The Good Book

I often think how useful it would be to have the ability to e mail myself from place to place as an attached file. But sadly this is not possible.

So I was given an exeat from the second day of our College of Bishops meeting to attend the Service to mark the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible. In default of the e mail option, I walked up the street to Waverley and caught the sleeper at 2340. I’ve got better at sleeping pretty well anywhere – indeed staying awake is becoming more of a challenge – so I was quite fresh-faced when I reached the Abbey.

Because I am a words person, I’m actually a crypto-lover of the King James Bible and the BCP. And they have a certain ‘ring’ of authority and drama when used in a place like the Abbey

Archbishop Rowan said that to celebrate the Bible “is to recognise the absolute seriousness with which [the translators] sought to find in our language words that would pass on to us hearers and readers in the English tongue the almost unbearable weight of divine intelligence and love pressing down on those who first encountered it and tried to embody it in writing”.