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Dawkins Loves The Bible

Richard Dawkins on his lifelong love of the King James Bible, which will be 400 years old next year: “Everyday speech is laced with biblical phrases from quotation to cliché.”
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The King James Bible occupies nearly 42 pages of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, only narrowly beaten by Shakespeare, with 45. Not just literature in the high sense but everyday speech is laced, suffused – riddled, even – with biblical phrases the status of which ranges from telling quotation (“They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind”) to cliché (“No peace for the wicked”) and all points between. A word in season and perhaps we can see eye to eye. Although I wouldn’t call the Bible my ewe lamb, and I would have to go the extra mile before I killed the fatted calf for it, you don’t need the wisdom of Solomon to see how biblical imagery dominates our English.

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