Book Shelf.(Review)

'If everything else in our language should perish, [the King James Version of the Bible] would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power." In these famous words, Thomas Babington Macaulay was speaking for the consensus of his own age, and ours as well. If anything, the decline of traditional faith has only increased the mystique of the King James Version: The agnostic in the faculty lounge may not share a religious creed with the translators of 1611, but he places their work on the same literary level as that of their contemporary, Shakespeare. In a genuinely ironic turn of the word's history, he elevates the KJV to "canonical" status.

The enduring fascination of this work is demonstrated yet again by the simultaneous publication of two new histories, Benson Bobrick's Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired (Simon & Schuster, 379 pp., $26) and Alister McGrath's In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (Doubleday, 340 pp., $24.95). Both books succeed admirably in detailing the historical context-both religious and political-out of which the KJV grew. In the 14th century, John Wycliffe challenged the established English church of his time, insisting, among other things, that the Bible be made available in the language of the common man. In the 15th century, Wycliffe's theological writings had a deep influence on Reformation protomartyr Jan Hus (who even translated one of Wycliffe's tracts into Czech). In the 16th century, arch-Reformer Martin Luther declared: "We are all of us Hussites." At the beginning of the 17th century, the circle was closed: In Wycliffe's own country, James I-the king, and therefore head of the established state religion-commissioned a vernacular translation of the Bible.

McGrath and Bobrick tell the same story at roughly the same length; their style, too, is similar, with Bobrick's account ever so slightly breezier and more journalistic. A reader interested in the history of the English Bible might well begin with either of these books, and continue with a couple of others. A History of the English Bible as Literature by David Norton (Cambridge, 484 pp., $29.95) takes the story of the KJV up to the present day. Just as the KJV itself was not intended to be a translation from scratch, but rather an attempt to improve, where ...