[MUSIC PLAYING] Good evening,
everyone, and welcome. For those of you who haven't
had the chance to meet earlier, my name is Mark Robson. I'm the director of English
at the British Council. I have one-- I've been asked to
do one piece of housekeeping. I'm not going to do
the fire exit routine, but I am going to ask you
to make sure you've got your mobile phones turned off. So if you haven't,
please do so now. Welcome to the
magnificent surroundings of Dartmouth House, home of
the English-Speaking Union, to whom I would like to
extend my thanks for agreeing to host tonight's lecture
by Professor David Crystal. Before I introduce
Professor Crystal, I'd like to just take a couple
of minutes to set the scene. At the British Council, we share
with the English-Speaking Union the fact that English is
at the core of what we do, this because we
passionately believe that acquiring English
language skills can provide people with
life-changing opportunities. A recent piece of research
that carried out on our behalf by Euromonitor in
five developing countries across
Africa and South Asia demonstrated that a
competent English speaker can expect to earn, on average,
30% more than a similarly skilled person without English. We also share with the
English-Speaking Union the aim, through English, of
providing people worldwide with the possibility to
dialogue, exchange ideas and opinions, and
hopefully break down mistrust between cultures. The English-Speaking Union
has a tremendous history in promoting the virtues
of the English language. For over 90 years, it's provided
scholarships, bursaries, and exchange opportunities
for English speakers around the world,
as well as promoting debating skills to school and
university students worldwide. Turning to the British
Council, this year, we're proud to say that we'll
reach 170 million teachers and learners of English
worldwide through a range of different types of work. We're extremely active in
teacher training these days, and taking India as
an example, we're working with Indian
state governments and nearing our goal of training
3/4 of a million state school English teachers over
a three-year period. We are actively
embracing technology and have a burgeoning portfolio
of web, mobile phone, radio, and TV products for remote
learners and teachers of English, which are, of
course, of particular relevance to the developing world. And, of course, there is
our fantastically successful network of 70 face to
face teaching centres in 43 countries and
also the nearly 2 million English proficiency
exams we deliver each year, including our world leading
high stakes English proficiency test, IELTS. Here in the UK, we've
reinvigorated our programme of English work of late and
have recently won European integration funding to
develop materials for learners and teachers in the
UK ESOL community, so we look forward to getting
stuck into that very soon. This is the last in a yearlong
series of seminars which has brought together hundreds
of teachers of English in various locations
across the country, providing access to a diverse
range of presentations and topics. And it's fitting that the finale
to the British Council seminar series tonight sees
us working together with the English-Speaking Union
and in support of the King James Bible Trust to
celebrate the foremost writer and lecturer on the English
language, Professor David Crystal. Now David really
needs no introduction. Being the world-renowned
eminent linguist and scholar that he is, he is,
of course, the author of such notable works
as English as a Global Language, The Cambridge
Encyclopaedia of the English Language, and, of
course, tonight's focus, Begat: The King James Bible
and the English Language, copies of which will be
on sale after the lecture. It is also my
particular pleasure to be able to wish David
many happy returns, because yesterday was, in
fact, his 70th birthday. [APPLAUSE] Congratulations, David. So thank you for listening. That's enough from me,
and without further ado, I give you Professor
David Crystal. Well, I don't feel 70. I mean working with
the British Council as long as I have and the ESU
also keeps you young, you know. Really, it really does. Thank you for coming. Obviously, you are
all here, because you were unable to get tickets
for the Harry Potter world premiere. And this is very
much a second best, but I'll try to live
up to the wizardry of that amazing series. You have then noticed, have you,
that it's the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. I thought you
might have noticed. It's been very difficult
to avoid noticing. Anniversaries are an
amazing thing, aren't they? They focus the mind. Last year, this time
last year, nobody was paying any
particular attention to the King James Bible any
more than any previous year. This year, how
many times have you heard the entire King
James Bible read aloud from beginning to end? I know of at least 10
occasions this year, where that has happened. Oh, they're great
events, certainly. They start off fine
with great enthusiasm, and Genesis and Exodus
are really exciting. But when you get on to
Numbers and Deuteronomy, there is a kind of falling
away of interest on there. And then it sort
of livens up again when you get to
the New Testament, if you're still alive by then. It's been quite an amazing
year from that point of view. Anniversaries are like that. Of course, we're already
planning next year. Dickens next year, of course. They're already planning 2016-- Shakespeare's death, 400 years. Oh, they're already
planning 2016. So this year has been quite
remarkable for bringing the King James version into
the public eye, a version that has attracted an extraordinary
campaign of public relations, really, apart from
anything else. Just think of the accolades
it's received over the years. Oh, just take in the
last 50 years, Churchill, for example, referring
to it as a masterpiece of the English language. We'll go back a century,
Coleridge claiming that the King James Bible
would keep anyone from being vulgar in point of style. If you follow the
King James style, you will avoid vulgarity,
by which he meant, of course, using a style that
was unelegant in some way. Oh, all the famous people
have commented in this way. Charlton Heston--
I mean, you know, let's go up a notch
to Charlton Heston. He said at one point,
"The King James Bible has been an enormous
force in shaping the development of
the English language," Charlton Heston, that
well-known expert on English language studies. But you see, why was he such-- why was he so enthusiastic? Because he had to
read the whole thing. Why did he read the whole thing? Because he was
playing Moses, wasn't he, in The Ten Commandments. And while he was
making that film, he did, indeed, read the
whole of the King James Bible. And he was very impressed by it. And we have that quote. And then we have
people who have pointed to the relationship of
the King James Bible to the English language
as we know it today. And here, things tend to
go a little out of control, it seems to me,
because people say here that the modern English
language has been shaped by the King James Bible. Without the King
James Bible, there would be no modern English. People say things like this. Melvyn Bragg, for example,
whose splendid book of books, by the way, came out
a little while ago, a year ago he was
saying things like this, that the King James
Bible was the DNA of the English language, a theme
that Frank Field picked up. And it got limited
publicity this-- the DNA of the English language. Now that's really quite a
strong claim I mean DNA-- I don't know very
much about genetics, but one thing I do know
is that DNA is everywhere. So what we're saying, if we're
saying that the King James is the DNA of the
English language, is that there isn't a
word that you can say that doesn't show the
influence of the King James Bible in some way. And that, to me, is
going well over the top. That is exaggeration,
because when you actually look at the King James
Bible and start to read it or listen to it, the thing
you notice more than anything else, it seems to me,
are the differences between the language of 1611
and the language of today. You look, for
example, at the way in which the
spellings have changed over this period of time-- hundreds of spellings different
in the King James version compared with today, words like
asswaged, spelt A-S-S-W-A-G-ED, pluckt, spelled P-L-U-C-K-T,
and so on and so forth-- lots of spelling differences. Punctuation differences-- huge
differences in punctuation. The punctuation system was
only coming into existence at the end of the 16th century. Words like "comma" and
"semicolon" and so on were being used
for the first time. And so you got many
differences in punctuation. Most of you here,
I have no doubt, have a certain degree of
hatred for what is often called the green grocer's apostrophe. Have you not hatred for it? I am quite sure that the ESU and
the council combined together-- the green grocer's apostrophe. That is the one but you
put an apostrophe in to express the plural,
potato's, apostrophe S, apostrophe for the plural-- not standard English today. You will find it throughout
the King James Bible. In King James, you
will have words which are pluralized
with apostrophe S, as you do in Shakespeare. You will find words like ours,
spelled O-U-R, apostrophe, S, theirs spelled
T-H-E-I-R, apostrophe, S. The punctuation system hadn't
settled down at that time, so big differences there. Vocabulary differences--
go through a concordance to the words in the
King James Bible, and what strike you more
than anything else are the differences, words
like peradventure and tari, and wot, W-O-T, meaning
no, that sort of thing. Grammar-- the grammatical
differences between 1611 and today-- very, very striking
when you go to King James. The word endings, E-T-H, moveth,
creepeth, diggeth, and so on. We don't have that. Past tenses--
builded, I builded it. I digged it. Adam digged and so on. We don't have those. Word order variations-- in the
likeness of God made he him, made he him. I laughed not, where today
we'd say, I didn't laugh. Lots of word order variations-- in the day but thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die. And that one sentence
summarises, really, the extraordinary differences
between the language of the King James Bible and the
language of the present day. Also, there are stylistic
traits in the King James version and in all the bibles of
that period, actually, which are out of fashion today. The style is not entirely
one that we use now. While there are fantastic
features of the King James style that anybody today would
admire and want to emulate, there are, nonetheless, features
which have gone out of fashion. Take this quotation,
for example. "And they came, both men and
women, as many as were willing hearted, and brought bracelets
and earrings and rings and tablets, all jewels of gold. And every man that offered,
offered an offering of gold unto the Lord." "And every man that
offered, offered an offering of gold unto the Lord." If I wrote that
in one of my books and sent it into a
publishing house, the copy editor would strike
out two of those offerings. They would say, you've used
the same word three times. You must change the word. Very the word. That kind of repetition is
out of fashion these days, but it was very
fashionable in those days. Or take this one. Let me introduce it
by way of a question. How many of you were taught,
once upon a time in school, that it was bad to introduce a
sentence with the word "and"? I'm not going to look. Everybody is going to
put their hands up, because we were all taught
this once upon a time. It was a prescriptive
rule that came in in the middle of the
19th century, and many of us have been taught this. But if you believe
that, if you believe it is bad to introduce
a sentence with the word "and," then you
immediately eliminate 3/4 of the King James Bible. And God did this, and God did
that, and God did the other. Opening chapter of the book of
Genesis, 31 verses, 29 of them begin with a word "and." It's a Hebrewism. It's the influence of
the original Hebrew that's coming through there. But the point is it was
a perfectly normal style in those days. And so there are lots and lots
of differences between King James and the present day. So when we're asking
the question, what is the influence
of the King James Bible on the English language,
we have to be rather judicious. We have to be rather cautious. Influence there certainly is,
but you have to look for it and explore it and be careful
about generalising about it. I guess if you were asked,
as really I'm asking you now, to reflect for a second on
the aspects of the Bible that are most immediately
apparent in present day English, probably
most of you would think of the idioms, of
the phrases from the Bible that have come into
the present day. That's what most people consider
to be the main influence. There are other influences, of
course, influences of rhythm, for example. But most people
think of the idioms. They think of things like
thorn in the flesh or fly in the ointment or out of the
mouths of babes or phrases of that kind. And that is the
area, indeed, that is the focus of the
talk this evening, because the question
I want to ask is, just how much influence
of that kind is there? This is the area where
most influence is manifest, not in vocabulary. The King James
does not introduce large numbers of new words
into the English language. Shakespeare did. We know that Shakespeare
invented lots of words into English, but
King James did not. And the reason is that the
King James translators, well, were deliberately conservative. They were looking back
rather than looking forward. They weren't trying to be daring
in language as Shakespeare was. They were trying to
reflect a tradition of biblical translation, which
went back several decades. They were told to do this. The preface to the
Bible says at one point, we are not trying to make a
new translation, but rather a principal good one. We're trying to make
an old one better. And they were
instructed that they had to use, as their
first source of reference, the Bishop's Bible in
its 1602 two translation. And if that was
wanting, they could look at other earlier translations. It was a conservativism
of approach in King James. So they were not in the
business of inventing new words, as Shakespeare was. But on the other
hand, if you are going to look back
at tradition, if you want a bible that is going
to be used by everybody, appreciated by everybody,
understood as 100 years before it was said by the
man who drives the plough, then you want to make sure you
tap into the idiom of English as it has been passed down. And so it is in
this area of idiom that you are most likely going
to encounter an influence that was not only present in
1611, but has continued until the present day. And so I put it
to you, there are phrases like "a fly in the
ointment" and "my brother's keeper" and all of these. How many such phrases are
there in modern English that come from the
King James Bible? That's the question. How many? What comes into your head? 10? 20? 50 of them? 100? 200? 500? 1,000? 5,000? Of course, you have
no idea, nor had I. And that's why I wrote Begat,
because when the idea came to write a book on the
influence of the King James Bible and the
English language, I looked at what I had written
previously in other books. And I see there that I wrote
the King James Bible has been a huge influence
on the English language through its idioms. And I asked myself the question,
I'm jolly glad that nobody asked me exactly how much
influence it has had, because I would not have
been able to answer. So I thought, it's
time to answer. And so that's what
the book is about. And that's what I did. I spent a very interesting
Christmas a couple of years ago reading the whole thing
from beginning to end, from chapter one,
verse one of Genesis to the very last full
stop in the Apocrypha. And what I did was
I went through, and I looked for these idioms. And every time I found
one, I highlit it. Well, it was all done on
screen, you understand, but electronic
highlighting I mean. And then to make sure
I hadn't missed any, I read it through again. Nobody in the history of
civilization has done that. [LAUGHTER] I am absolutely convinced that
nobody has read the King James Bible through twice,
once after the other from beginning to end. This is my real claim to fame,
I think, that I have done this. And I found the answer. I now know exactly how many
idioms have come into English from the King James Bible. The answer is-- I'll tell you that
in a little while. When you do this
kind of exercise, you have to be alert,
because it's not as if they're going to turn
up on every page, you see. There are long
stretches and sometimes entire books where there are
no influences of this kind whatsoever. And then there are
other stretches, where they're tumbling out
to you every few lines. Matthew's Gospel, for
example, has dozens, but you can go to some
books of the Old Testament and not find one at all. Let me illustrate the effect. I want to try and reconstruct
for you the feeling I had when I was doing this exercise. I'm going to read a section
from the Old Testament, and I want you to notice the
point at which you recognise the modern idiom. And it's going to take
a while, because I'm going to read 10 verses. And, well, to warn you,
you know nothing is going to happen in the first nine. But that's the point. That's the point. Check that I'm right. Listen, and say, is
there anything modern in this whatsoever? And then the
modernism will come. It'll hit you between the
ears, and you'll say, oh, yes, of course, there it is. There it is. So the beginning of Genesis,
chapter four, the Cain and Abel story. "And Adam knew Eve,
his wife, and she conceived and bear Cain." No. Why don't I read it in
the pronunciation of 1611, the way it would have
been pronounced in 1611? 400 years of pronunciation
change, but not that different from
the present day, but different enough to
make it a very interesting auditory experience. "And Adam knew Eve, his wife,
and she conceived and bear Cain and said, they have gotten
the man from the Lord. And she, again, bear
his brother, Abel. And Abel was the
keeper of sheep. But Cain was a
tiller of the ground. And in process of
time, it came to pass that Cain brought of
the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of
the first lines of his flock and of the fact thereof. And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and his
offering, he had not respect. And Cain was very rough, but his
countenance fell, and the Lord said unto Cain, quiet the rough,
and where's the countenance fallen? If they doest well, it
shall not be accepted, and if they doest not well,
sin layeth at the door. And unto they shall
be his desire, and those should rule over him. And Cain talked with
Abel, his brother. And it came to pass, when
they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel,
his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain,
where is Abel, thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I me brother's keeper? Am I me brother's keeper? I am my brother's keeper? Yes! 10 verses in. Whoof, am I my brother's keeper? Of course, I recognise that one. I've heard it 1,000 times. You'll see it in a
moment being used in all sorts of
modern circumstances. But the previous nine verses-- nothing really of
note, just the story being told in the usual way. That's one reason, then,
why it's tricky sometimes to place a decision on the
issue of counting the idioms in the King James version. You can sort of almost fall
asleep as you read and read and read, and one can slip past
you without you recognising it. You've got to be alert for
the occasional occurrence of the idiom. Second thing you've
got to be alert for is the fact that the
idiom may not actually be the same as it
was in King James. The modern idiom may have
changed the King James version in various ways. Let's take a modern idiom,
a phrase that we all know-- eat, drink, and
be merry, for tomorrow we shall die, for tomorrow we
die, something like that. Eat, drink, and be merry,
for tomorrow we die-- biblical expression, isn't it? No, it isn't. That expression turns
up nowhere in King James or in any other Bible
translation for that matter. What you get is a
conflation of two things. In Isaiah, we read,
let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die-- no mention of being merry. In Luke, we read one
of Jesus' parables about the rich man who tells
his soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry,
but no mention of dying. So what has happened is
that somehow or other over the centuries,
the Isaiah and the Luke have come together. And now we eat, drink, and be
merry, for tomorrow we die. Weeping and wailing
and gnashing of teeth-- very familiar one, right
out in the Bible, isn't it? No, it isn't. Matthew provides us with
weeping and gnashing of teeth-- no mention of wailing. At another point, he talks about
wailing and gnashing of teeth-- no mention of weeping. And in Esther, we get
weeping and wailing, no mention of gnashing. Somehow or other, they
have come together, and we have weeping and
wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is the point, you see. You've got to read
behind the idiom to find the modern version. One of the most famous is "fly
in the ointment," Ecclesiastes. "Fly in the ointment--"
straight out of the Bible. No, it isn't. What you get in King James is
an extraordinary line, really. This is what you get
in Ecclesiastes 10. "Dead flies cause the ointment
of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour." That's what you get. "Dead flies cause the ointment
of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour." And from that, somehow, we
have got fly in the ointment. How? Hm, that's interesting. Talk about that later. So the idioms that
we're talking about have sometimes a
direct relationship to King James in that the exact
idiom might be found there. Sometimes it is an amalgam
of various snippets that have come from
different parts of the Bible. And the general point is that
these items are sporadic. In some places,
as I said before, rather fuller in their
representation of others, but at no point can one, as it
were, take a page of the Bible, read it, and say to
oneself, oh, yes. There is definitely an
influence on modern English. It is not as strong
as you might think. So in what way, then, has
the King James Bible been an influence on modern English? If these idioms are sporadic,
turning up here and there, and the total number that
will be in the order-- ah, you have to wait for that. But it's not going
to be very large. Am I then saying that
the King James version has had no influence on English
or only a limited influence of English? No, I'm not, and
the reason is this. Because once an idiom
comes into modern English, then it is used,
and it is adapted. Then it is manipulated. Then it is played with. And we now find
the idioms being-- turning up in all
kinds of circumstances, places where you would never
expect the Bible to be at all show the influence
of these idioms. In other words,
there is a huge use being made of a
relatively small number of idiomatic expressions. Now in order to show this to
you, I have to prove it to you, really. Now the best way of doing it
is to show you some slides. When I first started
to give this talk at the beginning of the
year, I gave the examples I'm about to show you. And people said,
you've made them up. They're so bizarre, some of
them, you've invented them. No, every one of the examples
you will see this evening is genuine. And I begin with "fly
in the ointment." Why not? That's a perfectly
good place to start. Fly in the ointment--
you and I say that's the fly in the ointment. Teachers are-- books
of idioms on English will have "fly in the ointment." Students are taught to say "fly
in the ointment' and so on. But if you go to the press, you
begin to see things like this-- "Bush is the fly in
Blair's ointment." This is the sort
of thing I mean. The idiom is there
beneath the surface. Imagine somebody who is
unaware of the idiom, fly in the ointment,
is not aware that it comes from the Bible. What is he going
to do with this? Bush is fly in Blair's ointment? What ointment has
Mr. Blair, please? You know, I mean you're
going to get total confusion. You've got to know the idiom is
there before you can understand the adaptation of it. It's not just a British thing. This next example
illustrates the same sort of thing happening in
an American context, the fly in Congress's ointment,
says this particular headline. Once you know, of course,
that fly in the ointment is a metaphor, is not
being used literally-- yes, it was
originally, dead flies cause the ointment to stink. But when we say,
fly in the ointment, we simply mean that there is
a problem of some sort, yes. But now that we've got
to that stage, of course, you can reverse the situation
and use the expression literally as in
this next example. Here is an Innovation
Canada example. This is about the
household fruit fly. People are hoping to find,
by using the fruit fly, a solution to a range
of genetic disorders. So the journalist headed the
piece, fly in the ointment, meaning literally a real
fly in real ointment. So this is a second generation
of playfulness, you see, that is taking place here-- very subtle to
try and understand the levels of
meaning behind this. Now in order to give
you an example of how a particular expression is so
widely used in modern English, I thought I would take
one, and then I'll show you some more,
where I'm just going to show you
how it turns out in all kinds of circumstances. And the expression-- I will
take the one from Cain and Abel earlier on, my brother's keeper. Journalists love the
phrase, my brother's keeper, and not just journalists either. We all do. If you had to write an
article, for example, reporting on events
in any institution, which cares for people-- a borstal, a hospital, a mental
health institution, a nursing home, anywhere,
or a prison even, anywhere where people look
after or guard or care for-- you might well head it,
my brother's keeper. It's the sort of
thing that happens. I've got dozens and dozens of
examples of that happening. Rather more unexpected is
when you see it turning up in the middle of a
television series, where you wouldn't expect the
Bible to be present at all. "My Brother's Keeper"
has been the name of over a dozen episodes
of television series, such as Knight
Rider, Law and Order, Hee Haw, Tales from the
Crypt, for heaven's sake. One of the episodes was
called "My Brother's Keeper." The very first
episode of Miami Vice was called "My
Brother's Keeper." For those of you who
are slightly less young, you will remember The
Brady Bunch from the 1970s. One of their episodes was
called "My Brother's Keeper." And those of you who are
still less young than that will probably remember the
1948 film starring Jack Warner called, voila, My
Brother's Keeper. Several books have been
called My Brother's Keeper, such as this one by
Marcia Davenport. At least two songs have
been called it, and at least two record albums-- here is one-- My Brother's Keeper by the
Williams Brothers there. Many websites call themselves
My Brother's Keeper. Here is one. This is about health. It's about health
disparities, and the name is, if you can see,
My Brother's Keeper. My Brother's Keeper
is also the name of a genealogy site,
organising information about family history. There's its logo. They call themselves
Brother's Keeper. I don't expect you'd want to
expect to find the name turning up in a motorcycle organisation,
like Hell's Angels, would you? Not really the place
where you expect to see the Bible
turning up, but it does. Here's an organisation,
a motorcycle club. They call themselves
My Brother's Keepers. If you meet them in the
middle of the night, don't expect to
receive a prayer. There are lots of organisations
that call themselves Brother's Keepers. There's an anti-racism
group from Germany. You can't see the name on
the front of their album, but that particular
group call themselves My Brother's Keepers. There's a limit to
what you can do. So after a while,
people start to change the grammar of the phrase. What can you do? One thing you can do is
you can change the pronoun. My brother's
keeper-- well, let's have some other pronoun there. So there is a Walt
Disney cartoon, for example, The Gargoyle series
called "Her Brother's Keeper." There's an organisation, which
offers support to people with AIDS. They call it Brother's
Keepers, you see here, but the actual name of
the organisation is Our Brother's Keepers Foundation-- Our Brother's Keepers this time. There's an article
here coming up on traffic congestion in
American cities headed-- do you see-- "Their Brother's Keeper." That's one thing
you can do, then. You can change the pronoun. Another thing you
can do is you can change the gender of the noun. Several books and
films have been called "My Sister's Keeper." Here's one by Jodi Picoult.
Quite a number of sites, of course, go out of
their way to avoid sexism. I mean brother--
hm, male biassed. Sister-- hm, female biassed. Need to avoid this, so
let's have both together. This is a Roman Catholic
organisation called Big Sisters and Big Brothers, and the
heading of this particular page is, Am I My Brother's
and Sister's Keeper? Won't satisfy
everybody, of course, who would prefer it to be, Am
I My Sister's and Brother's Keeper? This kind of thing can
go right up to the top. Barack Obama, in his
Christmas Day message in 2008, made a very strong statement. "Now more than
ever," he said, "we must rededicate
ourselves to the notion that we share a common
destiny as Americans, that I am my brother's keeper,
I am my sister's keeper." That's what he said. It was reported in the
newspapers like this. "Be your brother's keeper,"
President-elect Barack Obama urges. No, he didn't say that. He said, brother's keeper
and sister's keeper. But that was presumably
a little bit too long for the headline writer. It's not just
brothers and sisters. Any relatives can be used here. Any story of someone
who has had to look after an ageing mother or
father can motivate such usages as "My Parent's Keeper," as
in this particular example. And some of you will remember
that very moving 1985 book by the daughter of film
star Bette Davis, which was called My Mother's Keeper. What else can you
do to the phrase? Well, one thing
you can do is you can increase the number
of possessives that turn up before the final noun. In 2008, a Wisconsin
court in America ruled that a homeowner looking
after somebody else's dog was responsible for
any personal injury caused if the dog runs out onto
the street and bites somebody. This was a big court case,
and it was reported like this. [LAUGHTER] "Am I My Brother's
Dog's Keeper?" You can go on and on. There is no limit to the number
of apostrophe S's that you can have in front of the noun. I've been looking for the
longest sequence ever. The longest one I found
so far is this one from a blogger, who
gave an account of how he was reluctantly
persuaded to go to the aid of a relative
in computational trouble. And he started his
blog like this. [LAUGHTER] "Am I my brother's
sister-in-law's computer's keeper?" Well, you can see how you could
keep it going if you wanted to. Another ploy is to
give the word "brother" an attribute of some kind,
an adjective of some sort. The economic downturn of
2008 was a perfect example. I saw this next
example several times. "Am I My Lehman
Brothers' Keeper?" You remember Lehman
Brothers was the name of one of the organisations involved. Rather more daring
is to tweak one or other of the salient words. Sometimes it's
the word "keeper," which provides the focus,
like this one heading an article on a
soccer transfer deal, a soccer transfer deal,
or this one heading an article on health care. "Am I my brother's gatekeeper?" Now, obviously, there are
plenty of words in English which end in "keeper," as
you can see the potential, can't you? You know, housekeeper and
gamekeeper and so on-- any of them, obviously,
could attract the usage. It's less easy to play
with the word "brother." More usually, the
whole word is replaced. For example, a political
commentator began, am I my senator's keeper? That's the sort
of thing you find. Or this piece about
the environment-- am I my water's keeper? Or one of my favourite examples,
but it might shock some of you-- this one by a former sex worker
about legalising prostitution. [LAUGHTER] It has to be
admired, doesn't it? You know, whatever your
view about the content, the ingenuity in the
language is extraordinary. Am I my brothel's keeper? Yes, lots of words
ending in "keeper." An article about an
American church minister who discovered an accounting
error made by a colleague began like this-- "Am I my bookkeeper's keeper?" And I could go on and
on and on, but let me just end this particular
sequence by telling you the joke about the
ape in the zoo caught reading Darwin and asking,
am I my keeper's brother? [LAUGHTER] [CLAPPING] Oh, listen. It's funny the first
time you hear it, but not the hundredth time. You look it up on
Google, you'll see how often that joke is retold. So what can I do to
illustrate the point? I mean that example I could
replicate hundreds of times for the other
idioms that they're talking about this evening. There isn't time to do that. That's what the
book is all about. But what I thought I would
do was give you my top 10, as it were, of idioms that
I find have been manipulated in the most ingenious way. Let me begin with Exodus,
manna from Heaven. We all talk about [INAUDIBLE]
manna from Heaven. Wonderful, isn't it? So here is a site about
a West Country cooking recipe using local produce. They call themselves
"Manna from Devon," which I thought was rather nice. And then you remember the Cuban
ballet star, Carlos Acosta, from Cuba, ballet? This article about him-- "Manna from Havana." Now that is very clever, because
it's a double pun, isn't it? You get the man
and the Heaven both working together
at the same time. Lots of variations
on manna from Heaven. A coat of many colours-- well known, of course,
because of the musical as much as anything else. So here is an article from
The Guardian on holiday travel to Zagreb in Croatia, and
they call the article, "A Croat of Many Colours." This next one,
Matthew 25, well done, though good and
faithful servant. You might not expect that one
to be as popular as it turns out to be, but it's all over the
place, as in this example, a farewell to a Whitehall
retiree began, "Well done, thou good
and civil servant." Here's one that you can do in
advance of me, if you like. Matthew 5, blessed
are the peacemakers. If you had to write an article
about the treatment for heart conditions, what
would you call it? Of course, you would, and
there is an example of it in real life. You see, this is
something we can all do, and there is a
motivation somehow deep within us to do this,
to take a famous phrase, and to play with it, and to show
how original and clever we are, except we find it on
Google 1,000 times. Except each time it
turns up, it seems fresh. Actually, it doesn't
seem cliched, and that's the amazing thing. Number six-- number one, two,
three, four, five, number five, sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof, Matthew 6. This next example, you might
not be able to read it. It's from an online forum. It says here,
"sufficient unto the day is the email thereof,"
which is so true. What about this one, Luke 2-- lay them in a manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn. No room in the inn-- this report of a
council unable to cope with waste after Christmas. "No room at the bin." What about Matthew 7,
seek and ye shall find? Seek and ye shall find. Well, this next slide is
actually slightly out of date, but at the beginning
of the year, when I put the
slides together, this was the heading of a blog about
the search for Osama bin Laden. "Seek and ye shall seek." Of course, they found him,
so the slide is now dated, but the principle
is as alive as ever. The Gentiles are a
law unto themselves. Romans, anybody
called "law" is now just waiting for this headline. And who do we know
best called "law"? The film star, Jude Law. Not surprising, then, that an
article on his rise to fame is going to be called
something like this. "Jude Law-- a law unto himself." You can get very subtle
with the word "law." In France, there is a
river, the River Loire. What is little
known is that there is a tributary of the River
Loire also called the Loir, but without a final
E. A travel brochure about visiting this lesser known
river was headed "A Loir Unto Itself." Here's another one that you can
all do without me helping you. Matthew 13, some seeds
fell by the wayside. So now your job is to write
an article about Wimbledon. [LAUGHTER] What
will you call it? You'll call it
something like that. Here's one. [INAUDIBLE] this is
about golf, of course, which also has seeds. Any seeded sport motivates
the use of the phrase. And then my 10th
example, which I use, because it is, in my
view, the worst possible pun that I've ever
come across in all my analysis of biblical
idioms and their playfulness. I never expected Isaiah,
I am holier than thou. I mean that's a
common enough phrase. He's very holier
than thou, isn't he? I mean we all know the phrase. I never expected it to be the
name of a studio for tattooing and body piercing. They call themselves,
Holier Than Thou. Yes, at this point,
you can either groan or decide to leave. The point is all
human life is here. Biblical expressions are not
restricted to only the most elegant of circumstances,
the most comfortable of circumstances. Even occasions like
brothels and sex stores and all the rest of it, they
use the phrases as well. And this is really what makes
the Bible so unbelievably exceptional, that people
have taken extracts from it and use them in circumstances
where you might not ever have expected them to appear. You'll see them turning up
on t-shirts, for example. "Judge not, lest ye be
smacked in the mouth," says this particular t-shirt. Or this one,
"Geekier than thou." That's for people
into IT, of course. Would you expect a
biblical expression to be the name of a pub? What about this one, this pub? It's called The Goat
of Many Colours. It's real. There is a picture of it. I looked and looked and looked
for examples of this kind in writing this book. Sometimes it took a long
time to find an example. For ages, I couldn't
find anything to do with a pillar
of salt, for instance. And then I was driving
through Bury St Edmunds and going up the
street, and I stopped, and I was talking to somebody. And it transpired
that this little thing in the middle of
Bury is actually called, by the locals,
the Pillar of Salt. Yes, thank you very much. That's just exactly
what I was looking for. So what have we got? We've got a situation,
where a certain number of biblical idioms
are being used in an extraordinary
variety of circumstances. But how many exactly? I promised you a
total, and the total I came up with,
having gone through that highlighting exercise I
mentioned earlier on, was 257. That's my total. Is it more than you
were expecting or less than you were expecting? I suspect most of you
are thinking less. Most of you were
thinking, there's going to be hundreds and
hundreds, maybe 1,000 such-- but no, not at all. 257. In my judgement, if you
went through the exercise I did, your intuition
being different from mine, you might spot
something that I ignored or disregard something
that I spotted. So you might end up
with 258 or 259 or 254. That's not important. The point is it's 250-ish. It's not 500 or 1,000
or anything like that. It's not very many. But here's the next point. How many of those 257 are
unique to the King James Bible? That's the interesting question. And the answer there
will really surprise you. 18 only. 18. All the other expressions
are to be found already in the earlier translations of
the Bible in the 16th century. You will find them in the
Bishop's Bible or the Geneva Bible or the Coverdale
Bible or the Great Bible or especially in
Tyndale's Bible of 1525, and some even earlier than that
in the Wycliffe translation, the very first translation
into English many years before. It's Tyndale, who introduced
most of the idioms that we're talking about. It's him and Wycliffe that
were stressing over and over, we want a translation for the
boy that drives the plough. And as a result, they
introduced idioms that were, in some
cases, innovatory. Innovatory-- innovative,
innovative, novel. They were idioms that people
were likely to remember, idioms that had a
good rhythm that were part of the natural
rhythm of spoken English-- fly in the ointment, head
in the dust, you know, that sort of thing,
tum-de-de-dum, that kind of rhythmic character
that you find so often in, for example, Shakespeare
and the other playwrights. They wanted memorable phrases. And one of the things
they did, of course, was they introduced into their
translations idioms that were already in the language that
everybody would recognise. You're the apple of my eye. She's the apple of his
eye, apple of one's eye-- a biblical expression. Indeed, it is. It turns up in all
these translations. But the Bible guys already-- it was already in English. They took it from old-- apple of the eye
is in old English, around about the year 1000. And it was a part of
normal English idiom. So if you were
doing a translation that you wanted
everybody to understand, you would obviously introduce
into your translation as many of these
things as possible. So here's the interesting point. King James is not
originating these idioms. It is, however,
popularising them. Unlike any other Bible, King
James popularised the idioms. These idioms,
especially the new ones, were not coming into
English in the 16th century. These things like
fly in the ointment and so on, they didn't come into
English in the 16th century. They came in a
century or more later. In fact, it took
quite a long time before the idioms
finally percolated through into English,
1611 for the Bible. You don't find many
examples in the 17th century of these idioms
turning up in the texts that we have available. But in the 18th century,
you start to find them. There are one or two exceptions. Root and branch, for
example, turns up in the middle of
the 17th century. Why? Because there was a
political movement called the Root and
Branch Movement. So that's the reason for that. But most of these idioms don't
turn up until a century later, and the vast majority
of them don't turn up until the 20th century. Virtually all of
that playfulness I showed you earlier on is
20th century playfulness. Now why? The answer is very simple. Because of the blasphemy laws. The 19th century blasphemy laws
would have come down on you like a tonne of
bricks if you started to play with biblical
expressions, especially the sayings of Jesus
in the way that some of the modern journalists
have chosen to do. And so it's in the 20th
century and in the second half of the 20th century
that you actually find this proliferation of ludic
manipulation of biblical texts. Notice, by the way, that the
biblical origin of the text is not critical to the
ludic manipulation. You don't have to know
the Bible, in other words, in order to
appreciate the point. What you have-- when I
say "know the Bible," I mean know it in the sense
of being a believer in it and somebody who wants
to live it and so on. You need to know its origin. Otherwise, you
don't get the point. If I say, be fruitful
and multiply, then you've got to know that
there is a biblical echo in the etymology there. You can't have second
language learners of English going up to people and saying,
be fruitful and multiply. You know, going up
to a pregnant lady and, you're being fruitful. You are multiplying. You know, that
that will not work. You've got to know that there
is a restriction on the usage here. But having said that, you don't
have to be a believer in order to use these idioms. You and I can say
"fly in the ointment" whether we believe
in the Bible or not. Whether you are Christian
or Jewish, doesn't matter. People with an
Islamic background, if they've learned English,
will say, fly in the ointment. If you don't have
any religion at all, you can still say,
fly in the ointment. The point is that's the
point, that these idioms have entered English and not just
a Judeo-Christian English. That's the important
point to take away. So the only thing I
had to do at the end was decide what to call my book. When I decided to put all
this sort of thing together, what do I call the book? I hit on the perfect title. I was going to call it A Book
of Many Colours, a lovely title, a nice play on the
biblical expression. And I sent it into
Oxford University Press with that title, and
there was a silence. And then they said,
no, I can't have it. Why do you think
I can't have it? Somebody else [INAUDIBLE]. No, not-- no, not because
somebody else had used it, no. Nothing to do with racism, no. No, nothing to do
with blasphemy laws. Too many words on the cover. Not because too many
words on the cover. It's simpler than that. [INAUDIBLE] No, nothing to do with that. It's much simpler. [INAUDIBLE] Because the spelling
of the word "Colours" is C-O-L-O-U-R-S in British
English and C-O-L-O-R-S in American English. And they could not produce a
book, which had, as it were, two titles. I said, why not? That's-- I mean, well, who am I? Anyway, they wouldn't have it. So we had to come up
with a different title. And I'm glad, actually, because
the title I ended up with, the word "begat," is
a fine, punchy title. It's a great usage, because
it's probably one of the most-- it is the most distinctive
word, I think, in the Bible in terms of frequency. It turns up over 200 times
in both Old Testament and New Testament. All kinds of people begat,
beget all kinds of people, and it's usually past tense. You notice it in the
long genealogical lists of Chronicles 1,
and then, of course, it's recapitulated in Matthew,
where the listing runs from Abraham down to Jesus. Archaic past tense
form of the verb "beget," it's taken and played
with as you might expect. All sorts of people beget. Films do it, for example. Jaws 2 begat Jaws The Revenge. Cars do it. "Mini begat Mini,
begat new Mini." People are still allowed
to begat as well, not just cars and
films and so on. For example,
especially in politics, very popular political
journalists-- the Washington
Post in early 2008 had this particular heading-- "Bush Begat McCain." The New York Times,
at the end of 2008, there was an
argument at the time that the positive
presentation of a black family had been much influenced
by The Cosby Show and that somebody
actually argued that The Cosby Show laid the
foundations for Barack Obama's presidency. And so you get
headlines like this one. "Did Bill Cosby beget Obama?" And there was a follow-up piece
illustrating the influence of women in the issue. And so you get, "And
Clair Begat Michelle," talking about the two wives. One thing, though,
of course, people don't fully understand the
grammar of the verb, beget. And so you get some very strange
usages in the public domain, a brand new verb like this one. "T4 shall begat T5." I mean somebody obviously thinks
that "begat" is a verb just like a normal verb
in English, and so it can have all the variations. They don't really understand. So begat [INAUDIBLE] in which
I decided to name the book. I'm glad I did. I think it's a very
punchy title indeed. And that, for me, summarises
the influence of the King James Bible on the English language. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]
Loved this.