Authorizing versions: The courtly politics of biblical translation

My dissertation concerns biblical translation, but it is not about biblical translation. Instead, it explores the use that monarchy makes of the only authority greater than itself. The highest earthly authority was the most fitting aegis under which to translate the word of God. In commissioning biblical translations, kings were doing more than playing literary patron; they were instructing their subjects in how writing encodes authority.;In Chapter 1, I discuss the Septuagint translation of the Bible. The earlier version of its creation holds the Septuagint up as a triumph of collaboration and consensus, while the later recension refigures the translators' achievement as divinely inspirated. Using competing understandings of "diegesis," I interpret this divergence as a question of audience and the appropriate expression of national and sectarian consciousness.;Chapter 2 concerns Alfred the Great of England. The individual texts of his translation program worked together to cast a net of Christian royal authority over Britain. Specifically through the strategic use of the preface---a genre perfected by Alfred---they regulated historical understanding of the king's reign by portraying him as the heir of Roman and Carolingian culture.;Chapter 3 treats the King James Bible, initially commissioned as the perfect text to achieve a balance between religious and political factions. The careful instructions to the translators have been preserved as a vital part of the bible's lineage. The obedience to and disregard of those instructions are a window into the interpretation and execution of the sovereign's will. Through the use of archaic language, Middle English prosody, and calculated polysemy, they addressed the threats to royal authority.;In the conclusion of my dissertation, I focus on the way that the effects of strategic Bible translation intensify across time. The reason, I argue, is traceable back to transmission: Each king learned the lessons of and built on the work of his predecessor. These lessons were conveyed not through the translations themselves but through the medium of the preface. The preface is the quiet partner to the translation, the expression of royal authority that complements and guides divine authority.