If I actually pull this project off it will be amazing, incredible. Amazing that is, that I pulled it off, maybe not an amazing project. It's a book called "Friend Anthony." I haven't started writing it yet but do know the basic outline.
It's about what happens when an early-18th-century English farmer decides to put the Bible into his own language, simplify it, make it clear what exactly it says. That guy would be Anthony Purver who wrote Purver's Bible or also known as the Quaker Bible though that last one is somewhat of a misnomer. It's a misnomer because Quakers never actually adopted it, or used it widely, or considered that this Bible is what makes us Quakers, as opposed to ordinary KJV-type people. No, the Quakers are as bad as most denominations: most of us are not as familiar with the Bible as we should be. But, discerning the difference between two different versions? Now you've eliminated 99% of all Christians, and even greater percent of Quakers, who these days may not be as attached to the Bible itself as they used to be.
In Anthony's time, they were very attached; people in general were attached. They had the King James Version, but already some people were saying that it was antiquated, ornate, that language had moved on from that 17th century version into this new 18th century more modern kind of language. Anthony wanted to update it. He figured that if it was more straightforward and understandable, people would relate better to it.
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We can understand that impuulse and thus know why so many more modern versions of it have appeared. Back in the early 1700s Anthony's was the only one, and would be the only one for the entire century. Very few people had time to study ancient languages or do any work on the origins of the Bible like they have done since that time. And even Anthony had to make time to do it and it took him a whole lifetime.
So now you're talking 1750 or 60, we're coming into a new era, and he's almost done with this entire. mountain of work. His friend John Fothergill takes Anthony under his wing and prints a thousand of them, sends some to the colonies where we can find them even today, scattered. Fothergill for example was good friends with John Bartram, Quaker farmer from PHiladelphia, and Bartram and Anthony Pulver had a loot in common. Their lives are parallel in seeking the truth and understanding the world they lived in. But Purver woulld just have a huge Bible to show for all his work - pages and pages of notes for every page he wrote of Bible. People weren't impressed. It didn't sell like hotcakes, though it was current.
Part of the story is that biblical scholars are very cruel to him. He didn't do what he said he would do; his wording was clumsy. He seemed preoccupied with this one biblical guy, who was just kind of a flake, but he seemed to need to argue with this guy in his notes. Scholars picked apart some of his transations. But here's the thing: do we know more ancient Greek or ancient Hebrew than Anthony did? My guess is that the modern scholars don't quite have either mastered any better than Anthony. Who after all has time for a language nobody speaks? My guess is that these arguments over ancient languages are going to get pretty arcane before long, and that Anthony, who at least learned the languages as they were, might have been in a better position to know something then, than they are now.
This book will partly be about the messiness of translation, because that's something I've dealt with all my life. You get your hands dirty, reading something and figuring out what somoeone meant, you'll see where I get the word "dirty." To think we're talking about the literal truth here, well, the reader will figure out where I stand.
One time way out on this lonely country road where I lived in the remote mountains of New Mexico, some country preacher came and found me and asked me if I took the Bible as the literal word of God. I was impressed by far this guy had actually gone to find me and talk to me, so I wanted to be nice to him. But what are the chances a guy like that has actually read the whole thing? Anthony, at least, has read it. So I'll start with what Anthony says.
