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The Crown, the Code, and the Covenant: this is not an abstract theme, but an operational line of sight from throne room to translation, from translation to empire, from empire to the souls of the oppressed, and from there back to the covenantal Source. The aim is not to vandalize faith, but to expose the human fingerprints pressed into the English Bible, particularly the King James Bible and its heirs, so that the distinction between the voice of the covenantal God and the voice of institutional man can no longer be blurred. This is a courtroom moment, not of atheism, but of forensic clarity. The text that has been presented for centuries as the unquestionable Word of God is placed back on the table as evidence. The chain of custody is examined. The Crown is identified as commissioning authority, the Church as operating system, the Empire as global distributor, and the English language as the container that shapes every thought, every image, every doctrine that flows from the page into human imagination. The conclusion that emerges from this investigation is not rebellion against God, but rebellion against the man-made framework that has claimed divine immunity while weaponizing the Bible against the vulnerable.
The forensic trail begins in a specific time and place, not in an abstract spiritual realm. In the early seventeenth century, a monarch on an earthly throne authorized a translation that would come to dominate the English-speaking Christian world. This did not occur in a vacuum of pure piety. The monarch in question, King James I of England, presided over a fractured religious landscape, marked by tension between Puritans, bishops, and the monarchy itself. In 1604, at the Hampton Court Conference, demands for reform converged before the throne. Among many rejected requests, one was granted: a new translation of the Bible. This translation would not arise from persecuted believers secretly copying manuscripts in caves or from oppressed communities demanding access to Scripture. It would be commissioned, funded, and governed by the institutional center of power.
The translators, roughly forty-seven in number, were all male and deeply embedded in the structures of the Church of England. They were organized into companies at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, working under explicit rules that tethered their work to the existing ecclesiastical order. The Bishops’ Bible was to serve as the base. The church hierarchy was not to be undermined. Marginal notes like those of the Geneva Bible, which had challenged tyrannical rule and empowered ordinary hearers against abusive authority, were forbidden. Here, the Bible being produced was not simply a linguistic exercise; it was an instrument of political theology. It affirmed monarchy, stabilized episcopal control, and muted potential threats to the state-church alliance.
The resulting volume, bearing the title “THE HOLY BIBLE,” (The White People’s Bible) did not merely describe holiness; it was branded with holiness by the very institutions that sought to control it. The act of calling this state-commissioned work “holy” functioned not only as a description but as a decree: this is the authorized lens through which God is to be seen in English. The effect mirrors a seal pressed into hot wax: the imprint of Crown and Church hardened into the consciousness of generations. From that point forward, English-speaking Christians were given not just a text, but a template. The God they encountered was mediated through a monarchy-centered, institutionally shaped vocabulary, where “Lord,” “King,” “throne,” and “obedience” were not neutral words but symbolic reinforcements of the existing political order. This is why it is fully accurate to name this work the “white people’s Bible”: not as a statement that only white people ever used it, but as a recognition that white, English, imperial power was its commissioning authority, its first interpreter, and its global distributor.
This installation of the King James Bible as a standard had profound consequences. Licensing laws and print controls ensured that unauthorized editions and rival translations faced suppression or marginalization. The Geneva Bible, loved by many for its robust marginal notes and perceived alignment with grassroots piety, gradually lost ground under this pressure. The state did not merely endorse a translation; it constrained alternatives, thereby narrowing the theological imagination of entire populations. A political arrangement had become a theological boundary. The God of the English Bible could now be consistently read as the guarantor of monarchy and the silent witness to parliamentary and episcopal authority.
From this root, the next phase unfolds: expansion. The English Bible did not remain confined to the island that commissioned it. As ships set out under flags of empire, they carried with them not only cannons and commerce, but also catechisms and Scripture. The King James Bible and its derivatives traveled in the hands of missionaries, chaplains, colonial administrators, and educators. It entered schools built on colonized soil. It was read in plantation chapels and colonial courts. It saturated sermons preached to both colonizer and colonized, always within a framework that fused Englishness with Christianity. English language, English religion, and English rule were woven into a single tapestry, each supporting the authority of the others.
In this context, Scripture ceased to be a neutral spiritual resource and became part of the colonial infrastructure. The English Bible functioned as a textbook of empire. It taught not only stories and doctrines, but a way of seeing power. Biblical images of kings, lords, and chosen nations were mapped directly onto imperial reality. Britannia could present itself as a new Israel, chosen to civilize the nations. Colonized peoples were cast as heathen Canaanites or as childlike dependents in need of tutelage and control. The translation choices embedded in the King James Bible lent theological weight to these hierarchies, and the lack of marginal commentary that challenged earthly power made Scripture a pliable ally of empire.
At the same time, the English Bible afforded a different possibility—one that the imperial custodians did not fully anticipate, or at least could not entirely prevent. The enslaved and the colonized, whose languages were suppressed and whose histories were stolen or distorted, sometimes gained access to the same text, albeit filtered through the lips of their oppressors. In its stories they found not only commands to obey, but testimonies of liberation. In the narrative of Yetzi’at Mitsrayim (Yeht-zee-AT Meetz-rah-yeem) — the Exodus from Egypt, they discerned a God who crushed a slaveholding empire and led a people out from under the hand of a tyrant. This resonance was like a hidden melody audible even through a cracked and distorted instrument.
The enslaved community in the Americas, in particular, performed a profound theological re-grafting. The book that had been used to justify their bondage became the script for their songs of deliverance. Spirituals invoked images of crossing Jordan, marching around Yericho (Yehr-ee-khoh) — Jericho, and standing before a God who sides with the oppressed. In this re-appropriation, the enslaved ceased to see themselves as merely objects of European “mission” and began to recognize themselves as a new Israel crying out under Pharaoh’s whip. The Empire’s Bible became, in their hands, a subversive manual of resistance and hope.
The depth of this subversion can be measured by the lengths to which slaveholding powers went to control it. Historical evidence reveals the production and circulation of a so-called “Slave Bible,” in which large sections of Scripture were deliberately removed. The book of Exodus was largely omitted. Passages that spoke of liberation, rebellion against unjust rulers, or divine judgment on oppressors were excised. What remained were carefully curated texts that emphasized obedience, submission to masters, and spiritual comfort without political liberation. This editorial mutilation functions as a confession by the oppressor: a recognition that the full witness of Scripture, even in English translation, contained explosive covenantal energy. The oppressor understood that if the oppressed were allowed to hear the entirety of the story, particularly its liberation arcs, the institutional control mechanism would face collapse.
This reveals a crucial distinction. The problem the empire faced was not that Scripture contained nothing but docile endorsement of hierarchy. The problem was that, beneath the institutional veneer, covenantal currents were still present, ready to be rediscovered by those willing to read against the grain. The Slave Bible, then, stands as forensic proof that the English Bible in its full form was dangerous to unjust power when left unedited. The fact that oppressors felt compelled to amputate large sections of the text demonstrates that the core divine testimony was not inherently their ally. The divine voice and the institutional voice were not identical, even within a translation designed by a Crown.
Yet even this powerful re-grafting by the enslaved and colonized confronts a deeper layer, one that reaches into the conceptual atoms of language. When a reader, especially one whose entire religious life has been shaped by English translations, opens an English Bible, the gaze enters through a pre-framed window. The words on the page are not mere neutral containers. They carry centuries of theological assumptions, cultural associations, and institutional preferences. Terms such as “God,” “Lord,” “kingdom,” “righteousness,” “church,” and “soul” are not raw reproductions of Hebrew and Greek realities; they are composites shaped by Latin, medieval theology, Reformation debates, and Anglican ecclesiastical structures.
Even when the narrative is repurposed for liberation, the conceptual vocabulary continues to echo with its institutional origin. A liberated reading of Exodus may still carry an image of a remote monarch rather than a covenant partner. The language of “Lord” may preserve feudal overtones that obscure the Name and character of the covenantal God of Yisra’el (Yis-rah-EL) — Israel. The framework in which “heaven” and “hell” are understood may owe more to medieval European imagination than to the covenantal emphasis on life, justice, and faithfulness within history. In this way, even re-grafted fruit continues to draw sap from a root defined by English institutional theology.
This dynamic is not an accident. It is the result of a posture shift that runs through the entire English translation tradition. At the level of the original Hebrew and Greek texts, the relationship between the divine and humanity is overwhelmingly covenantal. The central categories revolve around concrete obligations, justice for the oppressed, faithfulness to promises, and shared responsibility between God and His people. The divine Name, the commands, the prophetic oracles, and the narratives all testify to a God who binds Himself to a people and to standards of righteousness that can be tested against how the vulnerable are treated.
By contrast, the English translation tradition, especially as shaped under institutional auspices, tends to recast this relational, covenantal framework into the machinery of institutional religion. Power flows from the top down. Access to the divine is mediated by clergy, creeds, and prescribed rituals. Scripture becomes a tool to authorize these structures rather than a witness that can call them to account. The divine-human relationship is reframed less as mutual covenant and more as dictated obedience. Moral focus is shifted away from the structural treatment of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, and toward personal respectability, sexual policing, and doctrinal conformity.
Part of this shift manifests in translation decisions that consistently choose terms and syntactical patterns favoring hierarchy, abstraction, and distance. Titles like “Lord God” and “Almighty” are emphasized, while the covenantal implications of the divine Name (YHWH) are largely veiled under the uniform “LORD.” Concepts like mishpat (meesh-PAHT) — justice, hesed (KHEH-sed) — covenant loyalty, and tsedaqah (tseh-dah-KAH) — righteousness, are often flattened into generalized “justice,” “lovingkindness,” or “righteousness” without sustained attention to their relational, legal, and communal dimensions. The result is a text that still speaks of justice but does so in a way that can be spiritualized, privatized, and disconnected from structural critique.
Into this landscape, a single detailed case study can serve as a lens on the broader pattern: the treatment of the Hebrew terms ish and zakar in specific legal texts, most notably in the passages often cited as blanket condemnations of innate, biological (born) same-sex attraction. The traditional English renderings of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are familiar: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.” These translations, inherited by many English versions, have been used as foundational texts to justify widespread condemnation, persecution, and even violence to the point of death against individuals based solely on their same-sex orientation or relationships. On their existence.
Yet a closer examination of the underlying Hebrew terminology and the context of these laws reveals a very different focus. Within the social and covenantal framework of ancient Yisra’el (Yis-rah-EL) — Israel, the term “ish” does not merely denote a male person in a generic sense. It commonly signifies a man with standing, responsibility, and agency: a household head, a representative, a person who possesses recognized status within the community. A person in power. The term “zakar,” by contrast, is the primary biological designation for a male. It is used across contexts to refer to male animals as well as human males. A young boy, son, servant, slave. A male without status. A male without power and carries a strong emphasis on sexual category and biological function rather than social rank.
When these terms appear together in legal contexts, especially in passages regulating sexual behavior, the distinction between a man with status and a male as a category becomes crucial. In Leviticus 18 and 20, many prohibitions concern the abuse of power: a man exploiting his daughter, his daughter-in-law, his relative, or those under his authority. These texts are not concerned primarily with abstract notions of “sexual orientation,” a category foreign to the ancient world, but with preserving the integrity of households and protecting vulnerable parties from exploitation and shame.
Consider, then, the literal structure of the verse often translated generically as “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a woman.” At the level of interlinear unpacking, the components can be rendered as follows:
Original: זָכָר Transliteration: zakar Literal Meaning: male, categorized by sex, often in a role of lesser standing or dependency
Original: אִישׁ Transliteration: ish Literal Meaning: man of standing, person of recognized agency and responsibility
Original: לֹא תִשְׁכַּב מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה Transliteration: lo tishkav mishkevei ishah Literal Meaning: you (masculine singular) shall not lie (for sexual use) the lyings of a woman
In such a configuration, the legal thrust is not “no male may ever engage in sexual activity with another male under any circumstance,” but rather “a man of standing must not treat a male categorized in vulnerability or dependency as an object of sexual use, as he might treat a wife.” The offense here is abuse of power and misappropriation of sexual access, not the mere fact of same-sex contact. It targets the exploitation of a subordinate or dependent by a man who possesses authority. This reading aligns with the wider scope of Levitical sexual legislation, which consistently protects the integrity of family structures and prohibits the powerful from trespassing boundaries for their own satisfaction.
When institutional English translations flatten ish and zakar into an undifferentiated “male,” the power dimension disappears. The focus shifts from covenantal justice and protection of the vulnerable to a generalized condemnation of acts, detached from context and devoid of attention to consent, coercion, or hierarchy. This shift is not neutral. It conveniently aligns with institutional desires to police the intimate lives of individuals while leaving untouched the broader structures of economic and political injustice. It provides a simple category of sinner that can be publicly denounced, diverting attention from hypocrisy, oppression, and violence exercised by those in positions of authority.
The severity of the consequences flowing from this flattening cannot be overstated. For centuries, the institutional church in various forms has used these English renderings to justify shaming, excommunication, legal persecution, and even physical harm to the point of death against individuals whose only “offense” is the reality of their existence and relational life. Families have been torn apart, lives destroyed, people murdered and countless souls driven into despair by teachings grounded not in precise covenantal reading but in institutionalized mistranslation. When such translation choices produce results that consistently favor institutional control, protect the powerful, and sacrifice the vulnerable, the label “error” is insufficient. This bears the marks of sabotage. this was intentional.
The prophets of Yisra’el (Yis-rah-EL) — Israel, when speaking under the covenantal mandate, did not identify the nation’s great sins primarily in terms of improper personal desire. They named pride, violence, oppression of the poor, corruption in the courts, and neglect of the needy. One prophetic indictment stands as a summary of the covenantal standard in its social dimension: the sin of Sedom (Seh-dome) — Sodom is described not first as sexual, but as economic and moral failure toward the vulnerable. The prophetic word in Yehezqel (Yeh-hez-kel) — Ezekiel, states that the iniquity of Sedom was pride, abundant food, and careless ease while the poor and needy were not strengthened. This focus on the abuse of power and neglect of the vulnerable resonates with a reading of Levitical law that prioritizes protection of the weak, not condemnation of identity.
Set against this covenantal emphasis, the institutional fixation on sexual condemnation, particularly of already marginalized people, reveals itself as a strategic redirection. Instead of allowing Scripture to function as a mirror that exposes the unjust structures of empire and institutional religion, mistranslation allows those same institutions to point away from their own sins and to fixate on others. The very text that should have been a charter of protection for the oppressed becomes, in the hands of the institution, a weapon turned against them.
At this point in the deep dive, the verdict concerning the English Bible tradition, anchored in the King James Bible and continued in many later versions, becomes inescapable. The chain of custody shows a document commissioned by a Crown, shaped under institutional constraints, deployed as a tool of empire, edited and censored when its covenantal energy threatened unjust power, and translated in ways that often prioritize institutional dogma over covenantal nuance. It has been used to sanctify white supremacy, colonial conquest, slavery, segregation, and countless forms of discrimination. It has served as a shield behind which institutions have hidden, invoking the phrase “the Bible says” as a means to shut down scrutiny and further entrench control.
The call that emerges from this audit is not a call to faithless skepticism. It is a call to spiritual clarity and courage. Allegiance to the “white people’s Bible” as an untouchable, infallible authority must be broken. The English translation tradition, particularly in its institutionalized forms, cannot be granted the same trust as the covenantal Source. The corruption lies not in the foundational words of Hebrew and Greek, where the covenantal God reveals concern for justice, compassion for the vulnerable, and fierce opposition to oppression. The corruption lies in the filtering, packaging, and enforcement of those words through institutions that have repeatedly chosen self-preservation over truth.
From this standpoint, rebellion is not directed upward, against the divine, but outward, against the apparatus that has cloaked its own agendas in divine language. This rebellion is an act of fidelity. It refuses to confuse the voice of empire with the voice of the covenant. It refuses to accept that a translation produced in the court of King James, shaped by bishops and sanctioned by a state that ruled over colonized peoples, can be treated as the final and unquestionable form of God’s Word. It insists that every translation, every doctrinal formulation, every institutional claim must be tested against the covenantal standard: the treatment of the poor, the oppressed, the stranger, the vulnerable, and the integrity of justice.
The path forward, therefore, is a return to Source Scripture, not as a romantic idealization of “original texts,” but as a deliberate movement into the covenantal grammar and logic obscured by centuries of institutional mediation. This involves learning to see the original names, terms, and structures in their own context. It means hearing the voice of Mosheh (Moh-sheh) — Moses, Yeshayahu (Ye-sha-yah-hu) — Isaiah, Yirmeyahu (Yeer-meh-yah-hu) — Jeremiah, Amos (Ah-mohs) — Amos, and others, not as mere mouthpieces for later church doctrines, but as covenant prosecutors calling a nation to account for its treatment of the least. It means recognizing that the Mashiakh (Mah-shee-akh) — Messiah, known in the West as the anglicized counterfeit name of Jesus the Christ (Yehoshua), stands firmly in this prophetic stream, announcing good news to the poor, release to captives, and freedom for the oppressed, not comfort for empire.
Practically, this return does not require every believer to become a professional linguist. It does demand, however, a posture of suspicion toward institutional claims of infallibility and a willingness to question inherited translations, especially where they appear to contradict the covenantal priority of justice and mercy. It calls for the development of translation and reading practices that foreground covenantal relations, power dynamics, and the lived consequences of interpretation. It invites communities to read Scripture as a living covenant document, one that can testify against institutions that misuse it and can restore agency to those it has been used to crush.
The closing image is that of a darkened room where a window has long been covered by heavy curtains. For many generations, people have lived and died in that room, trusting that the dim filtered light permitted by the institutional curtains was all that existed. They have been told that the shape of the light, and the patterns dancing upon the fabric, are the direct manifestation of divine glory. They have been warned that to lift the curtains is to invite chaos, heresy, and judgment. Yet the courage to draw the fabric aside reveals something very different. The source of light is not the curtain but beyond it. The patterns claimed as divine turn out to be human designs stitched into the cloth.
Once the curtains are drawn back, the contours of reality change. The room does not vanish; the Bible does not disappear. Instead, the view expands. The human handiwork is exposed for what it is: sometimes brilliant, sometimes sincere, often compromised, and occasionally poisonous. The institutional Bible, including the King James and its descendants, is seen as a tool—powerful, historically formative, but indelibly marked by its origin in white, English, imperial power. The covenantal God, by contrast, stands beyond and above this, calling from the pages of Source Scripture for justice, mercy, humility, and liberation.
The only path that honors that voice is to recognize the hand of man in the text and to refuse to bow to human institutions as if they were divine. To cling uncritically to the “white people’s Bible” as infallible is to continue granting empire veto power over conscience and covenant. To acknowledge its human origin and its institutional imprint is the first act of reclaiming the heart of God. The rebellion, then, is not against a righteous God, but against the structures that have long used God’s name to shield their injustice. In that rebellion lies not destruction, but restoration: a return to covenantal relationship, to relational agency, and to a faith that is no longer hostage to the machinery of earthly thrones.
