Bring the Authorized Version to the Classroom - 1918
Arthur Quiller-Couch.
Introduction
Arthur Quiller-Couch was a British novelist, poet, educator, and literary critic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for two works, The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 and On the Art of Writing. The latter book was based on a series of lectures he delivered at the University of Cambridge. In the lecture from this day, April 24, 1918, he raised the question why the beautiful Authorized Version of the Bible [i.e. the KJV] was excluded from the classroom. He went on to show how worthy it was of inclusion in literature courses, and suggested better ways of translating and printing it to make its beauties more visible.
Quote
“We left off last term, Gentlemen, upon a note of protest. We wondered why it should be that our English Version of the Bible lies under the ban of school-masters, Boards of Studies, and all who devise courses of reading and examinations in English Literature: that among our ‘prescribed books’ we find Chaucer’s ‘Prologue,’ we find Hamlet, we find Paradise Lost, we find Pope’s Essay on Man, again and again, but The Book of Job never; The Vicar of Wakefield and Gray’s ‘Elegy’ often, but Ruth or Isaiah, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom never.
“I propose this morning:
(1) to enquire into the reasons for this, so far as I can guess and interpret them;
(2) to deal with such reasons as we can discover or surmise;
(3) to suggest to-day, some simple first aid: and in another lecture, taking for experiment a single book from the Authorised Version, some practical ways of including it in the ambit of our new English Tripos.
“This will compel me to be definite: and as definite proposals invite definite objections, by this method we are likeliest to know where we are, and if the reform we seek be realisable or illusory.
“I shall ask you then, first, to assent with me, that the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible is, as a literary achievement, one of the greatest in our language; nay, with the possible exception of the complete works of Shakespeare, the very greatest. You will certainly not deny this.
“As little, or less, will you deny that more deeply than any other book—more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare—far more deeply—it has influenced our literature.”
Quiller-Couch, Arthur. On the Art of Writing: Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913–1914.