An American academic has discovered the earliest known first draft of the King James Bible in a notebook at the University of Cambridge. This edition of the Bible is the most widely read book in the English language and sits alongside the work William Shakespeare as one of the central pillars of English literature.
Jeffrey Alan Miller, an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, found the notebook, which dates from 1604-1608, while working in the archives of Sidney Sussex College. The notebook belonged to Samuel Ward, who was as one of seven translators for the King James Bible and later became the college's master.
"There was a kind of thunderstruck, leap-out-of-bathtub moment," Professor Miller told The New York Times. "But then comes the more laborious process of making sure you are 100 percent correct."
If Miller is correct, then his discovery helps prove that the King James Bible was a joint effort.
On Wednesday, Miller wrote an article for The Times Literary Supplement in which he detailed his discovery.
"It represents not just the earliest draft of the KJB now known to survive, but one utterly unlike any previously found," Miller wrote. "Ward's draft alone bears all the signs of having been a first draft, just as it alone can be definitively said to be in the hand of one of the King James translators themselves."
He added: "The true value of Ward's draft, though, lies less in the sheer fact of its uniqueness, and more in what the draft, in its uniqueness, helps to reveal about one of the seventeenth century's most extraordinary cultural achievements."
According to The New York Times, the discovery helps shed light on how the King James Bible was produced. The first edition, which was published in 1611, was produced by six "companies" of translators, based in London, Oxford and Cambridge. The Church of England employed the companies to create an authorised version of the Bible, which no longer carried the Puritan influence seen in some earlier translations.
In July, researchers at the University of Birmingham found fragments of text belonging to a copy of the Koran, believed to be at least 1,370 years old.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
