While the phrasing “the earliest known draft of the King James Version” of the Bible appears to be misleading, this article does reveal that a notebook dating from 1604 to 1608, one belonging to translator Samuel Ward, has been found.
It remains to be seen just how far the discovery of Ward’s notebook will go in re-shaping our understanding of the translators’ work, but the find is certainly exciting on its own. To come that close to one of the possessions of one of the creators of the crown jewel of the English language, to see it, to touch it, to realize what it is you’re holding, is a moment almost beyond description in the life of a scholar.
Other translations have surpassed the KJV for accuracy. The American Standard Version of 1901, for instance, has been described as the “rock of Biblical honesty” by those deeply familiar with the sources. But no translation or paraphrase made in the last 400 hundred years has matched the King James Version’s combination of fidelity to the original Greek and Hebrew texts and felicity of phrasing on every page. It’s regarded as an astonishing performance by every lover of seventeenth-century literature, and a treasure of unspeakable comfort to those who believe in the spiritual life its pages present.
Everyone who’s read at least part of the Bible has favorite passages. For sheer beauty of the language, a few of my favorites are the Psalms, especially Ps. 23 and Ps. 91; the Book of Esther; the book of Isaiah, especially chapter 40; John 17; I Corinthians 13; and Revelation 22. “All things are possible,” the Book says, yet I feel confident in saying that though the human race may be writing 10,000 years from now, we will not have produced, from this time to that, any poetry or prose that matches the King James Version for the loveliness of its words or the claims to truth it makes upon our lives.
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