In his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of the Old
Testament in the King James Version, George Steiner reminds us of
the literary grandeur, uniqueness, and centrality of the
Bible.
"What you have in hand is not "a" book. It is "the "book. That, of
course, is what 'Bible' means. It is the book which, not only in
Western humanity, defines the concept of a text. All our other
books, however different in matter or method, relate, be it
indirectly, to this book of books...
"All other books, be they histories, narrations of the imaginary,
codes of law, moral treatises, lyric poems, dramatic dialogues,
theological-philosophic meditations, are like sparks, often, to be
sure, distant, tossed by an incessant breath from a central fire.
In the Western condition, but also in other parts of the planet to
which the 'Good Book' has been taken, the Bible largely informs our
historical and social identity...
"No other book is like it; all other books are inhabited by the
murmer of that distant source." Steiner underlines, as well, our
great good fortune in being able to read the Bible--which has been
translated in whole or in part into more than two thousand
languages--in the resplendent language of seventeenth-century
England.
"This is the instrument of Spenser, of Shakespeare, of Bacon, of
Donne and the young Milton. It encompasses the organblasts of the
Queen's rhetoric, Sidney's intimacies of desire, the 'lapidary
lightness' of Ben Jonson, and the compaction of the early
Metaphysical poets. It can command, seduce, enchant, and think
aloud as never before or since...There could not have been a
moment, a climate of feeling and general discourse, more apt to
engender the two foremost constructs in the language: Shakespeare
and the King James Version."
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
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