Thanks to a spur-of-the-moment trip to the book store at the Cambridge Centre, I discovered a gem in the remainder pile: GOD’S SECRETARIES - The Making of the King James Bible, by Adam Nicolson.
This account of the writing of the King James Bible — possibly the most famous & influential piece of religious scholarship in history — is a rich, well told tale that provides incredible insight into the culture that birthed it, and the men who assembled it. As a history teacher, I adore the recent thrust in historical publishing that focuses on telling history as story worthy of any novel — full of exciting characters, tense situations, and lots of juicy background material. Pierre Burton is a master of this sort of writing, and other books have taken such writing to new levels, particularly Paris 1919 and Krakatoa.
God’s Secretaries can join this pantheon (click HERE to link to some eloquent reviews of this book), but devouring it as I did in two short days has made me keenly aware of the main problem I have in teaching high school history: kids find it BORING!
Why do historians and researchers always have to write things in the most boring, scientific, arcane manner available to them? If they intend to create works that are to be disseminated by the world outside their university departments, why throw linguistic and organizational road blocks in the way of their scholarship? Aren’t high school textbooks bad enough?
There’s a reason I am a passionate reader of the best English language literature Canada, the UK, Australia, and the U.S. can produce. The authors of today’s best novels play with language, luxuriate in its artistry and complexity without alienating their audiences. Combined with emotional, exciting, thought-provoking situations and characters, the end result (9 times out of 10) are timeless works of readable art.
God’s Secretaries, and books like it, simply take non-fiction and present it using the tried and true methods of modern authors. It revels in telling the story of the creation of such a beautiful work of literature, while at the same time lamenting the modern loss of such expressive Jacobethean language, writing & scholarship. If these books keep coming, then my job will get much easier. I can share these gems with students eager to lap up the wonders of history, without being bored senseless by its presentation. One passage near the end spoke very eloquently to me about the loss of the 17th century’s majestic language:
“It is impossible now to experience in an English church the enveloping amalgam of tradition, intelligence, beauty, clarity of purpose, intensity of conviction and plangent, heart-gripping godliness which is the experience of page after page of the King James Bible. Nothing in our culture can match its breadth, depth and universality, unless, curiously enough, it is something was written at exactly the same time and in almost exactly the same place: the great tragedies of Shakespeare.” (Pg.239)
I want kids to read history and learn to use words like amalgam, breadth, pernicious, majestic…and a new word I discovered in this book, which meant (at the time) the ability to unify all things peacefully under one great fabric: irenicon. What a marvellous, glorious word it is. It whispers of history, culture and literacy…and it’s far removed from the short-hand, internet-gaming speak of our modern, hurried world.
To sum it up bluntly…go and read this book! Luxuriate in its greatness.
