PDF A history of the english bible as literature, David Norton, Cambridge, 524 pages

A history of the English bible as literature, David Norton, Cambridge, 524 pages

 

Contents
List of plates page ix
Preface xi
List of abbreviations xii
 Creators of English 
The challenge to the translators 
Literal translation: Rolle’s Psalter and the Wyclif Bible 
William Tyndale 
John Cheke and the inkhorn 
Myles Coverdale 
 From the Great Bible to the Rheims-Douai Bible:
arguments about language 
Official Bibles 
Opposing camps 
Does the verbal form matter? 
 The King James Bible 
The excluded scholar: Hugh Broughton 
Rules to meet the challenge 
The preface 
Bois’s notes 
Conclusion 
Epilogue: Broughton’s last word 
 Literary implications of Bible presentation 
Presentations of the text, – 
John Locke’s criticism of the presentation of the text 
 The struggle for acceptance 
The defeat of the Geneva Bible 
v
The failure of revision 
Quoting the good book 
The literary reception 
 The Psalter in verse and poetry 
‘Fidelity rather than poetry’ 
‘A great prejudice to the new’ 
An aside: verse epitomes of the Bible 
Ideas of biblical poetry 
The Sidney Psalms 
George Wither and the Psalter 
 ‘The eloquentest books in the world’ 
The eloquent Bible 
Divine inspiration 
John Donne 
Conquering the classics 
Conflict over the Bible as a model for style 
The Bible ‘disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled’ 
Wit, atheism and the sad case of Thomas Aikenhead 
 Writers and the Bible : Milton and Bunyan 
‘The best materials in the world for poesy’ 
John Milton 
John Bunyan 
 The early eighteenth century and the King James Bible 
‘All the disadvantages of an old prose translation’ 
John Husbands 
Anthony Blackwall 
‘A kind of standard for language to the common people’ 
 Mid-century 
Robert Lowth’s De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum 
Uncouth, harsh and obsolete 
 The critical rise of the King James Bible 
The influence of popular feeling 
Lowth and the English Bible 
Myths arise 
George Campbell and the KJB as a literary example 
The KJB in literary discussions of the Bible 
vi Contents
Revision or ‘superstitious veneration’ 
Rancorous reason and brouhaha 
 Writers and the Bible : the Romantics 
The faker and the madman 
William Blake and ‘the poetic genius’ 
William Wordsworth and the possibility of a new literary sense of
the Bible 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and ‘the living educts of the imagination’ 
Percy Bysshe Shelley and ‘Scripture as a composition’ 
An infidel and the Bible: Lord Byron 
A Bible for the romantic reader 
Charlotte Brontë and the influence of the KJB 
 Literary discussion to mid-Victorian times 
The pious chorus 
An inspired translation 
The KJB as a literary influence 
Parallelism revisited 
George Gilfillan and ‘the lesson of infinite beauty’ 
 The Revised Version 
Rules for the revision 
The preface to the New Testament 
Evidence from the New Testament revisers 
An English account of changes in the New Testament 
The New Testament revisers at work 
The reception of the New Testament 
The preface to the Old Testament 
An American account of changes in the Old Testament 
Notes from the first revision of Genesis 
Conclusion 
An aside: dialect versions 
 ‘The Bible as literature’ 
The Bible ‘as a classic’: Le Roy Halsey 
The American Constitution and school Bible reading 
Matthew Arnold 
Richard Moulton and literary morphology 
Anthologists 
Presenting the text as literature 
Contents vii
 The later reputation of the King James Bible 
Testimonies from writers 
Fundamentalists and the God-given translation 
Modern AVolatry 
The Shakespearean touch 
Dissenting voices 
The Hebrew inheritance and the virtues of literalism 
 The New English Bible 
Aims 
Reception 
A princely epilogue 
Bibliography 
General Index 
Biblical Index 