Who Was King James?
For the last three centuries
Protestants have fancied themselves the heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans,
the Calvinists, and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. This assumption
is one of history's greatest ironies. Today, Protestants laboring under that
assumption use the King James Bible. Most of the new Bibles such as the Revised
Standard Version are simply updates of the King James.
The irony is that none of the
groups named in the preceding paragraph used a King James Bible nor would they
have used it if it had been given to them free. The Bible in use by those
groups, until it went out of print in 1644, was the Geneva Bible. The first
Geneva Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was first published in English in
1560 in what is now Geneva, Switzerland. William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John
Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other luminaries
of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively.
Until he had his own version
named after him, so did King James I of England. James I later tried to
disclaim any knowledge of the Geneva Bible, though he quoted the Geneva Bible
in his own writings. As a Professor Eadie reported it:
"...his virtual disclaimer of all knowledge up to a late period of the
Genevan notes and
version was simply a bold, unblushing falsehood, a clumsy attempt to sever
himself
and
his earlier Scottish beliefs and usages that he might win favor with his
English
churchmen."
The irony goes further. King James did not
encourage a translation of the Bible in order to enlighten the common people:
his sole intent was to deny them the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible. The
marginal notes of the Geneva version were what made it so popular with the
common people.
The King James Bible was, and
is for all practical purposes, a government publication. There were
several reasons for the King James Bible being a government publication. First,
King James I of England was a devout believer in the "divine right of kings,"
a philosophy ingrained in him by his mother, Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart may have
been having an affair with her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, at the time she
conceived James. There is a better than even chance that James was the product
of adultery. Apparently, enough evidence of such conduct on the part of Mary
Stuart and David Rizzio existed to cause various Scot nobles, including Mary's
own husband, King Henry, to drag David Rizzio from Mary's supper table and
execute him. The Scot nobles hacked and slashed at the screaming Rizzio with
knives and swords, and then threw him off a balcony to the courtyard below
where he landed with a sickening smack. In the phrase of that day, he had been
scotched.
Mary did have affairs with
other men, such as the Earl of Bothwell. She later tried to execute her husband
in a gunpowder explosion that shook all of Edinburgh. King Henry survived the
explosion only to be suffocated later that same night. The murderers were never
discovered. Mary was eventually beheaded at the order of her cousin, Elizabeth
I of England.
To such individuals as James
and his mother, Mary, the "divine right of kings" meant that since a
king's power came from God, the king then had to answer to no one but God. This
lack of responsibility extended to evil kings. The reasoning was that if a king
was evil, that was a punishment sent from God. The citizens should then suffer
in silence. If a king was good, that was a blessing sent from God.
This is why the Geneva Bible
annoyed King James I. The Geneva Bible had marginal notes that simply didn't
conform to that point of view. Those marginal notes had been, to a great
extent, placed in the Geneva Bible by the leaders of the Reformation, including
John Knox and John Calvin. Knox and Calvin could not and cannot be dismissed
lightly or their opinions passed off to the public as the mere ditherings of
dissidents.
First, notes such as,
"When tyrants cannot prevail by craft they burst forth into open
rage" (Note i, Exodus 1:22) really bothered King James.
Second, religion in James'
time was not what it is today. In that era religion was controlled by the
government. If someone lived in Spain at the time, he had three religious
"choices:"
1.Roman
Catholicism
2.Silence
3.The
Inquisition
The third "option"
was reserved for "heretics," or people who didn't think the way the
government wanted them to. To governments of that era heresy and treason were
synonymous.
England wasn't much
different. From the time of Henry VIII on, an Englishman had three choices:
1.The
Anglican Church
2.Silence
3.The
rack, burning at the stake, being drawn and quartered, or some other form of
persuasion.
The hapless individuals who
fell into the hands of the government for holding religious opinions of their
own were simply punished according to the royal whim.
Henry VIII, once he had
appointed himself head of all the English churches, kept the Roman Catholic
system of bishops, deacons and the like for a very good reason. That system
allowed him a "chain of command" necessary for any bureaucracy to
function. This system passed intact to his heirs.
This system became a little
confusing for English citizens when Bloody Mary ascended to the throne. Mary
wanted everyone to switch back to Roman Catholicism. Those who proved
intransigent and wanted to remain Protestant she burned at the stake — about
300 people in all. She intended to burn a lot more, but the rest of her
intended victims escaped by leaving the country. A tremendous number of
those intended victims settled in Geneva. Religious refugees from other
countries in Western Europe, including the French theologian Jean Chauvin,
better known as John Calvin, also settled there.
Mary died and was succeeded in
the throne by her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth. The Anglican bureaucracy returned,
less a few notables such as Archbishop Cranmer and Hugh Latimer (both having
been burned at the stake by Bloody Mary). In Scotland, John Knox led the
Reformation. The Reformation prospered in Geneva. Many of those who had
fled Bloody Mary started a congregation there. Their greatest effort and
contribution to the Reformation was the first Geneva Bible.
More marginal notes were added
to later editions. By the end of the 16th century, the Geneva Bible had about
all the marginal notes there was space available to put them in.
Geneva was an anomaly in 16th
century Europe. In the days of absolute despotism and constant warfare, Geneva
achieved her independence primarily by constant negotiation, playing off one
stronger power against another. While other governments allowed lawyers to drag
out cases and took months and years to get rid of corrupt officials, the City
of Geneva dispatched most civil and criminal cases within a month and threw
corrupt officials into jail the day after they were found out. The academy that
John Calvin founded there in 1559 later became the University of Geneva.
Religious wars wracked Europe. The Spanish fought to restore Roman Catholicism
to Western Europe. The Dutch fought for the Reformation and religious freedom.
England, a small country with only 4-1/2 million people, managed to stay aloof
because of the natural advantage of the English Channel.
The Dutch declared religious
freedom for everybody. Amsterdam became an open city. English Puritans arrived
by the boatload. The 1599 Edition of the Geneva Bible was printed in Amsterdam
and London in large quantities until well into the 17th century.
King James, before he became
James I of England, made it plain that he had no use for the "Dutch
rebels" who had rebelled against their Spanish King. Another irony left to
us from the 16th century is that the freedom of religion and freedom of the
press did not originate in England, as many people commonly assume today. Those
freedoms were first given to Protestants by the Dutch, as the records of that
era plainly show. England today does not have freedom of the press the way we
understand it. (There are things in England such as the Official Secrets Act
that often land journalists in jail.)
England was relatively
peaceful in the time of Elizabeth I. There was the problem of the Spanish
Armada, but that was brief. Elizabeth later became known as "Good Queen
Bess," not because she was so good, but because her successor was so bad.
Elizabeth died in 1603 and her cousin, James Stuart, son of Mary Stuart, who up
until that time had been King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne and
became known as King James I of England. James ascended the throne of England
with the "divine right of kings" firmly embedded in his mind.
Unfortunately, that wasn't his only mental problem.
King James I, among his many
other faults, preferred young boys to adult women. He was a flaming homosexual.
His activities in that regard have been recorded in numerous books and public
records; so much so, that there is no room for debate on the subject. The King
was queer.
The very people who use the
King James Bible today would be the first ones to throw such a deviant out of
the congregations.
The depravity of King James I
didn't end with sodomy. James enjoyed killing animals. He called it
"hunting." Once he killed an animal, he would literally roll about in
its blood. Some believe that he practiced bestiality while the animal lay
dying.
James was a sadist as well as
a sodomite: he enjoyed torturing people. While King of Scotland in 1591, he
personally supervised the torture of poor wretches caught up in the witchcraft
trials of Scotland. James would even suggest new tortures to the examiners. One
"witch," Barbara Napier, was acquitted. That event so angered James
that he wrote personally to the court on May 10, 1551, ordering a sentence of
death, and had the jury called into custody. To make sure they understood their
particular offense, the King himself presided at a new hearing — and was gracious
enough to release them without punishment when they reversed their verdict.
History has it that James was
also a great coward. On January 7, 1591, the king was in Edinburgh and emerged
from the toll booth. A retinue followed that included the Duke of Lennox and
Lord Hume. They fell into an argument with the laird of Logie and pulled their
swords. James looked behind, saw the steel flashing, and fled into the nearest
refuge which turned out to be a skinner's booth. There to his shame, he
"fouled his breeches in fear."
In short, King James I was the
kind of despicable creature honorable men loathed, Christians would not
associate with, and the Bible itself orders to be put to death (Leviticus
20:13). Knowing what King James was we can easily discern his motives.
James ascended the English
throne in 1603. He wasted no time in ordering a new edition of the Bible in
order to deny the common people the marginal notes they so valued in the Geneva
Bible. That James I wasn't going to have any marginal notes to annoy him and
lead English citizens away from what he wanted them to think is a matter of
public record. In an account corrected with his own hand dated February 10,
1604, he ordained:
That a translation be made of
the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek, and
this to be set out and printed without any marginal notes, and only to be used
in all churches of England in time of divine service. James then set up rules
that made it impossible for anyone involved in the project to make an honest
translation, some of which follow:
1.
The
ordinary Bible read in the church, commonly called the Bishop's Bible to be
followed and as little altered as the truth of the original will permit.
2.
Or,
since the common people preferred the Geneva Bible to the existing government
publication, let's see if we can slip a superseding government publication onto
their bookshelves, altered as little as possible.
3.
The
old Ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz. the word "church" not to be
translated "congregation," etc.
4.
That
is, if a word should be translated a certain way, let's deliberately
mistranslate it to make the people think God still belongs to the Anglican
Church — exclusively.
5.
No
marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew
or Greek words, which cannot without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly
be expressed in the text.
All excerpts from Global Insights.
***For verification of King
James homosexuality, I got my info from Global Insights. You can also find more
info at Otto Scott's "James I: The Fool As King" (Ross House: 1976),
pp. 108, 111, 120, 194, 200, 224, 311, 353, 382; King James-VI of Scotland/I of
England by Antonia Fraser (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1975)pp. 36, 37, 38; King
James VI and I by David Harris Willson, pp.36, 99; James I by his
Contemporaries by Robert Ashton, p114; and A History of England by Samuel
Rawson Gardiner, Vol. 4, p.112. Check also A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE BIBLE by
Geddes MacGregor who has devoted a whole chapter entitled "QUEEN"
JAMES.
The Mammoth Book of Private
Lives by Jon E. Lewis, pp. 62,65,66
James White also makes mention of it in
his book, THE KING JAMES ONLY CONTROVERSY.
See also King
James and the History of Homosexuality by Michael B. Young
and King
James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David Moore Bergeron, both
available on amazon.com
For
those people who feel that the above is a result of the attack on King James by
the 17th century tobacco industry are ignorant of the fact that his behavior
and personal life were quite well known to his contemporaries. " He
disdained women and fawned unconscionably on his favorite men."
ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA-pp. 674,675
"And shall I then like bird or beast
forget
For any storms that threatening heaven can send
The object sweet, where on my heart is set
Whom for to serve my senses all I bend?..."
A poem written by
King James to his homosexual love interest (pictured above, Esme Stuart).
King James-VI of Scotland/I of England, by Antonia Fraser, New York 1975
The 1599 Geneva Bible: The Bible of the
Pilgrims
Now
available for the first time in 394 years, this is the Bible the Pilgrims
carried when they landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The Puritans of that era
considered the King James bible a "government issue" publication.
King James banned the Geneva Bible in England and made its ownership a felony.
The Geneva Bible is famous for its "margin notes," authored by John
Calvin, John Knox and other leaders of the Reformation. These marginal notes
illuminate many difficult to understand passages and the pages have been
expanded 20 percent for easier reading. Learn about the religion of your
ancestors in the pages of this handsome six-pound leatherette bound Bible!
To
Order: http://www.tollelegepress.com/gb/geneva.php