Coined By God: Words And Phrases That First Appear In The English Translations Of The Bible, by Stanley Malless and Jeffrey McQuain

This short and often humorous book has a focused goal that its subtitle describes well. Within the narrow scope of five different English translators or translations: Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, and the King James Version, those words or phrases or parts of speech of a word that appeared for the first time in English in one of those translations of the Bible are eligible for inclusion in this book. The authors, who have previously written about English grammar as well as words coined by Shakespeare, are keen not only in showing how these words were adopted by other translators up to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, but also how they are used in songs, plays, and Tampa Tribute articles. Although the authors, strangely, do not consider more contemporary translations of the Bible in terms of how these coined words are used at present, which is a strange decision but one easy to understand because of the proliferation of versions, they do show an interest in those obscure parts of contemporary culture that were evident at the time of the book’s writing in the early 2000’s.

In terms of the book’s organization and structure, it is a straightforward one. The words and expressions chosen by the author, as quotes only and not paraphrases of what is found in the given Bible translation, are arranged in alphabetical order and divided by the first letter of the word or the first word in the phrase. A history of the word origin follows, showing whether the word came as a Latin transliteration from the Vulgate, as most common for Wycliffe, or was a new coinage out of combining or transforming existing roots in English, French, Latin, Greek, or even Sanskrit, was common for Tyndale, or is a slight transformation of an existing phrase. The history of the word usage and other forms of the word is then given to the contemporary time, as well as the fate of the translator’s innovation in other versions of the Bible through the Revised Standard Version. At the end of the book there are helpful appendices that categorize the places in the Bible where these new words and expressions were coined, and other summary data that would be of interest to readers, including a chronology of the time period of interest in how the words enriched the English language.

Despite the fact that most people do not likely find the history of words as interesting as I do [1], this is a book that is useful for at least several reasons. For one, it is a demonstration of how the English language has been greatly enriched by the desire to make the concepts of the Bible as it appeared in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin familiar to English-speaking and English-reading audiences. As a language, English has been remarkably friendly to transliterating and adapting foreign words of expressions to express shades of meaning that previous words did not capture, and this book demonstrates that by changing and helping increase a language’s pool of expressions one greatly refines and influences the way that people think, although the uses of a given word and phrase change over time, often in response to the writings of other creative people. In showing how translators work by coining words, by coining new uses for familiar words, and in how phrases are chosen for their alliterative or poetic qualities to make them easier to remember, this book provides us with a clear demonstration of the value of the Bible in expanding the scope and expressive capabilities of the English language. For that, credit can be given to God, and to the men who translated His word so ably into our own language.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/venite-ad-me-omnes-qui-stomacho-laboratis-et-ego-vos-restaurabo/