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Print Price: $27.95

Format:
Hardback
320 pp.
135 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199585854

Publication date:
October 2010

Imprint: OUP UK

Begat

The King James Bible and the English Language

David Crystal

What do the following have in common?

Let there be light - A fly in the ointment - A rod of iron - New wine in old bottles
Lick the dust - How are the mighty fallen - Kick against the pricks - Wheels within wheels

They are all in the King James Bible. This astonishing book "has contributed far more to English in the way of idiomatic or quasi-proverbial expressions than any other literary source." So wrote David Crystal in 2004. In A Book of Many Colours he returns to the subject not only to consider how a work published in 1611 could have had such influence on the language, but how it can still do so when few regularly hear the Bible and fewer still hear it in the language of Stuart England.

No other version of the Bible however popular (such as the Good News Bible) or imposed upon the church (like the New English Bible) has had anything like the same influence. David Crystal shows how its words and phrases have over the centuries found independent life in the work of poets, playwrights, novelists, politicians, and journalists, and how more recently they have been taken up with enthusiasm by advertisers, Hollywood, and hip-hop.

Yet the King James Bible owes much to earlier English versions, notably those by John Wycliffe in in the fourteenth century and William Tyndale in the sixteenth. David Crystal reveals how much that is memorable in the King James Bible stems from its forebears. At the same time he shows how crucial were the revisions made by King James's team of translators and editors.

"A person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English language ought to have the Bible at his finger's ends," Lord Macaulay advised Lady Holland in 1831. A Book of Many Colours shows how true that remains. It will be a revelation to all who read it.

Readership : The general public with an interest in the role of the King James Bible in the development of English, its place in English history, and its influence on myriad aspects of culture and speech throughout the English-speaking world.

Prologue 1
Prologue 2
1. In the beginning
2. Let there be light
3. Be fruitful and multiply
4. Am I my brother's keeper?
5. Two by two
6. A coat of many colours
7. Fire and brimstone
8. Begat
9. Thou shalt not
10. Manna, milk, and honey
11. Eyes, teeth, and loins
12. What hath been wrought
13. Bread alone
14. How are the mighty fallen!
15. The skin of one's teeth
16. Out of the mouths of babes
17. Pride goes before a fal
18. Nothing new under the sun
19. Fly in the ointment
20. No peace for the wicked
21. Be horribly afraid
Interlude
22. Seeing the light
23. Eyes, ears, cheeks
24. Speaking, shouting, wailing, writing
25. Shaking, turning, moving
26. Many and few, first and last
27. Fights, foes, fools, friends
28. Praising faous men
29. Sheep, goats, swine
30. Money, wages, pearls, mites
31. Blessed are the servants
32. Heal thyself
33. Times and seasons
34. Birth, life, and death
35. Countries, kingdoms, Armageddon
36. Building houses, mansions, sepulchres
37. Millstones, crosses, yokes, pricks
38. Sowing seeds
39. Salt and wine
40. The law, judges, thieves, swords
41. Love and charity
42. Peace and patience, wrath, whore
Epilogue
Appendixes
Indexes

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David Crystal is the world's best known linguist. He is Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor. His books include Linguistics, Language and Religion (1965), The Stories of English (Penguin, 2004) The Fight for English (OUP 2006), and Just a Phrase I'm Going Through: my Life in Language (Routledge 2009). He has written extensively on religious language, including 'Linguistics and Liturgy' for Church Quarterly in 1969 and 'Language in Church' for The Tablet in 1985.

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