A Big, Fabulous Bible': The Queen James Bible and Its Queering of Scripture

Abstract

While queer biblical translation aims to validate the presence of the LGBTQI community within Christianity, it is often viewed as violating the ethical standards of canonical biblical texts. This paper analyses the Queen James Bible as an activist, queer translation of the Bible that intersects with questions of ethics. Drawing on prefatory material and textual and comparative analysis of the “clobber verses” as presented in the Queen James Bible and the King James Version on which it is based, I discuss how this Bible makes a significant contribution to both the LGBTQI community and activism. Engaging with queer translation and activist theory to frame my analysis, I explore how the Queen James Bible’s anonymous editors confer new meaning to normative biblical conventions, thereby subverting accusations by readers and theologians that depict this text as an unethical alteration of the Bible. By categorising the edits made on the “clobber verses” into four sections and investigating the editors’ engagement with the initial Hebrew and Greek scriptures, I conclude that translations such as the Queen James Bible contend with the issue of ethics by creating a queer hermeneutical space via religious scripture that is often used to marginalise the LGBTQI community.

Keywords

• queen james bible
• queer bible translation
• activism
• clobber verses