God’s Secretaries – Adam Nicolson – 2 Stars

God’s Secretaries – Adam Nicolson – 2 Stars

Title: God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

Author: Adam Nicolson

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers        

Year: 2005 Softcover

Rating:  2 Stars

 

Price and Purchasing Options: For the LDS Community this hasn’t been a staple book – so you won’t find it at secondhand LDS book options (Deseret Industries), but you may find it at other secondhand options.  This book has been a best seller though, and so you can get it reasonably priced right from Amazon if you wanted to read it for about $10.

Review: I will cut right to the chase on this review.  It is 2 Stars, both because it wasn’t what I was looking for (which isn’t the books fault), but it also isn’t something that I would say relates to the LDS community too much.  I’ll explain.

First of all, if you really like history books, and you are really interested in the time this takes place (early 1600’s), this might be an interesting read.  For that purpose Nicolson does a good job writing it.

However, if you are looking into getting some background on the making of the King James Bible, this is overkill.  Most of the information that you probably want can be found with a good google search and a peruse of Wikipedia.

This book will go into the details of the political climate of the time, some of the internal translation struggle, and some of the financial implications.  With that beings said, the writer also jumps around like he is playing a game with time, so the narrative is fairly lost.  He can jump years and make references decades a part – it is a little hard to follow at time.

The crux of what was interesting was the focus on the translation that took place, unlike previous English editions of the Bible before it – using five different companies, and the need for them to check each other work.  You did begin to appreciate the effort it took to get the King James Version of the Bible, as well as understand why it became the standard so quickly and universally for most English protestant movements.  With all of its current criticisms for accuracy, you appreciate what they accomplished, and that at the time it was the most accurate attempt in English.    It really is an inspired edition of the book.

With all of that said, I wouldn’t recommend it for most LDS readers, however, if you are die hard interested it might be worth it.

  

Suggestions:  If you really want to read the book go for it, but if it isn’t a strong desire than feel free to skip it and learn what you want about the King James Bible from more direct and succinct voices.

I hope you have enjoyed this review, and I encourage you to follow this blog as I update more reviews in the coming days, weeks, months, etc.  Please feel free to also follow my YouTube page – however, I enjoy writing more than being on camera!

Review #42

Tags: 2 Stars, History, God’s Secretaries, Adam Nicolson, LDS Book Review, Ryan Daley