ised
Version of the Bible.

I grant you, to be sure, that the path to the Authorised Version was made
straight by previous translators, notably by William Tyndale. I grant you
that Tyndale was a man of genius, and Wyclif before him a man of genius.
I grant you that the forty-seven men who produced the Authorised Version
worked in the main upon Tyndale's version, taking that for their basis.
Nay, if you choose to say that Tyndale was a miracle in himself, I
cheerfully grant you that as well. But, in a lecture one must not
multiply miracles _praeter necessitatem_; and when Tyndale has been
granted you have yet to face the miracle that forty-seven men--not one of
them known, outside of this performance, for any superlative talent--sat
in committee and almost consistently, over a vast extent of
work--improved upon what Genius had done. I give you the word of an old
committee-man that this is not the way of committees--that only by
miracle is it the way of any committee. Doubtless the forty-seven were
all good men and godly: but doubtless also good and godly were the Dean
and Chapter who dealt with Alfred Steven's tomb of the Duke of Wellington
in St Paul's Cathedral; and you know what _they_ did. Individual genius
such as Tyndale's or even Shakespeare's, though we cannot explain it, we
may admit as occurring somehow, and not incredibly, in the course of
nature. But that a large committee of forty-seven should have gone
steadily through the great mass of Holy Writ, seldom interfering with
genius, yet, when interfering, seldom missing to improve: that a
committee of forty-seven should have captured (or even, let us say,
should have retained and improved) a rhythm so personal, so constant,
that our Bible has the voice of one author speaking through its many
mouths: that, Gentlemen, is a wonder before which I can only stand humble
and aghast.

Does it or does it not strike you as queer that the people who set you
'courses of study' in English Literature never include the Authorised
Version, which not only intrinsically but historically is out and away
the greatest book of English Prose. Perhaps they can pay you the silent
compliment of supposing that you are perfectly acquainted with it?... I
wonder. It seems as if they thought the Martin Marprelate Controversy,
for example, more important somehow.

'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortal shall have put on immortality...'

'Many wat