News
The Prince of Wales attends the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible
16th November 2011
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has paid tribute to the "extraordinary" and "abiding importance" of the King James Bible at a service to mark the 400th anniversary of the translation.
The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh and The Prince of Wales led around 2,000 worshippers at the service in Westminster Abbey where early editions of the Bible were presented at the altar.
Dr Williams told the congregation that the translators would have been "baffled and embarrassed" by the idea of a perfect translation but had sought instead to convey the "almost unbearable weight of divine intelligence and love" into the English language.
"The temptation is always there for the modern translator to look for strategies that make the text more accessible - and when that temptation comes, it doesn't hurt to turn for a moment - for some long moments indeed - to this extraordinary text," he said.
The Prince of Wales is a practising Anglican and attends church regularly with The Duchess of Cornwall.
The service was attended by senior clerics including the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, the Bishop of London Dr Richard Chartres and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, former head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Earlier this year, The Prince recorded a passage for the King James Bible Trust project, the YouTube Bible.
Further information:
Find out more about The Prince of Wales's personal faith