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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.
James I was born in 1566 to Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. He descended from the Tudors through Margaret, daughter of Henry VII : both Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stewart were grandchildren of Margaret Tudor. James ascended the Scottish throne upon the abdication of his mother in 1567, but Scotland was ruled by regent untilJames reached his majority. He married Anne of Denmark in 1589, who bore him three sons and four daughters: Henry, Elizabeth, Margaret, Charles, Robert, Mary and Sophia. He was named successor to the English throne by his cousin, Elizabeth I and ascended that throne in 1603. James died of a stroke in 1625 after ruling Scotland for 58 years and England for 22 years.
posted on 24-4-2008 at 11:16 AM
I guess I am a hopeless romantic.
I thought you married because you loved someone, not for material or territorial gain.
Silly Me!
Originally posted by TheRealYoda7
reply to post by ChadAndrewATS
All religion is mistrue today.
King James was a lame that thought he could control minds by justifying his version of the way churches should be portrayed.
The only way the bible can be read is in the aramaic texts. I thought you all already knew this.
Originally posted by orangetom1999
The roots of this still exist today...most Englishmen can be found in the pubs..more than anywhere else.
The Gunpowder Plot reinforced James' oppression of non-conforming English Catholics; and he sanctioned harsh measures for controlling them. In May 1606, Parliament passed an act which would require every citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance, incorporating a denial of the Pope's authority over the king. James was conciliatory towards Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance, and he tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court. However, in practice he enacted even harsher measures against Catholics than were laid upon them by Elizabeth. Towards the Puritan clergy, with whom he debated at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans; but ejections and suspensions from livings became fewer as the reign wore on. A notable success of the Hampton Court Conference was the commissioning of a new translation of the Bible, completed in 1611, which became known as the King James Bible, considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose. In Scotland, James attempted to bring the Scottish kirk "so neir as can be" to the English church and reestablish the episcopacy, a policy which met with strong opposition. In 1618, James's bishops forced his Five Articles of Perth through a General Assembly; but the rulings were widely resisted. James was to leave the church in Scotland divided at his death, a source of future problems for his son.