🚀 go-pugleaf

Tony Reed wrote:
> 
> William Shakespeare left an Easter egg in the King James
> Version of the Bible...
> 
> Check it out at: <http://www.cam.org/~treed/bill.html>

I checked out your page and there are several BIG problems with this
theory:

1. First and foremost, I don�t know what �East of Eden� has to do with
this, but the word �Selah� most definitely WAS in the original Hebrew.
In fact, it�s not even translated from the Hebrew; it�s �transliterated�
(i.e., they use the English alphabet to mimic its pronunciation in
Hebrew). It�s probably a musical notation, such as �forte� or �fermata;�
scholars argue a bit over what it means. Most think it means something
akin to �pause and reflect.� There isn�t a good English equivalent, so
they don�t translate it (like �baptize� in the new Testament, which was
actually orginally a Greek word).

2. The King James was completed by 47 Bible scholars, none of whom were
Shakespeare. I don�t know if he knew Greek and Hebrew or not, but that�s
irrelevant. The scholars at that time wouldn�t have let a playwright
touch their scrolls with a ten foot pole. Plays were thought to be
sinful (remember, this is the height of the Puritan era, just before the
Restoration). You think they�d let a guy who wrote �The Rape Of Lucrece�
help translate the Bible? Don�t make me laugh.

Here�s a quote from Grolier�s:

�On Nov. 28, 1582, church authorities gave permission for him to marry
Anne Hathaway of the neighboring village of Shottery.  He was 18 years
old, and she was 26;  probably she was pregnant.  On May 26, 1583, their
daughter Susanna was baptized in Holy Trinity.�

So we have the Catholic Church letting a fornicating, sinful writer of
horrid, sinful plays writing the Bible. I don�t think so.

(By the way--I�m not saying I support the way the Church would have
looked at Shakespeare or his plays. He was immensely talented; history
bears it out. But the fact is he wouldn�t have had a chance to try).

3. I looked up all the info I could find on the production of the King
James Version in all the works I have access to (I�m a Systematic
Theology/Journalism major at Mutlnomah Bible College in Portland; we
have a 65,000-volume theological library). You�d think if Shakespeare
helped write the KJV, it would show up somewhere. No mention. Where dod
you hear it?

Also, the KJV was partly based on revisions of several earlier works,
including the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), and the
Rheims-Douai Bible (1582, 1609). This is why they were able to complete
the KJV in only seven years. Most of those works were completed before
Shakespeare was born--and in Germany and Switzerland to boot (Unger�s
Bible Dictionary, pp. 1301-1303).

4. From 1604 to 1611, the time when the KJV was being translated,
Shakespeare wrote and/or produced the following plays for the Globe
Theatre, which he partly owned, at the rate of about one play every six
months. He also acted in some of them: Troilius and Cressida, All's Well
That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Pericles (c.1608), Cymbeline
(1609-1610), The Winter's Tale (1610-1611), and The Tempest (this is all
from Grolier�s Multimedia again). Busy guy, as you pointed out on your
web page. When was he supposed to have time to translate the Bible, too?

So we have a playwright, a father out of wedlock, that the Church
supposedly let help translate the Bible. No mention of it in history. No
mention of it in theology. No evidence that Shakespeare knew Greek and
Hebrew (he�d also have to know German, Latin and Aramaic for reasons I
won�t get into here). And last but not least, the �easter egg� he
allegedly left in the Psalms doesn�t exist unless you play games with
the text.

This is a cute theory, though. It forces me to argue from silence for
the most part--except for the fact that Selah is part of the original
Hebrew. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Check out my website: "Do We Have To Give Up Our Brains For Jesus?"
http://www.aracnet.com/~ghartman/index.shtml