How the King James Bible Forever Changed English: 400th Anniversary Celebrated with Fun Videos

in English Language, History, Religion | October 10th, 2011 1 Comment

This year marks the 400th anniver­sary of the King James Bible, a trans­la­tion that influ­enced the devel­op­ment of the Eng­lish lan­guage as much as it did the Chris­t­ian faith. Right along­side many oth­er anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place this year, Glen Scriven­er, a min­is­ter in the Church of Eng­land, has start­ed a blog about the lin­guis­tic impact of the text, focus­ing on 365 phras­es that have passed in com­mon par­lance. A lot of this gets art­ful­ly dis­tilled by Scriven­er’s short video, The King’s Eng­lish — 100 phras­es in 3 Min­utes (above).

Scriven­er’s work is nice­ly com­ple­ment­ed by a wit­ty ani­mat­ed video tak­en from The His­to­ry of Eng­lish in 10 Min­utes, a sequence cre­at­ed by The Open Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year.

H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts the Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Intro­duc­tion to the New and Old Tes­ta­ments


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  • Natasha S. Chowdory says:
    October 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    Just absolute­ly bril­liant. I had no idea that the KGB sound­ed as lyri­cal as a piece of Shake­speare. Although it sor­ta makes sense giv­en the time peri­od, and King James was an avid fol­low­er of the Arts. :)

    Reply

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