Art News

Still a Best-Seller, the King James Bible is Being Celebrated on Its 400th Anniversary

LONDON (AP).- Every Sunday, the majestic cadences of the King James Bible resound in Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal in London, in scattered parish churches in Britain and in countless chapels, halls and congregations around the world. You may also hear it in a pub or on a street — “the skin of my teeth,” ”the root of the matter,” and “turned the world upside down” — or listening to the lyrics of Handel’s “Messiah.” Still a best-seller, the King James Bible is being celebrated on its 400th anniversary as a religious and literary landmark and formative linguistic and cultural influence on the English-speaking world. You don’t have to be a believer to appreciate it. When Britain’s most famous atheist, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, read a chapter from the