H. L. Mencken on the KJV
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), of all people, the
agnostic Baltimore Sun reporter and literary critic who covered the
Scopes trial gave eloquent testimony to the superiority of the KJV.
Mencken's quote I give in full from the preface to Gustavus Paine's
The Learned Men (the KJV translators):
It is the most beautiful of all the
translations of the Bible; indeed, it is probably the most beautiful
piece of writing in all the literature of the world. Many attempts
have been made to purge it of its errors and obscurities. An English
Revised Version was published in 1885 and an American Revised
Version in 1901, and since then many learned but misguided men have
sought to produce translations that should be mathematically
accurate, and in the plain speech of everyday. But the Authorized
Version has never yielded to any of them, for it is palpably and
overwhelmingly better than they are, just as it is better than the
Greek New Testament, or the Vulgate, or the Septuagint. Its English
is extraordinarily simple, pure, eloquent, lovely. It is a mine of
lordly and incomparable poetry, at once the most stirring and the
most touching ever heard of.”
Of course the KJB has no errors or true
obscurities, but overall such a statement from H. L. Mencken is
astounding. For us today the KJV is better than the Greek New
Testament and is the most beautiful writing in all literature. The
greatest Greek scholars among us do not think in Koine Greek, and
the priesthood of the believer requires that those in the pews have
faithful vernacular translations.
Since Gustavus Paine did not give the location
of this quote of Mencken's I called Mr. Fitzpatrick, curator of the
Mencken Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and
asked him whether he had seen the Paine quote. He had not, but he
said it certainly sounded like Mencken. He sent me some other
newspaper and magazine articles written by Mencken. They are just as
strong as the Paine quote. If any man thinks KJV only people are
rough on liberal theologians and text critics that man should look
at the last sentence of an article entitled “The Book.” There
Mencken said, obviously in jest, but a jest that was made as a
commentary on modern translations, that the 300th anniversary of the
KJV in 1911 should be celebrated by the “wholesale hanging of
so-called biblical scholars.”
In an article from the American Mercury of
December, 1931 Mencken defends J. Gresham Machen against the
modernists at Princeton who had just tried and fired him and even
seems to take Machen's side. Machen graduated as valedictorian from
Johns Hopkins University. Mencken and Machen were both in Baltimore
at the same time, but Mencken never met Machen. Nevertheless, he
wrote several stories about Machen's trial by the Presbyterian
General Assembly which showed quite a bit of respect for him and
took his side. Machen was the first man tried by a liberal
university for being orthodox. But though he was a believer he
favored the critical text. Soon after he was fired from Princeton he
founded Westminster Theological Seminary, and in turn it became the
birthplace of the NIV..
Mencken did meet many times with Howard A.
Kelly, M.D., the great and famous fundamentalist physician who
founded and headed the Department of Ob-Gyn at Johns Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore from its beginning in 1889 until 1933. Kelly
was one of the great “four doctors” who were present from the
beginning of the Hospital. Their famous group portrait hangs today
in the rotunda of the Hopkins Hospital. They were Sir William Osler,
medicine, William Halstead, surgery, William Welch, pathology, and
Howard Kelly, obstetrics and gynecology. Kelly was the only
fundamentalist of the four. But Mencken, as one would expect, showed
considerably less respect for Kelly than for Machen, because Kelly
was a soul winner who believed in the any moment second coming and a
literal 6 day creation. Kelly was also a prohibitionist and very dry
while Machen, according to Mencken's newspaper articles was “a wet”
and “may have voted for Al Smith in the 1928 election.” Mencken
called Kelly's views simian. So the differences, in Mencken's mind,
between Machen and Kelly were creationism, prohibition, and
eschatology. But it is striking that Menken preferred the English
Bible, the KJV, to Machen's critical Greek text. Mencken was
courageous enough to defend Machen aganinst the liberal Princeton
academics and also courageous enough to admit the superiority of the
KJV. At least in these instances Mencken was right.
James H. Sightler, M. D.
Sightler Publications
175 Joe Leonard Road
Greer, SC 29651
7-12-02
