KJV in the USA: Folger Institute's King James Bible conference begins

Jill Lepore

The Folger Institute, a consortium of 40 universities and the Folger Shakespeare Library, kicks off a major scholarly conference this evening with a public lecture, “KJV in the USA: The King’s Bible in a Country Without a King,” by keynote speaker Jill Lepore.

Lepore, who is both a New Yorker staff writer and David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University, offers something of a (hilarious) preview today on the New Yorker’s blog, The Book Bench, with a post entitled “An American King: Noah Webster’s Holy Bible.”

Noah Webster’s edit of the King James Bible is also included on our Manifold Greatness website in the site’s Historic American Bibles gallery. While the project was enormously important to Webster, it was—as Lepore explains—not particularly successful among American, or any other, Bible readers.

Noah Webster. Library of Congress.

Webster's edited Bible. 1833. Amherst College.

The Folger Institute conference, “An Anglo-American History of the KJV,”continues through Saturday, October 1. The conference includes plenary lectures, panels, and round tables, with a focus on the King James Bible and early modern England in the Friday sessions and a focus on the King James Bible and America on Saturday.

For a look at the great variety of subjects to be covered, including links to additional materials supplied by some of the speakers, consult the online program at the link above.