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What Hacker News says
- Whether you are a believer or not, the KJB — King James Bible of 1611 — is one of the world's greatest books and its publication changed the world. Therefore, here's one's chance to see a copy of it close up and in reasonable detail.
Unlike so many later facsimiles, this version retains its original late Middle Ages/Early Renaissance English spelling. To put this into perspective, Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616, so this 1611 edition was published whilst he was still alive.
(As many know, this Bible was the work of a committee and remarkably—unlike the work of so many committees—it actually turned out to be a remarkable work of literature in its own right.)
The Bible opens with a combined frontispiece/title page. An ornate line drawing fills most of the page but is blank at the centre except for its title which is at the centre top and spread over three lines. Immediately underneath is additional text including its publications date. Here is the frontispiece/title text in full:
This is immediately followed by a dedication to the King from its Translators, following that comes 'The Epistle', 'Dedicatorie', 'The Translators to The Reader' followed by various religious calendar dates, lessons for special days, alphabetical list of names, maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, etc. It is not until about page 39 that we actually get to 'The First Book of Moses called GENESIS.'THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Testament, AND THE NEW: Newly Translatd out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and reuised by his Maiesties Speciall Comandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie Anno Dom. 1611There is much information included in this 1611 Edition which is not included in the recent and otherwise well annotated editions of the KJV such as the important Scofield Editions. This alone makes this work a feast for both religious scholars and book antiquarians alike.
This PDF version that I downloaded consists of 1506 pages and its file size is 1,923,870,199 bytes. The scan resolution is quite good but not excellent which is a shame. Moreover, little or no attempt has be made to straighten or make pages linear, which is shame. I will attempt to download the jp2 (jpeg 2000) version later and see if it is any better.
There is a smaller PDF that also includes the text but like most Internet Archive OCR attempts it is dismally inaccurate and full of errors.
- Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Euclid, Elements of Geometry
Fuller, Buckminster. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
Greene, Robert. The 48 Laws of Power
Kernighan & Ritchie. The C Programming Language
The King James Bible
Polya, George. How to Solve It
- "The commenters on here have noticed a greater uptick in religious and theist discussions/topics."
First, I was not aware that the original 1611 KJV had been scanned and was on the Internet Archive. Mind you, I'd never previously looked either.
Second, my interest in the KJV has precious little to do with theistic interests or activities. I'd suggest that this is true for many other too who have an interest in their own Western culture and its historical origins. If you had studied history with any degree of seriousness then you would appreciate this.
As can be gathered from my rather long post on the 1611 KJV, there are many reasons for why one would take an interest in this book. For starters, the KJV is one of the quintessential books of the era (ca 1600 and the Elizabethan era) for studying written language of that time. Moreover, the KJV was written with great care and finesse and edited with care and scholarship. As I mentioned, Shakespeare was still alive at the time, so a comparison of his writing style with that of Christopher Marlowe, Donne, Jonson, Spenser and others along with the KJV is inevitable.
Moreover, the KJV had great political consequence; it changed the English language not to mention the politics of England and the Anglophone world in huge ways. It's historical and political significance cannot be underestimated.
The KJV Bible cannot be taken in isolation either. Earlier Bibles also had a huge political significance at various times throughout history; their influence on both the culture and politics of their day was often huge. For instance, William Tyndale was accused of heresy and put to death for publishing his Bible (the Reformation was a very dangerous political time). The Geneva Bible published some 50 years before the KJV was very important and influential, it was the Bible of Shakespeare, Cromwell, Knox and many other notables of the era.
Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance English Bibles act as important reference points for the English language, as the source material from which they are translated into English comes from ancient and [mostly] unchanging texts, Hebrew, Latin Greek etc. thus the changes in the English language can be checked and traced over time. For instance, nuances in the translation from Hebrew texts to Tyndale, to Geneva, to KJ, etc are very noticeable and are analyzed by linguists. Other older Bible texts such as the Latin Vulgate Bible also act as reference 'clamps' or stating points for translation.
Another interest I have in the King James Bible is the printing technology of the day used to print it. The best printing technology of the day would have been used for printing the KJV, so it's an excellent reference point for comparing other printed texts of the era. (You'll note my minor criticism of the somewhat low resolution of the Internet Archive scan. Being as low as it is, I cannot satisfactorily analyze or judge certain printing features of the KJV, which to me, is a disappointment).
