The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife, Thursday, May 5th 2011 – Saturday, May 7th 2011

I would like to present in Dr. Vivienne Westbrook's seminar, "Translating the Bible and the Long Reformation," a paper on the way in which Christian theology affected the translation of the Hebrew Bible. I will look closely at particular passages in the HB (examining when necessary their rendering in the Septuagint and Vulgate), and their translation in the the KJV. For example, in Genesis 1:2, the "ruach elohim" becomes in English "the Spirit of God" - trinitarian language - even though "ruach" can also mean "wind" or "breath." The Greek Septuagint - a Jewish translation - uses "pneuma," which is equally broad in its semantic categories, but Jerome opts for "spiritus" in the Vulgate.