Testimonies from writers

In considering the reputation of the KJB over the century since the RV, it may be best to start with a somewhat amorphous collection of testimonies from writers to their experience of the KJB and, sometimes, its influence on their work.

Interest in the KJB as a literary influence helped to shape some of the chorus-books referred to earlier (above, p. 186). One such was by the American Baptist minister and professor, author of The Religious Influence of Wordsworth, T. Harwood Pattison (1838–1904). His The History of the English Bible (1894) begins ordinarily enough but goes on to chapters on ‘the Bible in English literature’ and ‘the Bible and the nation’. An observation he attributes to the American Presbyterian minister Charles Henry Parkhurst sums up the motivation for this development: ‘“I am interested in the people who made the Bible, but I am more interested in the people whom the Bible makes, for they show me the fibre and genius of Scripture as no mental studiousness or verbal exegesis can do”’ (p. 222). So in these chapters Pattison moves beyond opinions of the literary excellence of the Bible to testimonies from writers that their work was shaped by the Bible.