Francis Bacon and the King James
Bible
by Mather Walker
2007
In the English-speaking world there are two
supreme masterpieces of literature. Both,
oddly enough, were first published within twelve
years of each other in the then relatively small
(by today’s standards) city of London,
England. The King James Authorized Version of
the Bible (KJAV) was published in 1611, and the
first folio edition of the Collected Works of
William Shakespeare (FF) was published in
1623. Odder still the facts known about the
authors of both of these works present ‘irreconcilable
differences’ with the works they supposedly
authored.
Six groups, comprised of some 54 translators,
produced the KJAV. Most of these people had
no literary aspirations, and have left no written
works. Those who have exhibit no outstanding
literary quality in their works. In addition,
the inability of a committee to produce anything of
outstanding quality is proverbial. As for the
Shakespeare works, the reputed author, William
Shakspere of Stratford on Avon, is the most
unlikely candidate imaginable. He had
illiterate parents, illiterate children, and
judging by the crabbed and incomplete six
signatures he left behind was more than likely
illiterate himself.
The solution to the ‘irreconcilable
difference’ problem of the authorship of the ‘Shakespeare’
works is that Francis Bacon was the actual
author. As far back as 1598, the year the ‘Shakespeare’
name first appeared on one of the plays, Joseph
Hall and John Marston had works in print showing
they recognized Francis Bacon as the actual author
of these works. Subsequently various people, adding
to what was begun by Hall and Marston, have amassed
an imposing body of evidence for Bacon’s
authorship. The articles on the present
site (sirbacon.org) alone are more than sufficient
to demonstrate that Bacon was the actual author of
the ‘Shakespeare’ works.
The problem with the authorship of the KJAV may
have the same solution. William T. Smedley in his
1905 book, The Mystery of Francis Bacon,
first put forth the theory that Bacon rewrote
the translator’s manuscripts to produce the
literary masterpiece that is the KJAV. At a
time when books from the Elizabethan and Stuart era
were much more affordable than they are now Smedley
amassed a very fine library, and having become
intimately acquainted with the material in his
library, noticed some odd features in these
publications. He began to suspect that one man was
behind the publication of many of these works, and
he identified this man as Francis Bacon.
Smedley said Bacon marked the books he published
with special printer’s devices. For example,
the device below on the “To the Christian
Reader” at the beginning of the KJAV can also
be found at the beginning of Bacon’s 1620
Great Instauration, and at the beginning of the
Shakespeare First Folio:
Here is the beginning of Bacon’s 1620 “Great
Instauration”:
The 1611 KJAV was printed in a large Folio
edition, and the printer was Robert Barker, the
King’s printer. Beginning in 1612 the
KJAV was printed in smaller quarto editions, and
still smaller Octavo editions. Smedley showed
the following title page from the 1612 Octavo
edition of the KJAV. This edition was printed
for John Speed, who has been granted a patent by
King James to print the genealogies in the English
bibles, and Smedley observed that the device at the
top of the page was printed from the
identical block, which was used on the title page
of the first edition of the 1593 ‘Shakespeare’
“Venus and Adonis”, and that the device at the
bottom was a variant of the light “A”,
dark “A” device that appeared in the
First Folio of the Shakespeare works.
The idea that Bacon rewrote the translator’s
manuscripts, far-fetched as it might seem on the
surface, has additional support. Smedley said that,
“Although not one of the translators has left any literary work
which would justify the belief that he was capable
of writing the more beautiful portions of the
Bible, fortunately Bacon has left an example which
would rather add luster to than decrease the high
standard of the Bible if it were incorporated in
it. As to the truth of this statement the
reader must judge from the following prayer, which
was written after his fall, and which was described
by Addison as resembling the devotions of an angel
rather than a man:” Here is an excerpt from
the prayer:
“Remember, O Lord, how Thy servant hath walked before Thee;
remember
What I have first sought, and what [hath]
been principal in mine intentions.
I have loved Thy assemblies; I have mourned for the
divisions of Thy
Church; I have delighted in the brightness of Thy
sanctuary.
This vine, which Thy right hand hath planted in
this nation, I have ever
Prayed unto Thee that it might have the first and
latter rain, and that it
Might stretch her branches to the seas and the
floods….
“Remember (O Lord) how thy servant walked before thee:
remember what
I have first sought, and what hath been principal
in mine intentions. I have
Loved thy assemblies, I have mourned for the
divisions of thy Church. I
Have delighted in the brightness of thy
sanctuary. This vine which thy right
Hand hath planted in the this nation, I have ever
prayed unto thee that it
Might have the first and the latter rain; and that
it might stretch her branches
to the seas and to the floods. The state and
bread of the poor and oppressed
have been precious in mine eyes. I have hated
all cruelty, and hardness of
heart: I have (though in a despised weed)
procured the good of all men.
If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of
them; neither hath the sun
Almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as
a dove, free from
superfluity of maliciousness. Thy
creatures have been my books, but thy
Scriptures much more. I have sought thee
in the courts, fields, and gardens,
but I have found thee in thy temples.”
There are a number of bits of evidence of lesser
weight that tend to support Smedley’s
claim. For example, if Bacon wrote the ‘Shakespeare’
works, and rewrote the translator’s
manuscripts to produce the KJAV his mind would have
certainly been filled with the Bible when he sat
down to write The Tempest in 1611. It
is interesting therefore that Stephen Marx in his
2000 book; SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE, demonstrated
The Tempest is permeated with reflections
from the Bible. He shows the darkness and
chaos at the beginning of The Tempest is a
creation myth paralleling that in the book of
Genesis in the Bible; that Prospero personifying
God parallels the divine providence portrayed in
the Bible; that the wandering of the King’s
party on the island parallels the wandering of the
children of Israel in the wilderness; and even that
the masque at the end of the play with the
apocalyptic vision parallels the apocalypse at the
end of the Bible. Another example of evidence
of lesser weight is the phrase from the above
prayer where Bacon says, “Thy creatures
have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more.”
This could be merely an allusion to Bacon’s
habit of reading the Scripture, except he often
fashioned phrases with double meanings. In
view of this it could also be read as saying that
the KJAV was his book. It might be
significant also that just as was the case with the
First Folio, the manuscript from which the KJAV was
printed has never been found. The late Penn
Leary’s book, “The Oak Island Enigma”
presented evidence connecting Francis Bacon to
whatever is buried at Oak Island. Although
whatever is buried there has never been recovered,
a core drill brought up a manuscript fragment from
a chest located some 153 feet below the
surface.
Since Bacon used the ‘Shakespeare’
pseudonym, the peculiarity in the KJAV of the
construction of Psalm 46 can be accepted as
evidence that Bacon marked it to show his
involvement. The
46th word from the beginning is ‘shake’
and the 46th word from the end is ‘spear’.
In previous translations of the Bible these words
had been placed differently in relation to the
beginning and ending of the Psalm, and ‘shake’
had earlier been written ‘shoke’.
It is evident there was more than coincidence
involved, and if this was not coincidence it means
that Bacon went to the trouble of arranging the
text to identify his involvement with the rewriting
of the KJAV. The ‘46’ connected
to this establishes the certainly of the absence of
coincidence. The ‘46’ seems to be a
reference to the number of translators still alive
when the KJAV was completed, and also to the fact
that that Bacon’s ‘mask’ William
Shakspere of Stratford on Avon was 46 years old at
that time. No doubt, this detail was added to
rule out the possibility that the anomaly was
coincidence.
It should be remembered in connection with the
question of whether in the KJAV Bacon rewrote the
translator’s manuscripts to produce a
masterpiece of literature that this is the same
thing he had been doing with his Shakespeare plays
for over twenty years. Rewriting source
material produced almost all of these great
masterpieces of literature. Compare
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with his
source Arthur Brooke’s “Tragicall
Historye of Romeus and Juliet”, or King Lear
with its source “The Chronicle History of
King Leir”, or Macbeth with the source
material from Holinshed’s Chronicles,
or Antony and Cleopatra with its source in
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, and so on
and so on.
Two works of Francis Bacon were published
posthumously, The New Atlantis, and the
Sylva Sylvarum. The New Atlantis
was designed to link Bacon to the FF, specifically
to The Tempest (see my essay A New Light
on the New Atlantis). The Sylva
Sylvarum was designed to link Bacon to the
KJAV. Examine the title page from the KJAV
below, and compare this with the Sylva
Sylvarum title page below it. Both have
an oval at the top enclosing the Hebrew name of
Jehovah. Both have a peculiar drawing of a
small angelic figure with a large head and tiny
wings. In the KJAV New Testament this is at
the bottom. In the Sylva Sylvarum
there are two of these peculiar little angelic
figures at the top, one on each side of the Jehovah
oval. Is it coincidence that both title pages
have two important features in common, or was the
Sylva Sylvarum designed to shown Bacon’s
connection to the King James Bible? Also the
order of the subject matter dealt with in the
Sylva Sylvarum (i.e. liquids, air, light,
solid bodies, animals, man, and so on), follows the
same order as the creation in Genesis (the deep
exists in the beginning like a vast body of water,
the spirit of God moves over it like air above the
ocean, God says let there be light and there is
light, then solid matter is created, then animals,
then man, etc.).

CONCLUSION
William Smedley exhibited remarkable insight
into Bacon mind and objectives. There is
evidence to support his contention that Bacon
rewrote the translator’s manuscripts to
produce the supreme literary masterpiece of the
KJAV. As to how persuasive this evidence is,
I leave this to the reader’s judgment.
Smedley said that, “…there was
only one writer of the period [Francis
Bacon] who was capable of turning the phrases
with that matchless style which is the great charm
of the Shakespeare plays. Whoever that
stylist was, it was to him that James handed over
the manuscripts, which he received from the
translators. That man made havoc of much of
the translation, but he produced a result which, on
its literary merits, is without equal.”
Although the other evidence is striking, when all
things are considered this seems the strongest
evidence for Smedley’s claim that Francis
Bacon was responsible for the literary masterpiece
that is the King James Bible.
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