“Today, English girdles the globe. All who speak it do so in the shadow of the KJV” – the King James Version of the Bible. So says Globe writer Michael Valpy in a recent article about the KJV’s 400th birthday, its history and its impact (greater than Shakespeare’s!) on the English language. Among the enduring idioms with their genesis, so to speak, in the KJV: ‘No man can serve two masters’, ‘how are the mighty fallen’, ‘out of the mouths of babes’, and ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’.
Links
- Globe and Mail article
- The ‘Bible Bath Challenge‘ will see 365 volunteers perform a public reading of the entire Bible over 5 days
- American broadcaster NPR features a podcast on the lasting religious and linguistic impact of the KJV
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