The King James Bible at 401

The King James Bible has now entered its fifth century. Prepared by some 50 committed scholars of Hebrew and Greek, its text depended heavily on the work of the martyred scholar William Tyndale. Like the Septuagint, its Greek precedent, begun in the 3rd century B.C.E., the KJV was a team effort, and it was in fact, as the Septuagint was in legend, undertaken at royal command. Like Shakespeare's works, the King James Version both reflected and helped create the modern English language. But its phrases were not always called majestic. Indeed they were frowned upon by many an 18th century writer. But its robust language, hewing closely to the concrete diction of the Hebrew and koine Greek originals, kept to a vocabulary less than a third the size of Shakespeare's, allowing it to fulfill Tyndale's dream, that one day the Bible's message would be open to the humblest speaker of English. Idealized, even idolized in some quarters, this redoubtable text continues to strike fire today, where its many rivals often only sputter.     

Restructuring for resilience: The NASA model

Two decades of incremental decisions have locked in a vision of human space exploration through an interdependent civil space program centered on the Shuttle and the Space Station. The program lacks the resilience necessary to contain cost overruns, schedule slips, and capability cutbacks. The result is overcommitment, which makes it difficult to sustain the program in a budget-constrained environment. Coping with overcommitment through budget cuts in space science, applications, and technology could split the post-Apollo coalition and jeopardize NASA as an institution. Alternatively, terminating the Space Station could eliminate overcommitment, strengthen NASA's political base, and facilitate restructuring toward a resilient program that is sustainable. A restructured NASA might once again become a model for other agencies.     

Professionalism and the Millbank Tendency: A Response to Webb and Fisher

This short response examines critically both the analysis and data provided in the Webb and Fisher article concerning the trends towards professionalisation. It calls for a more thorough understanding of the idea of professionalisation and a more careful use of the word when applied to particular organisational contexts.     

The Geopolitics of James Bond

This article considers the politics of James Bond in order to throw light on the interaction of 'real' geopolitics and literary and cinematic representations. The Bond literature provides many opportunities for considering aspects of the popular perception of the worlds of intelligence, including, for example, the stress on covert operations and on human intelligence rather than on signals operations. The stories can also be used to consider changing images of Britain, the United States and the world, and can at times be seen as efforts to create an impression of the normality of British imperial rule and Empire. Echoes of Anglo-American competition and tension are also to be found in the Bond literature. An important, albeit concealed, theme is Britain's diminished political and military presence in Cold War confrontations and a corresponding need to adapt to the United States. Cinematic representations of Bond have presented the world with an image of global struggle through Western eyes, having depicted shifts in the Cold War and addressing themes such as the space race, nuclear confrontation and drugs.     

On James Burnham’sThe Machiavellians

Sidney Hook, senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, is emeritus professor of philosophy and former head of the All-University Department at New York University. Among the thirty books he has written or edited are Education for Modern Man, Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life,and Philosophy and Public Policy.Most recently, he has written Marxism and Beyondand his autobiography, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century.This article will be used as an introduction to a new edition of James Burnham’s The Machiavelliansto be published by Regnery Gateway, Inc.