400 candles

As one gets older the appeal of celebrating most anniversaries seems to decline. It’s as though there were some sort of inverse relationship, the bigger the number the less desire to make a fuss about it.

Here’s an exception to that rule. The King James Bible turns 400 this year. It was published on May 2^nd, 1611 by the Church of England and became known as the Authorised or King James Version of the Bible. It has done more to influence the language we speak, the most used one on the planet, than anything other than Shakespeare.

Back a couple of decades ago when I was an articling law student in Toronto, facing a 40 minute subway commute each way, each day, for a year, I decided I’d read the Bible cover to cover. The King James version was the obvious choice. And reading it from front to back opened my eyes about a number of things.  

The very first thing I learned when I started to read the Bible was something I hadn’t expected. It was that sitting down on a train and pulling out…