Sue Agnew

Dear friends,

Today we commemorate Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester (1555–1626), who was one of the principal scholars involved in the translation of the King James Version of the Bible.

That accomplishment makes me think of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the movable type printing press (even though the famous Gutenberg Bible is not the King James translation). A translation of the Bible into the vernacular, not Latin, and a way to make documents more ubiquitous and affordable had huge impacts on common people’s access to information.

I worked in a print shop in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The shop was a veritable museum of 20th-Century printing. Because my boss had been in business so long, it was more cost-effective for him on some projects (like the San Mateo Garden Society directory) to continue to set type the way he had for 30 or more years, using a linotype machine, rather than converting that project to computer typesetting, which is what I did.

A linotype machine is a fearful and wonderful contraption, Rube Goldberg–esque in its complexity. As the operator types, individual molds of letters drop down in alignment into a tray, and when the tray is full, molten lead is poured in and a “line o’ type” is cast. The base of each mold is notched in a way specific for that character, and they return to their storage bins along a track, dropping off the track at the appropriate point to fall into the appropriate bin. It uses a special keyboard (not the QWERTY keyboard we are familiar with) designed to slow down the operator to prevent the mechanism from being jammed. Some things are “classics.”

There have been multiple translations of the Bible by various groups since the King James Translation was made, putting the texts into more modern language and improving the accuracy of the meanings of the original words. However, the King James Bible is a classic.

To quote some Wikipedean hyperbole, the KJV has had “more influence on English literature and Christian thought than any other English Bible translation. Its phrasing has been credited with shaping not only hymnody and liturgy, but also the idioms of everyday speech used in the English-speaking world.”

And the poetry! Quick, recite the twenty-third Psalm by memory. Did you say it in the King James Version?

We give thanks for Lancelot Andrewes, for his piety, eloquence, and scholarship.

Yours in Christ,

—Sue Agnew