|
|
|
Who Really Was King James? |
|
|
Friday, 19 November 2004 |
 The Story of King James
For the last three centuries Protestants have fancied
themselves the heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans, the Calvinists,
and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. This assumption is one of
history's greatest ironies. Today, Protestants laboring under that
assumption use the King James Bible. Most of the new Bibles such as the
Revised Standard Version are simply updates of the King James.
The irony is that none of the groups named in the preceding paragraph
used a King James Bible nor would they have used it if it had been
given to them free. The Bible in use by those groups, until it went out
of print in 1644, was the Geneva Bible. The first Geneva Bible, both
Old and New Testaments, was first published in English in 1560 in what
is now Geneva, Switzerland. William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John
Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other
luminaries of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively.
Until he had his own version named after him, so did King James I of
England. James I later tried to disclaim any knowledge of the Geneva
Bible, though he quoted the Geneva Bible in his own writings. As a
Professor Eadie reported it:
"...his virtual disclaimer of all knowledge up to a late period of the
Genevan notes and version was simply a bold, unblushing falsehood, a
clumsy attempt to sever himself and his earlier Scottish beliefs and
usages that he might win favor with his English churchmen."
The irony goes further. King James did not encourage a translation of
the Bible in order to enlighten the common people: his sole intent was
to deny them the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible. The marginal notes
of the Geneva version were what made it so popular with the common
people.
The King James Bible was, and is for all practical purposes, a
government publication. There were several reasons for the King
James Bible being a government publication. First, King James I of
England was a devout believer in the "divine right of kings," a
philosophy ingrained in him by his mother, Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart may
have been having an affair with her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, at
the time she conceived James. There is a better than even chance that
James was the product of adultery. Apparently, enough evidence of such
conduct on the part of Mary Stuart and David Rizzio existed to cause
various Scot nobles, including Mary's own husband, King Henry, to drag
David Rizzio from Mary's supper table and execute him. The Scot nobles
hacked and slashed at the screaming Rizzio with knives and swords, and
then threw him off a balcony to the courtyard below where he landed
with a sickening smack. In the phrase of that day, he had been scotched.
Mary did have affairs with other men, such as the Earl of Bothwell. She
later tried to execute her husband in a gunpowder explosion that shook
all of Edinburgh. King Henry survived the explosion only to be
suffocated later that same night. The murderers were never discovered.
Mary was eventually beheaded at the order of her cousin, Elizabeth I of
England.
To such individuals as James and his mother, Mary, the "divine right of
kings" meant that since a king's power came from God, the king then had
to answer to no one but God. This lack of responsibility extended to
evil kings. The reasoning was that if a king was evil, that was a
punishment sent from God. The citizens should then suffer in silence.
If a king was good, that was a blessing sent from God.
This is why the Geneva Bible annoyed King James I. The Geneva Bible had
marginal notes that simply didn't conform to that point of view. Those
marginal notes had been, to a great extent, placed in the Geneva Bible
by the leaders of the Reformation, including John Knox and John Calvin.
Knox and Calvin could not and cannot be dismissed lightly or their
opinions passed off to the public as the mere ditherings of dissidents.
First, notes such as, "When tyrants cannot prevail by craft they burst
forth into open rage" (Note i, Exodus 1:22) really bothered King James.
Second, religion in James' time was not what it is today. In that era
religion was controlled by the government. If someone lived in Spain at
the time, he had three religious
"choices:"
1. Roman Catholicism
2. Silence
3. The Inquisition
The third "option" was reserved for "heretics," or people who didn't
think the way the government wanted them to. To governments of that era
heresy and treason were synonymous.
England wasn't much different. From the time of Henry VIII on, an Englishman had three choices:
1. The Anglican Church
2. Silence
3. The rack, burning at the stake, being drawn and quartered, or some other form of persuasion.
The hapless individuals who fell into the hands of the government for
holding religious opinions of their own were simply punished according
to the royal whim.
Henry VIII, once he had appointed himself head of all the English
churches, kept the Roman Catholic system of bishops, deacons and the
like for a very good reason. That system allowed him a "chain of
command" necessary for any bureaucracy to function. This system passed
intact to his heirs.
This system became a little confusing for English citizens when Bloody
Mary ascended to the throne. Mary wanted everyone to switch back to
Roman Catholicism. Those who proved intransigent and wanted to remain
Protestant she burned at the stake - about 300 people in all. She
intended to burn a lot more, but the rest of her intended victims
escaped by leaving the country. A tremendous number of those
intended victims settled in Geneva. Religious refugees from other
countries in Western Europe, including the French theologian Jean
Chauvin, better known as John Calvin, also settled there.
Mary died and was succeeded in the throne by her Protestant cousin,
Elizabeth. The Anglican bureaucracy returned, less a few notables such
as Archbishop Cranmer and Hugh Latimer (both having been burned at the
stake by Bloody Mary). In Scotland, John Knox led the
Reformation. The Reformation prospered in Geneva. Many of those
who had fled Bloody Mary started a congregation there. Their greatest
effort and contribution to the Reformation was the first Geneva Bible.
More marginal notes were added to later editions. By the end of the
16th century, the Geneva Bible had about all the marginal notes there
was space available to put them in.
Geneva was an anomaly in 16th century Europe. In the days of absolute
despotism and constant warfare, Geneva achieved her independence
primarily by constant negotiation, playing off one stronger power
against another. While other governments allowed lawyers to drag out
cases and took months and years to get rid of corrupt officials, the
City of Geneva dispatched most civil and criminal cases within a month
and threw corrupt officials into jail the day after they were found
out. The academy that John Calvin founded there in 1559 later became
the University of Geneva. Religious wars wracked Europe. The
Spanish fought to restore Roman Catholicism to Western Europe. The
Dutch fought for the Reformation and religious freedom. England, a
small country with only 4-1/2 million people, managed to stay aloof
because of the natural advantage of the English Channel.
The Dutch declared religious freedom for everybody. Amsterdam became an
open city. English Puritans arrived by the boatload. The 1599 Edition
of the Geneva Bible was printed in Amsterdam and London in large
quantities until well into the 17th century.
King James, before he became James I of England, made it plain that he
had no use for the "Dutch rebels" who had rebelled against their
Spanish King. Another irony left to us from the 16th century is that
the freedom of religion and freedom of the press did not originate in
England, as many people commonly assume today. Those freedoms were
first given to Protestants by the Dutch, as the records of that era
plainly show. England today does not have freedom of the press the way
we understand it. (There are things in England such as the Official
Secrets Act that often land journalists in jail.)
England was relatively peaceful in the time of Elizabeth I. There was
the problem of the Spanish Armada, but that was brief. Elizabeth later
became known as "Good Queen Bess," not because she was so good, but
because her successor was so bad. Elizabeth died in 1603 and her
cousin, James Stuart, son of Mary Stuart, who up until that time had
been King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne and became known as
King James I of England. James ascended the throne of England with the
"divine right of kings" firmly embedded in his mind. Unfortunately,
that wasn't his only mental problem.
King James I, among his many other faults, preferred young boys to
adult women. He was a flaming homosexual. His activities in that regard
have been recorded in numerous books and public records; so much so,
that there is no room for debate on the subject. The King was queer.
The very people who use the King James Bible today would be the first ones to throw such a deviant out of the congregations.
The depravity of King James I didn't end with sodomy. James enjoyed
killing animals. He called it "hunting." Once he killed an animal, he
would literally roll about in its blood. Some believe that he practiced
bestiality while the animal lay dying.
James was a sadist as well as a sodomite: he enjoyed torturing people.
While King of Scotland in 1591, he personally supervised the torture of
poor wretches caught up in the witchcraft trials of Scotland. James
would even suggest new tortures to the examiners. One "witch," Barbara
Napier, was acquitted. That event so angered James that he wrote
personally to the court on May 10, 1551, ordering a sentence of death,
and had the jury called into custody. To make sure they understood
their particular offense, the King himself presided at a new hearing -
and was gracious enough to release them without punishment when they
reversed their verdict.
History has it that James was also a great coward. On January 7, 1591,
the king was in Edinburgh and emerged from the toll booth. A retinue
followed that included the Duke of Lennox and Lord Hume. They fell into
an argument with the laird of Logie and pulled their swords. James
looked behind, saw the steel flashing, and fled into the nearest refuge
which turned out to be a skinner's booth. There to his shame, he
"fouled his breeches in fear."
In short, King James I was the kind of despicable creature honorable
men loathed, Christians would not associate with, and the Bible itself
orders to be put to death (Leviticus 20:13). Knowing what King James
was we can easily discern his motives.
James ascended the English throne in 1603. He wasted no time in
ordering a new edition of the Bible in order to deny the common people
the marginal notes they so valued in the Geneva Bible. That James I
wasn't going to have any marginal notes to annoy him and lead English
citizens away from what he wanted them to think is a matter of public
record. In an account corrected with his own hand dated February 10,
1604, he ordained:
That a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be
to the original Hebrew and Greek, and this to be set out and printed
without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of
England in time of divine service. James then set up rules that made it
impossible for anyone involved in the project to make an honest
translation, some of which follow:
1. The ordinary Bible read in the church, commonly called the Bishop's
Bible to be followed and as little altered as the truth of the original
will permit.
2. Or, since the common people preferred the Geneva Bible to the
existing government publication, let's see if we can slip a superseding
government publication onto their bookshelves, altered as little as
possible.
3. The old Ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz. the word "church" not to be translated "congregation," etc.
4. That is, if a word should be translated a certain way, let's
deliberately mistranslate it to make the people think God still belongs
to the Anglican Church - exclusively.
5. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation
of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot without some circumlocution,
so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.
*** You can find more info at Otto Scott's "James I: The Fool As King"
(Ross House: 1976), pp. 108, 111, 120, 194, 200, 224, 311, 353, 382;
King James-VI of Scotland/I of England by Antonia Fraser (Alfred A.
Knopf, New York 1975)pp. 36, 37, 38; King James VI and I by David
Harris Willson, pp.36, 99; James I by his Contemporaries by Robert
Ashton, p114; and A History of England by Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Vol.
4, p.112. Check also A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE BIBLE by Geddes
MacGregor who has devoted a whole chapter entitled "QUEEN" JAMES.
The Mammoth Book of Private Lives by Jon E. Lewis, pp. 62,65,66
James White also makes mention of it in his book, THE KING JAMES ONLY CONTROVERSY.
See also King James and the History of Homosexuality by Michael B. Young
and King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David Moore Bergeron.
For those people who feel that the above is a result of the attack on
King James by the 17th century tobacco industry are ignorant of the
fact that his behavior and personal life were quite well known to his
contemporaries. "He disdained women and fawned unconscionably on his
favorite men." ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA-pp. 674,675
"And shall I then like bird or beast forget
For any storms that threatening heaven can send
The object sweet, where on my heart is set
Whom for to serve my senses all I bend?..."
A poem written by King James to his homosexual love interest (pictured above, Esme Stuart).
King James-VI of Scotland/I of England, by Antonia Fraser, New York 1975
The 1599 Geneva Bible: The Bible of the Pilgrims
700 pages 8" x 10" Leatherette bound
Now available for the first time in 394 years, this is the Bible the
Pilgrims carried when they landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The
Puritans of that era considered the King James bible a "government
issue" publication. King James banned the Geneva Bible in England and
made its ownership a felony. The Geneva Bible is famous for its "margin
notes," authored by John Calvin, John Knox and other leaders of the
Reformation. These marginal notes illuminate many difficult to
understand passages and the pages have been expanded 20 percent for
easier reading. Learn about the religion of your ancestors in the pages
of this handsome six-pound leatherette bound Bible!
|
|
Home 
