-4229 or ron.hamman@gci.net.

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