Getting it right

William Lyon Phelps (1865-1843) was an American educator who served in the English Department of Yale University from 1892 until his retirement in 1933. He was the son of Sylvanus Dryden Phelps, a Baptist preacher, editor, and author of hymns, who laboured in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The transcription below is from Human Nature in the Bible by William Lyon Phelps. An excerpt of this is sometimes used to support the inspiration and inerrancy of the King James Bible. Though Phelps lavished great praise on the Authorised (King James) Bible, the full quote below suggests his greatest praise was for the Bible as English literature – “the climax” of it, in fact. For this reason, I urge that we King James Bible Defenders recognize and use this quote for what it is, rather than as an excerpted version that does not accurately relay what Phelps wrote.

“The Elizabethan period — a term loosely applied to the years between 1558 and 1642 — is properly regarded as the most important era in English literature…the crowning achievement of those spacious times was the Authorised Translation of the Bible, which appeared in 1611. Three centuries of English literature followed; but although they have been crowded with poets and novelists and essayists, and although the teaching of the English language and literature now gives employment to many earnest men and women, the art of English composition reached its climax in the pages of the Bible.

“The translators made more mistakes in Greek than they did in English. When we remember that English is not a perfect language, for as a means of expression it is inferior to both Russian and Polish, it is marvellous to consider what that group of Elizabethan scholars did with it. We Anglo-Saxons have a better Bible than the French or the Germans or the Italians or the Spanish; our English translation is even better than the original Hebrew and Greek. There is only one way to explain this; I have no theory to account for the so-called ‘inspiration of the Bible,’ but I am confident that the Authorised Version was inspired.

“Now as the English-speaking people have the best Bible in the world, and as it is the most beautiful monument ever erected with the English alphabet, we ought to make the most of it, for it is an incomparably rich inheritance, free to all who can read. This means that we ought invariably in the church and on public occasions to use the Authorised Version; all others are inferior. And, except for special purposes, it should be used exclusively in private reading. Why make constant companions of the second best, when the best is available?

“The so-called Revised Version and modern condensed versions are valuable for their superior accuracy in individual instances; they may be used as checks and comments; but for steady reading, and in all public places where the Bible is read aloud, let us have the noble, marbly English of 1611.”

William Lyon Phelps (Lampson Professor of English Studies at Yale), Human Nature in the Bible, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922, pp. x-xi.