IT’S an appropriate place to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
Pupils at King James’s School in Almondbury have spent the last week learning about the most influential version of the Christian holy book.
Year 7 pupils used art, video and rap to celebrate the King James Bible, which was first printed in 1611.
Associate assistant headteacher Jacqui Armitage said yesterday: “We decided to do the project because our school is also named after King James and we celebrated our 400th anniversary three years ago.”
Sixty pupils from the Almondbury school were joined by another 60 from Moor End Academy in Crosland Moor for the week of activities.
Jacqui said: “We’ve done a collage and other artwork based on the Bible and we’ve had poetry sessions using passages from the book. The students have also done Bible raps and rhymes.
“Some of the project has been filmed by Small Cog Productions and will feature in a service at All Hallows Church in Almondbury on November 27.”
Jacqui hopes the children will learn valuable lessons from this week’s activities.
“It’s gone brilliantly. We’ve asked the students to rate the week out of 10 and none of them have given it less than eight,” she said.
“It’s about them learning to work in teams and working with people from different backgrounds.
“The key thing for us is to break down barriers and try to celebrate and promote diversity and show that there’s one race – the human race.
“Huddersfield is an ethnically and socio-economically diverse town and this kind of project prepares the students for their future in the wider world.”
THE Bible was commissioned by King James I (above) in 1604 after hard-line Puritans complained about alleged inaccuracies in earlier English translations
Forty-seven members of the Church of England spent the following seven years interpreting the Bible from Hebrew and Greek to create a new official English version of the Christian holy book
The bible was first published in 1611, costing 10 shillings loose-leaf or 12 shillings bound
More than 200 phrases, including “feet of clay” and “reap the whirlwind”, were coined by the interpreters of the King James Bible
The Bible spread across the world in the centuries after its publication, as England became a colonial power. Winston Churchill described the book as : “An enduring link, literary and religious, between the English-speaking people of the world”.
