Be it...

Very common in formal and legalistic documents:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management Committee

   (PMC), to be known as the "Apache Logging Services PMC", be and

   hereby is established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be

   it further...

Teleostomi

But the value of the original Bible, be it observed, did not make the value of the English Bible.

Would you please paraphrase this sentence??

Please / Let us note ( = be it observed) that the (literary? religious?) value of the original Bible is not the whole source of the (literary? cultural?) value of the English language (King James version?) of the Bible.

I presume the writer is referring to the literary and cultural value of the King James translation of the Bible; I may be off track.

Thank you very much!

Yes, the author is Lafcadio Hearn, and he's explaining in his lecture why the King James Version of the Bible is excellent.

Lafcadio Hearn is a novelist/literary critic admired by Japanese.

TeleostomiYes, the author is Lafcadio Hearn, and he's explaining in his lecture why the King James Version of the Bible is excellent.

Lafcadio Hearn is a novelist/literary critic admired by Japanese.If I remember well, he lived and died there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La

"be it observed" here is imperative, and should not be mixed up with the subjunctive. Compare:

"Fee, fi, fo, fum
I smell the blood of a man
Be he alive, or be he dead
I'll grind his bones to make my bread!"

I add the above comments for other students who might incidentally read this thread. That's the root of my confusion. (If you sense sth wrong, please point it

Nothing wrong there, Maple. Excellent point. To make be it observed subjunctive requires a different sort of thought. Note how the structure usually has an or when it's a matter of the subjunctive use.

Be it observed in the morning or in the afternoon, the statue has that same gloomy look.
= (It doesn't matter) whether it is observed in the morning or ...