Interesting narrative but unjustifiable grand claims. This is classic Melvyn Bragg: a charming meander through narrative history which requires no justification. But this genre does not suffice for the claims he makes in this book about the Bible, and more specifically for the King James Version of the Bible. What he offers is a fond eulogy, in which he claims huge impact for the KJV, usually a highly positive impact. He claims that the Bible is 'one of the fundamental makers of the modern world' which 'walks with us in our life today' and 'can teach us day-to-day morality' (p5). He seems content that American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have its verses engrained in their gun sights. He suggests that particle research at CERN derives from Biblical principles.
He gives pre-eminence to the King James Version over older and newer versions, despite that being due to the legal monopoly imposed by James I, which was only lifted in 1905. He even makes the extraordinary claim that decline in church attendance is due to the replacement of the KJV by more modern versions (p129), describing a version in modern English as a 'misguided decision' (p83) although, of course, it was a decision made on the same basis as the KJV – to render the Bible readable. 'Would other versions have had the same impact?' he wonders (p230). This is one of his few assertions which is capable of empirical test, which it evidently fails.
His best section is his 17th century coverage, since this relies on Christopher Hill's magnificent The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution, in which Hill brilliantly makes the case that the Bible's prophetic content on social justice led to the regicide of 1649. He makes the wide claim that we owe the richness and depth of English language to the Bible, whose words have fed Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Swift, Blake, Eliot, Melville, Hawthorne et al. This is true in one sense, but mistaken in another – the Bible did not give rise to the English language, but the language of Chaucer and others gave rise to the English Bible.
Even the Enlightenment is subservient to the Bible – 'where would the Enlightenment have been without it? (p182); the Enlightenment failed to sweep away the KJV (p193). It 'authorised the work of ...early modern scientists' (p111). He would do well to read Roy Porter's excellent Flesh in the Age of Reason to see just how devastating the Enlightenment was to Bible concepts.
After a brief onslaught on Richard Dawkins, Bragg then gives us a list of social movements – abolition of slavery, education, colonisation, sexual ethics, women's rights, social reform, and democracy – all of which apparently owe their inspiration to the King James Version of the Bible. This is fond speculation, based on a flawed methodology, which identifies prime movers in each movement, and claims that they were Bible friendly. Today's younger educated elite is almost Bible illiterate. The great myths and stories are unknown to them. I happen to regret this, but claiming otherwise does not help to rectify it. What merit can be ascribed to a Bible, which is highly ambiguous on the issue of slavery, an ambiguity which fed the American civil war costing over 600,000 lives?
Bragg fails to mention the impact of the Judaic Bible on modern Zionism, which inspires the exclusion and persecution of Palestine by the state of Israel, and figures as one of today's worst moral failures.
On page 122, Bragg quotes Alister McGrath writing 'In 1407, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, banned the Bible in English'. It is ironic then that Lord Bragg is a member of a legislature which in 2011 bans the reading of the Bible at civil weddings in the UK. The Church of England, the Bible Society, and the Evangelical Alliance, are all complicit in this ban. It would be eminently fitting in the 400th year of publication of the Bible in English, to revoke this contemporary censorship of the Bible.
Geoff Crocker's book An Enlightened Philosophy – Can an Atheist Believe Anything? was published by O Books in 2011.
Reviewed: The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible 1611-2011 by Melvyn Bragg, Hodder & Stoughton (London 2011), Pbk. 384 pages, £8.99.