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King James Version

April 24, 2023

"KJB" redirects here. For other uses, see KJB (disambiguation) and King James Version (disambiguation).

The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I.[d][e] The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.[3][4]

King James Version
The title page to the 1611 first edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible by Cornelis Boel shows the Apostles Peter and Paul seated centrally above the central text, which is flanked by Moses and Aaron. In the four corners sit Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the traditionally attributed authors of the four gospels, with their symbolic animals. The rest of the Apostles (with Judas facing away) stand around Peter and Paul. At the very top is the Tetragrammaton "יְהֹוָה" written with Hebrew diacritics.
AbbreviationKJV[a]
Complete Bible
published		1611
Online asKing James Version at Wikisource
Textual basisOT: Masoretic Text; Septuagint; Latin Vulgate
NT: Textus Receptus
Apocrypha: Septuagint; Latin Vulgate
Translation typeFormal equivalence[1]
Version revision1769
CopyrightPublic domain[b]
Religious affiliationAnglican[1][c]
Genesis 1:1–3
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, who both held the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into English language approved by the English Church authorities: The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568).[5] In Geneva, Switzerland, the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560[6] from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.

In January 1604, King James convened the Hampton Court Conference, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans,[7] a faction of the Church of England.[8]

James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.[9] The translation was done by 6 panels of translators (47 men in all, most of whom were leading biblical scholars in England) who had the work divided up between them: the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels, the New Testament to two, and the Apocrypha to one.[10] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings (but not for the Psalter, which substantially retained Coverdale's Great Bible version), and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament.[11]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re-edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.

Name

 
John Speed's Genealogies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures (1611), bound into first King James Bible in quarto size (1612)

The title of the first edition of the translation, in Early Modern English, was "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties ſpeciall Cõmandement". The title page carries the words "Appointed to be read in Churches",[12] and F. F. Bruce suggests it was "probably authorised by order in council", but no record of the authorisation survives "because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19".[13]

For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name. In his Leviathan of 1651, Thomas Hobbes referred to it as "the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James".[14] A 1761 "Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English" refers to the 1611 version merely as "a new, compleat, and more accurate Translation", despite referring to the Great Bible by its name, and despite using the name "Rhemish Testament" for the Douay–Rheims Bible version.[15] Similarly, a "History of England", whose fifth edition was published in 1775, writes merely that "[a] new translation of the Bible, viz., that now in Use, was begun in 1607, and published in 1611".[16]

King James's Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation (on a par with the Genevan Bible or the Rhemish Testament) in Charles Butler's Horae Biblicae (first published 1797).[17] Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic: it is found both in a "historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible" published in Massachusetts in 1815[18] and in an English publication from 1818, which explicitly states that the 1611 version is "generally known by the name of King James's Bible".[19] This name was also found as King James' Bible (without the final "s"): for example in a book review from 1811.[20] The phrase "King James's Bible" is used as far back as 1715, although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or merely a description.[21]

The use of Authorized Version, capitalized and used as a name, is found as early as 1814.[22] For some time before this, descriptive phrases such as "our present, and only publicly authorised version" (1783),[23] "our Authorized version" (1731,[24] 1792[25]) and "the authorized version" (1801, uncapitalized)[26] are found. A more common appellation in the 17th and 18th centuries was "our English translation" or "our English version", as can be seen by searching one or other of the major online archives of printed books. In Britain, the 1611 translation is generally known as the "Authorized Version" today. The term is somewhat of a misnomer because the text itself was never formally "authorized", nor were English parish churches ever ordered to procure copies of it.[27]

King James' Version, evidently a descriptive phrase, is found being used as early as 1814.[28] "The King James Version" is found, unequivocally used as a name, in a letter from 1855.[29] The next year King James Bible, with no possessive, appears as a name in a Scottish source.[30] In the United States, the "1611 translation" (actually editions following the standard text of 1769, see below) is generally known as the King James Version today.

History

Earlier English translations

See also: English translations of the Bible

The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century. These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards.[31] The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but it was circulated very widely in manuscript form, often inscribed with a date which was earlier than 1409 in order to avoid the legal ban. Because the text of the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, and because it also contained no heterodox readings, the ecclesiastical authorities had no practical way to distinguish the banned version; consequently, many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscripts of English Bibles and claimed that they represented an anonymous earlier orthodox translation.

 
William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English in 1525.

In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament.[32] Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament.[33] Despite some controversial translation choices, and in spite of Tyndale's execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.[34] With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorised version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII.[5] When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country,[35] some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.[36]

These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible.[37] This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages.[38] Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible (namely, that the Geneva Bible did not "conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy") became painfully apparent.[39] In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible, a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.[40] While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age—in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds.[41] Accordingly, Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version—small editions were available at a relatively low cost. At the same time, there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay–Rheims New Testament of 1582, undertaken by exiled Catholics. This translation, though still derived from Tyndale, claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate.[42]

In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English.[43] Two years later, he ascended to the throne of England as James I.[44]

Considerations for a new version

The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles:

First, Galatians iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 (from the Great Bible), 'They were not obedient;' the original being, 'They were not disobedient.' Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), 'Then stood up Phinees and prayed,' the Hebrew hath, 'executed judgment.'[45]

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use Formal Equivalence and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible).[9] King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy:[46] Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous 'mother', Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa's grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots).[46] Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England.[9] Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church.[9] For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word "church" were to be retained and not to be translated as "congregation".[9] The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy.[9]

James' instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and readers. The text of the Bishops' Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops' Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douay–Rheims Bible.[47] It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been "translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special commandment." As the work proceeded, more detailed rules were adopted as to how variant and uncertain readings in the Hebrew and Greek source texts should be indicated, including the requirement that words supplied in English to 'complete the meaning' of the originals should be printed in a different type face.[48]

The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved.[10] All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy.[49] The scholars worked in six committees, two based in each of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Westminster. The committees included scholars with Puritan sympathies, as well as high churchmen. Forty unbound copies of the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible were specially printed so that the agreed changes of each committee could be recorded in the margins.[50] The committees worked on certain parts separately and the drafts produced by each committee were then compared and revised for harmony with each other.[51] The scholars were not paid directly for their translation work; instead, a circular letter was sent to bishops encouraging them to consider the translators for appointment to well-paid livings as these fell vacant.[49] Several were supported by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, while others were promoted to bishoprics, deaneries and prebends through royal patronage.

The committees started work towards the end of 1604. King James VI and I, on 22 July 1604, sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project.

Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have appointed certain learned men, to the number of 4 and 50, for the translating of the Bible, and in this number, divers of them have either no ecclesiastical preferment at all, or else so very small, as the same is far unmeet for men of their deserts and yet we in ourself in any convenient time cannot well remedy it, therefor we do hereby require you, that presently you write in our name as well to the Archbishop of York, as to the rest of the bishops of the province of Cant.[erbury] signifying unto them, that we do well and straitly charge everyone of them ... that (all excuses set apart) when a prebend or parsonage ... shall next upon any occasion happen to be void ... we may commend for the same some such of the learned men, as we shall think fit to be preferred unto it ... Given unto our signet at our palace of West.[minister] on 2 and 20 July, in the 2nd year of our reign of England, France, and of Ireland, and of Scotland xxxvii.[52]

They had all completed their sections by 1608, the Apocrypha committee finishing first.[53] From January 1609, a General Committee of Review met at Stationers' Hall, London to review the completed marked texts from each of the six committees. The General Committee included John Bois, Andrew Downes and John Harmar, and others known only by their initials, including "AL" (who may be Arthur Lake), and were paid for their attendance by the Stationers' Company. John Bois prepared a note of their deliberations (in Latin) – which has partly survived in two later transcripts.[54] Also surviving of the translators' working papers are a bound-together set of marked-up corrections to one of the forty Bishops' Bibles—covering the Old Testament and Gospels,[55] and also a manuscript translation of the text of the Epistles, excepting those verses where no change was being recommended to the readings in the Bishops' Bible.[56] Archbishop Bancroft insisted on having a final say making fourteen further changes, of which one was the term "bishopricke" at Acts 1:20.[57]

Translation committees

Printing

 
Archbishop Richard Bancroft was the "chief overseer" of the production of the Authorized Version.

The original printing of the Authorized Version was published by Robert Barker, the King's Printer, in 1611 as a complete folio Bible.[60] It was sold looseleaf for ten shillings, or bound for twelve.[61] Robert Barker's father, Christopher, had, in 1589, been granted by Elizabeth I the title of royal Printer,[62] with the perpetual Royal Privilege to print Bibles in England.[f] Robert Barker invested very large sums in printing the new edition, and consequently ran into serious debt,[63] such that he was compelled to sub-lease the privilege to two rival London printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill.[64] It appears that it was initially intended that each printer would print a portion of the text, share printed sheets with the others, and split the proceeds. Bitter financial disputes broke out, as Barker accused Norton and Bill of concealing their profits, while Norton and Bill accused Barker of selling sheets properly due to them as partial Bibles for ready money.[65] There followed decades of continual litigation, and consequent imprisonment for debt for members of the Barker and Norton printing dynasties,[65] while each issued rival editions of the whole Bible. In 1629 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge successfully managed to assert separate and prior royal licences for Bible printing, for their own university presses—and Cambridge University took the opportunity to print revised editions of the Authorized Version in 1629,[66] and 1638.[67] The editors of these editions included John Bois and John Ward from the original translators. This did not, however, impede the commercial rivalries of the London printers, especially as the Barker family refused to allow any other printers access to the authoritative manuscript of the Authorized Version.[68]

Two editions of the whole Bible are recognized as having been produced in 1611, which may be distinguished by their rendering of Ruth 3:15;[69] the first edition reading "he went into the city", where the second reads "she went into the city";[70] these are known colloquially as the "He" and "She" Bibles.[71]

 
The opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews of the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version shows the original typeface. Marginal notes reference variant translations and cross references to other Bible passages. Each chapter is headed by a précis of contents. There are decorative initial letters for each chapter, and a decorated headpiece to each book, but no illustrations in the text.

The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized, and when printers, as a matter of course, expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places, so as to achieve an even column of text.[72] They set v for initial u and v, and u for u and v everywhere else. They used long ſ for non-final s.[73] The glyph j occurs only after i, as in the final letter in a Roman numeral. Punctuation was relatively heavy and differed from current practice. When space needed to be saved, the printers sometimes used ye for the (replacing the Middle English thorn, Þ, with the continental y), set ã for an or am (in the style of scribe's shorthand), and set & for and. On the contrary, on a few occasions, they appear to have inserted these words when they thought a line needed to be padded.[citation needed] Later printings regularized these spellings; the punctuation has also been standardized, but still varies from current usage norms.

The first printing used a blackletter typeface instead of a roman typeface, which itself made a political and a religious statement. Like the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible, the Authorized Version was "appointed to be read in churches". It was a large folio volume meant for public use, not private devotion; the weight of the type mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it.[citation needed] However, smaller editions and roman-type editions followed rapidly, e.g. quarto roman-type editions of the Bible in 1612.[74] This contrasted with the Geneva Bible, which was the first English Bible printed in a roman typeface (although black-letter editions, particularly in folio format, were issued later).

In contrast to the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible, which had both been extensively illustrated, there were no illustrations at all in the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version, the main form of decoration being the historiated initial letters provided for books and chapters – together with the decorative title pages to the Bible itself, and to the New Testament.[citation needed]

In the Great Bible, readings derived from the Vulgate but not found in published Hebrew and Greek texts had been distinguished by being printed in smaller roman type.[75] In the Geneva Bible, a distinct typeface had instead been applied to distinguish text supplied by translators, or thought needful for English grammar but not present in the Greek or Hebrew; and the original printing of the Authorized Version used roman type for this purpose, albeit sparsely and inconsistently.[76] This results in perhaps the most significant difference between the original printed text of the King James Bible and the current text. When, from the later 17th century onwards, the Authorized Version began to be printed in roman type, the typeface for supplied words was changed to italics, this application being regularized and greatly expanded. This was intended to de-emphasize the words.[77]

The original printing contained two prefatory texts; the first was a formal Epistle Dedicatory to "the most high and mighty Prince" King James. Many British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not.[citation needed]

The second preface was called Translators to the Reader, a long and learned essay that defends the undertaking of the new version. It observes the translators' stated goal, that they "never thought from the beginning that [they] should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark." They also give their opinion of previous English Bible translations, stating, "We do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs [Catholics] of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God." As with the first preface, some British printings reproduce this, while most non-British printings do not. Almost every printing that includes the second preface also includes the first.[citation needed] The first printing contained a number of other apparatus, including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and evensong, and a calendar, an almanac, and a table of holy days and observances. Much of this material became obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain and its colonies in 1752, and thus modern editions invariably omit it.[citation needed]

So as to make it easier to know a particular passage, each chapter was headed by a brief précis of its contents with verse numbers. Later editors freely substituted their own chapter summaries, or omitted such material entirely.[citation needed] Pilcrow marks are used to indicate the beginnings of paragraphs except after the book of Acts.[g]

Authorized Version

The Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England. No record of its authorization exists; it was probably effected by an order of the Privy Council, but the records for the years 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618/19,[13] and it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. The King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible,[62] so necessarily the Authorized Version replaced it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England.

In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version finally supplanted that of the Great Bible in the Epistle and Gospel readings[78]—though the Prayer Book Psalter nevertheless continues in the Great Bible version.[79]

The case was different in Scotland, where the Geneva Bible had long been the standard church Bible. It was not until 1633 that a Scottish edition of the Authorized Version was printed—in conjunction with the Scots coronation in that year of Charles I.[80] The inclusion of illustrations in the edition raised accusations of Popery from opponents of the religious policies of Charles and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, official policy favoured the Authorized Version, and this favour returned during the Commonwealth—as London printers succeeded in re-asserting their monopoly on Bible printing with support from Oliver Cromwell—and the "New Translation" was the only edition on the market.[81] F. F. Bruce reports that the last recorded instance of a Scots parish continuing to use the "Old Translation" (i.e. Geneva) as being in 1674.[82]

The Authorized Version's acceptance by the general public took longer. The Geneva Bible continued to be popular, and large numbers were imported from Amsterdam, where printing continued up to 1644 in editions carrying a false London imprint.[83] However, few if any genuine Geneva editions appear to have been printed in London after 1616, and in 1637 Archbishop Laud prohibited their printing or importation. In the period of the English Civil War, soldiers of the New Model Army were issued a book of Geneva selections called "The Soldiers' Bible".[84] In the first half of the 17th century the Authorized Version is most commonly referred to as "The Bible without notes", thereby distinguishing it from the Geneva "Bible with notes".[80]

There were several printings of the Authorized Version in Amsterdam—one as late as 1715[85] which combined the Authorized Version translation text with the Geneva marginal notes;[86] one such edition was printed in London in 1649. During the Commonwealth a commission was established by Parliament to recommend a revision of the Authorized Version with acceptably Protestant explanatory notes,[83] but the project was abandoned when it became clear that these would nearly double the bulk of the Bible text. After the English Restoration, the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era.[citation needed] Furthermore, disputes over the lucrative rights to print the Authorized Version dragged on through the 17th century, so none of the printers involved saw any commercial advantage in marketing a rival translation.[citation needed] The Authorized Version became the only current version circulating among English-speaking people.

A small minority of critical scholars were slow to accept the latest translation. Hugh Broughton, who was the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time but had been excluded from the panel of translators because of his utterly uncongenial temperament,[87] issued in 1611 a total condemnation of the new version.[88] He especially criticized the translators' rejection of word-for-word equivalence and stated that "he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than that this abominable translation (KJV) should ever be foisted upon the English people".[89] Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the Authorized Version (and indeed the English language) entirely.[90] Walton's reference text throughout is the Vulgate.

The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan of 1651,[91] indeed Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers (e.g., Job 41:24, not Job 41:33) for his head text. In Chapter 35: 'The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God', Hobbes discusses Exodus 19:5, first in his own translation of the 'Vulgar Latin', and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms "... the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James", and "The Geneva French" (i.e. Olivétan). Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred. For most of the 17th century the assumption remained that, while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people, nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so, Biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of Latin. It was only in 1700 that modern bilingual Bibles appeared in which the Authorized Version was compared with counterpart Dutch and French Protestant vernacular Bibles.[92]

In consequence of the continual disputes over printing privileges, successive printings of the Authorized Version were notably less careful than the 1611 edition had been—compositors freely varying spelling, capitalization and punctuation[93]—and also, over the years, introducing about 1,500 misprints (some of which, like the omission of "not" from the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" in the "Wicked Bible",[94] became notorious). The two Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 attempted to restore the proper text—while introducing over 200 revisions of the original translators' work, chiefly by incorporating into the main text a more literal reading originally presented as a marginal note.[95] A more thoroughly corrected edition was proposed following the Restoration, in conjunction with the revised 1662 Book of Common Prayer, but Parliament then decided against it.[citation needed]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the sole English translation in current use in Protestant churches,[11] and was so dominant that the Catholic Church in England issued in 1750 a revision of the 1610 Douay–Rheims Bible by Richard Challoner that was very much closer to the Authorized Version than to the original.[96] However, general standards of spelling, punctuation, typesetting, capitalization and grammar had changed radically in the 100 years since the first edition of the Authorized Version, and all printers in the market were introducing continual piecemeal changes to their Bible texts to bring them into line with current practice—and with public expectations of standardized spelling and grammatical construction.[97]

Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Hebrew, Greek and the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars and divines, and indeed came to be regarded by some as an inspired text in itself—so much so that any challenge to its readings or textual base came to be regarded by many as an assault on Holy Scripture.[98]

In the 18th century there was a serious shortage of Bibles in the American colonies. To meet the demand various printers, beginning with Samuel Kneeland in 1752, printed the King James Bible without authorization from the Crown. To avert prosecution and detection of an unauthorized printing they would include the royal insignia on the title page, using the same materials in its printing as the authorized version was produced from, which were imported from England.[99][100]

Standard text of 1769

 
Title page of the 1760 Cambridge edition

By the mid-18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version, combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints, had reached the proportion of a scandal, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text. First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760, the culmination of 20 years' work by Francis Sawyer Parris,[101] who died in May of that year. This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762[102] and in John Baskerville's fine folio edition of 1763.[103]

This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition, edited by Benjamin Blayney,[104] though with comparatively few changes from Parris's edition; but which became the Oxford standard text, and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings.[105] Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers, while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638, and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own.

They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original, making many thousands of minor changes to the text. In addition, Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of "supplied" words not found in the original languages by cross-checking against the presumed source texts. Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus, rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured; accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ.[106] Like the 1611 edition, the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha, although Blayney tended to remove cross-references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators. It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition. Altogether, the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney's 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24,000 places.[107]

The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below.

[1611] 1. Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.

[1769] 1. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses: 11 changes of spelling, 16 changes of typesetting (including the changed conventions for the use of u and v), three changes of punctuation, and one variant text—where "not charity" is substituted for "no charity" in verse two, in the erroneous belief that the original reading was a misprint.

A particular verse for which Blayney's 1769 text differs from Parris's 1760 version is Matthew 5:13, where Parris (1760) has

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be troden under foot of men.

Blayney (1769) changes 'lost his savour' to 'lost its savour', and troden to trodden.

For a period, Cambridge continued to issue Bibles using the Parris text, but the market demand for absolute standardization was now such that they eventually adapted Blayney's work but omitted some of the idiosyncratic Oxford spellings. By the mid-19th century, almost all printings of the Authorized Version were derived from the 1769 Oxford text—increasingly without Blayney's variant notes and cross references, and commonly excluding the Apocrypha.[108] One exception to this was a scrupulous original-spelling, page-for-page, and line-for-line reprint of the 1611 edition (including all chapter headings, marginalia, and original italicization, but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original), published by Oxford in 1833.[h]

Another important exception was the 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible, thoroughly revised, modernized and re-edited by F. H. A. Scrivener, who for the first time consistently identified the source texts underlying the 1611 translation and its marginal notes.[110] Scrivener, like Blayney, opted to revise the translation where he considered the judgement of the 1611 translators had been faulty.[111] In 2005, Cambridge University Press released its New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with Apocrypha, edited by David Norton, which followed in the spirit of Scrivener's work, attempting to bring spelling to present-day standards. Norton also innovated with the introduction of quotation marks, while returning to a hypothetical 1611 text, so far as possible, to the wording used by its translators, especially in the light of the re-emphasis on some of their draft documents.[112] This text has been issued in paperback by Penguin Books.[113]

From the early 19th century the Authorized Version has remained almost completely unchanged—and since, due to advances in printing technology, it could now be produced in very large editions for mass sale, it established complete dominance in public and ecclesiastical use in the English-speaking Protestant world. Academic debate through that century, however, increasingly reflected concerns about the Authorized Version shared by some scholars: (a) that subsequent study in oriental languages suggested a need to revise the translation of the Hebrew Bible—both in terms of specific vocabulary, and also in distinguishing descriptive terms from proper names; (b) that the Authorized Version was unsatisfactory in translating the same Greek words and phrases into different English, especially where parallel passages are found in the synoptic gospels; and (c) in the light of subsequent ancient manuscript discoveries, the New Testament translation base of the Greek Textus Receptus could no longer be considered to be the best representation of the original text.[114]

Responding to these concerns, the Convocation of Canterbury resolved in 1870 to undertake a revision of the text of the Authorized Version, intending to retain the original text "except where in the judgement of competent scholars such a change is necessary". The resulting revision was issued as the Revised Version in 1881 (New Testament), 1885 (Old Testament) and 1894 (Apocrypha); but, although it sold widely, the revision did not find popular favour, and it was only reluctantly in 1899 that Convocation approved it for reading in churches.[115]

By the early 20th century, editing had been completed in Cambridge's text, with at least 6 new changes since 1769, and the reversing of at least 30 of the standard Oxford readings. The distinct Cambridge text was printed in the millions, and after the Second World War "the unchanging steadiness of the KJB was a huge asset."[116]

Editorial criticism

F. H. A. Scrivener and D. Norton have both written in detail on editorial variations which have occurred through the history of the publishing of the Authorized Version from 1611 to 1769. In the 19th century, there were effectively three main guardians of the text. Norton identified five variations among the Oxford, Cambridge, and London (Eyre and Spottiswoode) texts of 1857, such as the spelling of "farther" or "further" at Matthew 26:39.[117]

In the 20th century, variation between the editions was reduced to comparing the Cambridge to the Oxford. Distinctly identified Cambridge readings included "or Sheba",[118] "sin",[119] "clifts",[120] "vapour",[121] "flieth",[122] "further"[123] and a number of other references. In effect the Cambridge was considered the current text in comparison to the Oxford.[124] These are instances where both Oxford and Cambridge have now diverged from Blayney's 1769 Edition. The distinctions between the Oxford and Cambridge editions have been a major point in the Bible version debate,[125] and a potential theological issue,[126] particularly in regard to the identification of the Pure Cambridge Edition.[127]

Cambridge University Press introduced a change at 1 John 5:8[128] in 1985, reversing its longstanding tradition of printing the word "spirit" in lower case by using a capital letter "S".[129] A Rev. Hardin of Bedford, Pennsylvania, wrote a letter to Cambridge inquiring about this verse, and received a reply on 3 June 1985 from the Bible Director, Jerry L. Hooper, claiming that it was a "matter of some embarrassment regarding the lower case 's' in Spirit".[130]

Literary attributes

Translation

In obedience to their instructions, the translators provided no marginal interpretation of the text, but in some 8,500 places a marginal note offers an alternative English wording.[131] The majority of these notes offer a more literal rendering of the original, introduced as "Heb", "Chal" (Chaldee, referring to Aramaic), "Gr" or "Lat". Others indicate a variant reading of the source text (introduced by "or"). Some of the annotated variants derive from alternative editions in the original languages, or from variant forms quoted in the fathers. More commonly, though, they indicate a difference between the literal original language reading and that in the translators' preferred recent Latin versions: Tremellius for the Old Testament, Junius for the Apocrypha, and Beza for the New Testament.[132] At thirteen places in the New Testament[133][134] a marginal note records a variant reading found in some Greek manuscript copies; in almost all cases reproducing a counterpart textual note at the same place in Beza's editions.[135]

A few more extensive notes clarify Biblical names and units of measurement or currency. Modern reprintings rarely reproduce these annotated variants—although they are to be found in the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. In addition, there were originally some 9,000 scriptural cross-references, in which one text was related to another. Such cross-references had long been common in Latin Bibles, and most of those in the Authorized Version were copied unaltered from this Latin tradition. Consequently the early editions of the KJV retain many Vulgate verse references—e.g. in the numbering of the Psalms.[136] At the head of each chapter, the translators provided a short précis of its contents, with verse numbers; these are rarely included in complete form in modern editions.

Also in obedience to their instructions, the translators indicated 'supplied' words in a different typeface; but there was no attempt to regularize the instances where this practice had been applied across the different companies; and especially in the New Testament, it was used much less frequently in the 1611 edition than would later be the case.[76] In one verse, 1 John 2:23, an entire clause was printed in roman type (as it had also been in the Great Bible and Bishop's Bible);[137] indicating a reading then primarily derived from the Vulgate, albeit one for which the later editions of Beza had provided a Greek text.[138]

 
Gods name JEHOVAH in Psalms 83:18

In the Old Testament the translators render the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) by "the LORD" (in later editions in small capitals as LORD),[i] or "the LORD God" (for YHWH Elohim, יהוה אלהים),[j] except in four places by "IEHOVAH".[139] However, if the Tetragrammaton occurs with the Hebrew word adonai (Lord) then it is rendered not as the "Lord LORD" but as the "Lord God".[140] In later editions it appears as "Lord GOD", with "GOD" in small capitals, indicating to the reader that God's name appears in the original Hebrew.

Old Testament

For the Old Testament, the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg (1524/5),[141][failed verification] but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation.[142] For example, the Septuagint reading "They pierced my hands and my feet" was used in Psalm 22:16[143] (vs. the Masoretes' reading of the Hebrew "like lions my hands and feet"[144]). Otherwise, however, the Authorized Version is closer to the Hebrew tradition than any previous English translation—especially in making use of the rabbinic commentaries, such as Kimhi, in elucidating obscure passages in the Masoretic Text;[145] earlier versions had been more likely to adopt LXX or Vulgate readings in such places. Following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the books of 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras in the medieval Vulgate Old Testament were renamed 'Ezra' and 'Nehemiah'; 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras in the Apocrypha being renamed '1 Esdras' and '2 Esdras'.

New Testament

For the New Testament, the translators chiefly used the 1598 and 1588/89 Greek editions of Theodore Beza,[146][k] which also present Beza's Latin version of the Greek and Stephanus's edition of the Latin Vulgate. Both of these versions were extensively referred to, as the translators conducted all discussions amongst themselves in Latin. F. H. A. Scrivener identifies 190 readings where the Authorized Version translators depart from Beza's Greek text, generally in maintaining the wording of the Bishops' Bible and other earlier English translations.[147] In about half of these instances, the Authorized Version translators appear to follow the earlier 1550 Greek Textus Receptus of Stephanus. For the other half, Scrivener was usually able to find corresponding Greek readings in the editions of Erasmus, or in the Complutensian Polyglot. However, in several dozen readings he notes that no printed Greek text corresponds to the English of the Authorized Version, which in these places derives directly from the Vulgate.[148] For example, at John 10:16,[149] the Authorized Version reads "one fold" (as did the Bishops' Bible, and the 16th-century vernacular versions produced in Geneva), following the Latin Vulgate "unum ovile", whereas Tyndale had agreed more closely with the Greek, "one flocke" (μία ποίμνη). The Authorized Version New Testament owes much more to the Vulgate than does the Old Testament; still, at least 80% of the text is unaltered from Tyndale's translation.[150]

Apocrypha

Unlike the rest of the Bible, the translators of the Apocrypha identified their source texts in their marginal notes.[151] From these it can be determined that the books of the Apocrypha were translated from the Septuagint—primarily, from the Greek Old Testament column in the Antwerp Polyglot—but with extensive reference to the counterpart Latin Vulgate text, and to Junius's Latin translation. The translators record references to the Sixtine Septuagint of 1587, which is substantially a printing of the Old Testament text from the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, and also to the 1518 Greek Septuagint edition of Aldus Manutius. They had, however, no Greek texts for 2 Esdras, or for the Prayer of Manasses, and Scrivener found that they here used an unidentified Latin manuscript.[151]

Sources

The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that—like the Codex Bezae—would have been readily available to them.[152] In addition to all previous English versions (including, and contrary to their instructions,[153] the Rheimish New Testament[154] which in their preface they criticized), they made wide and eclectic use of all printed editions in the original languages then available, including the ancient Syriac New Testament printed with an interlinear Latin gloss in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1573.[155] In the preface the translators acknowledge consulting translations and commentaries in Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.[156]

The translators took the Bishops' Bible as their source text, and where they departed from that in favour of another translation, this was most commonly the Geneva Bible. However, the degree to which readings from the Bishops' Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company, as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own. John Bois's notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of versions and patristic sources, including explicitly both Henry Savile's 1610 edition of the works of John Chrysostom and the Rheims New Testament,[157] which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes.

Variations in recent translations

Main article: List of major textual variants in the New Testament
See also: List of Bible verses not included in modern translations

A number of Bible verses in the King James Version of the New Testament are not found in more recent Bible translations, where these are based on modern critical texts. In the early seventeenth century, the source Greek texts of the New Testament which were used to produce Protestant Bible versions were mainly dependent on manuscripts of the late Byzantine text-type, and they also contained minor variations which became known as the Textus Receptus.[158] With the subsequent identification of much earlier manuscripts, most modern textual scholars value the evidence of manuscripts which belong to the Alexandrian family as better witnesses to the original text of the biblical authors,[159] without giving it, or any family, automatic preference.[160]

Style and criticism

A primary concern of the translators was to produce an appropriate Bible, dignified and resonant in public reading.[161] Although the Authorized Version's written style is an important part of its influence on English, research has found only one verse—Hebrews 13:8—for which translators debated the wording's literary merits. While they stated in the preface that they used stylistic variation, finding multiple English words or verbal forms in places where the original language employed repetition, in practice they also did the opposite; for example, 14 different Hebrew words were translated into the single English word "prince".[3][needs context]

In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like verily and it came to pass.[87] The pronouns thou/thee and ye/you are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time you was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare).[162] For the possessive of the third person pronoun, the word its, first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598, is avoided.[163] The older his is usually employed, as for example at Matthew 5:13:[164] "if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?";[163] in other places of it, thereof or bare it are found.[l] Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of -eth for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: "the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame". The rival ending -(e)s, as found in present-day English, was already widely used by this time (for example, it predominates over -eth in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe).[166] Furthermore, the translators preferred which to who or whom as the relative pronoun for persons, as in Genesis 13:5:[167] "And Lot also which went with Abram, had flocks and heards, & tents"[168] although who(m) is also found.[m]

The Authorized Version is notably more Latinate than previous English versions,[153] especially the Geneva Bible. This results in part from the academic stylistic preferences of a number of the translators—several of whom admitted to being more comfortable writing in Latin than in English—but was also, in part, a consequence of the royal proscription against explanatory notes.[169] Hence, where the Geneva Bible might use a common English word, and gloss its particular application in a marginal note, the Authorized Version tends rather to prefer a technical term, frequently in Anglicized Latin. Consequently, although the King had instructed the translators to use the Bishops' Bible as a base text, the New Testament in particular owes much stylistically to the Catholic Rheims New Testament, whose translators had also been concerned to find English equivalents for Latin terminology.[170] In addition, the translators of the New Testament books transliterate names found in the Old Testament in their Greek forms rather than in the forms closer to the Old Testament Hebrew (e.g. "Elias" and "Noe" for "Elijah" and "Noah", respectively).

While the Authorized Version remains among the most widely sold, modern critical New Testament translations differ substantially from it in a number of passages, primarily because they rely on source manuscripts not then accessible to (or not then highly regarded by) early-17th-century Biblical scholarship.[171] In the Old Testament, there are also many differences from modern translations that are based not on manuscript differences, but on a different understanding of Ancient Hebrew vocabulary or grammar by the translators. For example, in modern translations it is clear that Job 28:1-11[172] is referring throughout to mining operations, which is not at all apparent from the text of the Authorized Version.[173]

Mistranslations

The King James Version contains several alleged mistranslations, especially in the Old Testament where the knowledge of Hebrew and cognate languages was uncertain at the time.[174] Among the most commonly cited errors is in the Hebrew of Job and Deuteronomy, where Hebrew: רֶאֵם, romanized: Re'em with the probable meaning of "wild-ox, aurochs", is translated in the KJV as "unicorn"; following in this the Vulgate unicornis and several medieval rabbinic commentators. The translators of the KJV note the alternative rendering, "rhinocerots" [sic] in the margin at Isaiah 34:7. On a similar note Martin Luther's German translation had also relied on the Latin Vulgate on this point, consistently translating רֶאֵם using the German word for unicorn, Einhorn.[175] Otherwise, the translators are accused on several occasions to have mistakenly interpreted a Hebrew descriptive phrase as a proper name (or vice versa); as at 2 Samuel 1:18 where 'the Book of Jasher' Hebrew: סֵפֶר הַיׇּשׇׁר, romanized: sepher ha-yasher properly refers not to a work by an author of that name, but should rather be rendered as "the Book of the Upright" (which was proposed as an alternative reading in a marginal note to the KJV text).

Influence

Despite royal patronage and encouragement, there was never any overt mandate to use the new translation. It was not until 1661 that the Authorized Version replaced the Bishops' Bible in the Epistle and Gospel lessons of the Book of Common Prayer, and it never did replace the older translation in the Psalter. In 1763 The Critical Review complained that "many false interpretations, ambiguous phrases, obsolete words and indelicate expressions ... excite the derision of the scorner". Blayney's 1769 version, with its revised spelling and punctuation, helped change the public perception of the Authorized Version to a masterpiece of the English language.[3] By the 19th century, F. W. Faber could say of the translation, "It lives on the ear, like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego."[176]

Geddes MacGregor called the Authorized Version "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language",[177] "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world". David Crystal has estimated that it is responsible for 257 idioms in English; examples include feet of clay and reap the whirlwind. Furthermore, prominent atheist figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being "a giant step in the maturing of English literature" and "a great work of literature", respectively, with Dawkins then adding, "A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian".[178][179]

The King James Version is one of the versions authorized to be used in the services of the Episcopal Church and other parts of the Anglican Communion,[180] as it is the historical Bible of this church.

Other Christian denominations have also accepted the King James Version. The King James Version is used by English-speaking Conservative Anabaptists, along with Methodists of the conservative holiness movement, in addition to certain Baptists.[181][182] In the Orthodox Church in America, it is used liturgically and was made "the 'official' translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox". The later Service Book of the Antiochian archdiocese, in vogue today, also uses the King James Version.[n] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to use its own edition of the Authorized Version as its official English Bible.

Although the Authorized Version's preeminence in the English-speaking world has diminished—for example, the Church of England recommends six other versions in addition to it—it is still the most used translation in the United States, especially as the Scofield Reference Bible for Evangelicals. However, over the past forty years it has been gradually overtaken by modern versions, principally the New International Version (1973) and the New Revised Standard Version (1989),[3] the latter of which is seen as a successor to the King James Version.[184]

Copyright status

The Authorized Version is in the public domain in most of the world. However, in the United Kingdom, the right to print, publish and distribute it is a royal prerogative and the Crown licenses publishers to reproduce it under letters patent. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the King's Printer, and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board. The office of King's Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for centuries, the earliest known reference coming in 1577. In the 18th century, all surviving interests in the monopoly were bought out by John Baskett. The Baskett rights descended through a number of printers and, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the King's Printer is now Cambridge University Press, which inherited the right when they took over the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1990.[185]

Other royal charters of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Authorized Version independently of the King's Printer. In Scotland, the Authorized Version is published by Collins under licence from the Scottish Bible Board. The terms of the letters patent prohibit any other than the holders, or those authorized by the holders, from printing, publishing or importing the Authorized Version into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Authorized Version, and also the Book of Common Prayer, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom.[185] Almost all provisions granting copyright in perpetuity were abolished by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but because the Authorized Version is protected by royal prerogative rather than copyright, it will remain protected, as specified in CDPA s171(1)(b).[186][o]

Permission

Within the United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press permits the reproduction of at most 500 verses for "liturgical and non-commercial educational use", provided that their prescribed acknowledgement is included, the quoted verses do not exceed 25% of the publication quoting them and do not include a complete Bible book.[187] For use beyond this, the Press is willing to consider permission requested on a case-by-case basis and in 2011 a spokesman said the Press generally does not charge a fee but tries to ensure that a reputable source text is used.[188][189]

Apocrypha

Further information on the Apocrypha: Biblical canon

Translations of the books of the biblical apocrypha were necessary for the King James version, as readings from these books were included in the daily Old Testament lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer. Protestant Bibles in the 16th century included the books of the Apocrypha—generally, following the Luther Bible, in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments to indicate they were not considered part of the Old Testament text—and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles;[190][191] The Apocrypha of the King James Version has the same 14 books as had been found in the Apocrypha of the Bishops' Bible; however, following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the first two books of the Apocrypha were renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, as compared to the names in the Thirty-nine Articles, with the corresponding Old Testament books being renamed Ezra and Nehemiah. Starting in 1630, volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the Apocrypha section excluded. In 1644 the Long Parliament forbade the reading of the Apocrypha in churches and in 1666 the first editions of the King James Bible without the Apocrypha were bound.[192]

The standardization of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print-runs at very low unit prices. For commercial and charitable publishers, editions of the Authorized Version without the Apocrypha reduced the cost, while having increased market appeal to non-Anglican Protestant readers.[193]

With the rise of the Bible societies, most editions have omitted the whole section of Apocryphal books.[194] The British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew subsidies for Bible printing and dissemination in 1826, under the following resolution:

That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal;[195]

The American Bible Society adopted a similar policy. Both societies eventually reversed these policies in light of 20th-century ecumenical efforts on translations, the ABS doing so in 1964 and the BFBS in 1966.[196]

King James Only movement

Main article: King James Only movement

The King James Only movement advocates the belief that the King James Version is superior to all other English translations of the Bible. Most adherents of the movement believe that the Textus Receptus is very close, if not identical, to the original autographs, thereby making it the ideal Greek source for the translation. They argue that manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, on which most modern English translations are based, are corrupted New Testament texts. One of them, Perry Demopoulos, was a director of the translation of the King James Bible into Russian. In 2010 the Russian translation of the KJV of the New Testament was released in Kyiv, Ukraine.[197] In 2017, the first complete edition of a Russian King James Bible was released.[198] In 2017, a Faroese translation of the King James Bible was released as well.[199]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ The King James Version can also be found abbreviated as either the KJB (King James Bible) or the AV (Authorized Version).
  2. ^ The King James Version has publication restrictions in the United Kingdom—see the section regarding copyright status.
  3. ^ The King James Version has also been used throughout a multitude of Protestant denominations since its original publication. In addition, it has been used by various sects.
  4. ^ James acceded to the throne of Scotland as James VI in 1567, and to that of England and Ireland as James I in 1603. The correct style is therefore "James VI and I".
  5. ^ "And now at last, ... it being brought unto such a conclusion, as that we have great hope that the Church of England (sic) shall reape good fruit thereby ..."[2]
  6. ^ The Royal Privilege was a virtual monopoly.
  7. ^ Norton 2011, p. x notes: "In all likelihood, the first edition of the King James Bible was hurried through the press before the translators had fully completed their work. One of the casualties of this hurry was the paragraphing. It emerged rough and incomplete: for instance, there are no paragraph breaks marked in the New Testament after Acts 20.
  8. ^ The Holy Bible, an Exact Reprint Page for Page of the Authorized Version Published in the Year MDCXI. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833 (reprints, ISBN 0-8407-0041-5, 1565631625). According to J.R. Dore,[109] the edition "so far as it goes, represents the edition of 1611 so completely that it may be consulted with as much confidence as an original. The spelling, punctuation, italics, capitals, and distribution into lines and pages are all followed with the most scrupulous care. It is, however, printed in Roman instead of black letter type."
  9. ^ Genesis 4:1
  10. ^ Genesis 2:4 "אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם ביום עשות יהוה אלהים ארץ ושמים"
  11. ^ Edward F. Hills made the following important statement in regard to the KJV and the Received Text:

    The translators that produced the King James Version relied mainly, it seems, on the later editions of Beza's Greek New Testament, especially his 4th edition (1588–9). But also they frequently consulted the editions of Erasmus and Stephanus and the Complutensian Polyglot. According to Scrivener (1884), (51) out of the 252 passages in which these sources differ sufficiently to affect the English rendering, the King James Version agrees with Beza against Stephanus 113 times, with Stephanus against Beza 59 times, and 80 times with Erasmus, or the Complutensian, or the Latin Vulgate against Beza and Stephanus. Hence the King James Version ought to be regarded not merely as a translation of the Textus Receptus but also as an independent variety of the Textus Receptus.

    — Edward F. Hills, The King James Version Defended, p. 220.
  12. ^ e.g. Matthew 7:27: "great was the fall of it.", Matthew 2:16: "in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof", Leviticus 25:5: "That which groweth of it owne accord of thy harvest". (Leviticus 25:5 is changed to its in many modern printings).[165]
  13. ^ e.g. at Genesis 3:12: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with mee"
  14. ^ That which is most used liturgically is the King James Version. It has a long and honorable tradition in our Church in America. Professor Orloff used it for his translations at the end of the last century, and Isabel Hapgood's Service Book of 1906 and 1922 made it the "official" translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox. Unfortunately, both Orloff and Hapgood used a different version for the Psalms (that of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), thereby giving us two translations in the same services. This was rectified in 1949 by the Service Book of the Antiochian Archdiocese, which replaced the Prayer Book psalms with those from the King James Version and made some other corrections. This beautiful translation, reproducing the stately prose of 1611, was the work of Fathers Upson and Nicholas. It is still in widespread use to this day, and has familiarized thousands of believers with the KJV.[183]
  15. ^ The only other perpetual copyright grants Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children "a right to a royalty in respect of the public performance, commercial publication or communication to the public of the play 'Peter Pan' by Sir James Matthew Barrie, or of any adaptation of that work, notwithstanding that copyright in the work expired on 31st December 1987". See CDPA 1988 s301

Citations

  1. ^ a b "Bible Translation Spectrum". Logos Bible Software Wiki. from the original on 7 January 2023. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  2. ^ KJV Dedicatorie 1611.
  3. ^ a b c d . The Times Literary Supplement. 9 February 2011. Archived from the original on 17 June 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2011.
  4. ^ "The King James Bible: The Book That Changed the World – BBC Two". BBC.
  5. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 204.
  6. ^ The Sixth Point of Calvinism, The Historicism Research Foundation, Inc., 2003, ISBN 09620681-4-4
  7. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 435.
  8. ^ Hill 1997, pp. 4–5.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Daniell 2003, p. 439.
  10. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 436.
  11. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 488.
  12. ^ Cross & Livingstone 1974, Authorised Version of the Bible.
  13. ^ a b Douglas 1974, Bible (English Versions).
  14. ^ Hobbes 2010, Chapter XXXV.
  15. ^ Pearse 1761, p. 79.
  16. ^ Kimber 1775, p. 279.
  17. ^ Butler 1807, p. 219.
  18. ^ Holmes 1815, p. 277.
  19. ^ Horne 1818, p. 14.
  20. ^ Adams, Thacher & Emerson 1811, p. 110.
  21. ^ Hacket 1715, p. 205.
  22. ^ Anon 1814, p. 356.
  23. ^ Anon 1783, p. 27.
  24. ^ Twells 1731, p. 95.
  25. ^ Newcome 1792, p. 113.
  26. ^ Anon 1801, p. 145.
  27. ^ Greenslade 1963, p. 168.
  28. ^ Smith 1814, p. 209.
  29. ^ Chapman 1856, p. 270.
  30. ^ Anon 1856, pp. 530–31.
  31. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 75.
  32. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 143.
  33. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 152.
  34. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 156.
  35. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 277.
  36. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 291.
  37. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 292.
  38. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 304.
  39. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 339.
  40. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 344.
  41. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 186.
  42. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 364.
  43. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 221.
  44. ^ Valpy, Michael (5 February 2011). "How the mighty has fallen: The King James Bible turns 400". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 8 April 2014.
  45. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 433.
  46. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 434.
  47. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 328.
  48. ^ Norton 2005, p. 10.
  49. ^ a b Bobrick 2001, p. 223.
  50. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 442.
  51. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 444.
  52. ^ Wallechinsky & Wallace 1975, p. 235.
  53. ^ Norton 2005, p. 11.
  54. ^ Bois, Allen & Walker 1969.
  55. ^ Norton 2005, p. 20.
  56. ^ Norton 2005, p. 16.
  57. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 257.
  58. ^ DeCoursey 2003, pp. 331–32.
  59. ^ Bobrick 2001, pp. 223–44.
  60. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 309.
  61. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 310.
  62. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 453.
  63. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 451.
  64. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 454.
  65. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 455.
  66. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 424.
  67. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 520.
  68. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 4557.
  69. ^ Ruth 3:15
  70. ^ Norton 2005, p. 62.
  71. ^ Anon 1996.
  72. ^ Norton 2005, p. 46.
  73. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 261.
  74. ^ Herbert 1968, pp. 313–14.
  75. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 61.
  76. ^ a b Scrivener 1884, p. 70.
  77. ^ Norton 2005, p. 162.
  78. ^ Procter & Frere 1902, p. 187.
  79. ^ Hague 1948, p. 353.
  80. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 458.
  81. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 459.
  82. ^ Bruce 2002, p. 92.
  83. ^ a b Hill 1993, p. 65.
  84. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 577.
  85. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 936.
  86. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 457.
  87. ^ a b Bobrick 2001, p. 264.
  88. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 266.
  89. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 265.
  90. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 510.
  91. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 478.
  92. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 489.
  93. ^ Norton 2005, p. 94.
  94. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 444.
  95. ^ Scrivener 1884, pp. 147–94.
  96. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 515.
  97. ^ Norton 2005, p. 99.
  98. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 619.
  99. ^ Newgass, 1958, p. 32
  100. ^ Thomas, 1874, Vol. I, pp. 107-108
  101. ^ Norton 2005.
  102. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 1142.
  103. ^ Norton 2005, p. 106.
  104. ^ Herbert 1968, p. 1196.
  105. ^ Norton 2005, p. 113.
  106. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 242.
  107. ^ Norton 2005, p. 120.
  108. ^ Norton 2005, p. 125.
  109. ^ Dore 1888, p. 363.
  110. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 691.
  111. ^ Norton 2005, p. 122.
  112. ^ Norton 2005, p. 131.
  113. ^ Norton 2006.
  114. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 685.
  115. ^ Chadwick 1970, pp. 40–56.
  116. ^ Norton 2005, pp. 115, 126.
  117. ^ Norton 2005, p. 126.
  118. ^ Joshua 19:2
  119. ^ 2 Chronicles 33:19
  120. ^ Job 30:6
  121. ^ Psalm 148:8
  122. ^ Nahum 3:16
  123. ^ Matthew 26:39
  124. ^ Norton 2005, p. 144.
  125. ^ White 2009.
  126. ^ "Settings of the King James Bible" (PDF). ourkjv.com. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  127. ^ tbsbibles.org (2013). (PDF). Quarterly Record. Trinitarian Bible Society. 603 (2nd Quarter): 10–20. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 April 2014. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  128. ^ 1 John 5:8
  129. ^ "CUP letter" (PDF). ourkjv.com. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  130. ^ Asquith, John M. (7 September 2017). "The Hooper Letter". purecambridgetext.com. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  131. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 56.
  132. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 43.
  133. ^ Metzger, Bruce (1968). Historical and Literary Studies. Brill. p. 144.
  134. ^ e.g. Luke 17:36 and Acts 25:6
  135. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 58.
  136. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 118.
  137. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 68.
  138. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 254.
  139. ^ Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18, Isaiah 12:2 and Isaiah 26:4) and three times in a combination form. (Genesis 22:14, Exodus 17:15, Judges 6:24
  140. ^ Psalm 73:28, etc.
  141. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 42.
  142. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 262.
  143. ^ Psalm 22:16
  144. ^ The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh, copyright 1985
  145. ^ Daiches 1968, p. 208.
  146. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 60.
  147. ^ Scrivener 1884, pp. 243–263.
  148. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 262.
  149. ^ John 10:16
  150. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 448.
  151. ^ a b Scrivener 1884, p. 47.
  152. ^ Scrivener 1884, p. 59.
  153. ^ a b Daniell 2003, p. 440.
  154. ^ Bois, Allen & Walker 1969, p. xxv.
  155. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 246.
  156. ^ KJV Translators to the Reader 1611.
  157. ^ Bois, Allen & Walker 1969, p. 118.
  158. ^ Metzger 1964, pp. 103–06.
  159. ^ Metzger 1964, p. 216.
  160. ^ Metzger 1964, p. 218.
  161. ^ For more, see Timothy Berg, "Seven Common Misconceptions about the King James Bible," Text & Canon Institute (2022).
  162. ^ Barber 1997, pp. 153–54.
  163. ^ a b Barber 1997, p. 150.
  164. ^ Matthew 5:13
  165. ^ Barber 1997, pp. 150–51.
  166. ^ Barber 1997, pp. 166–67.
  167. ^ Genesis 13:5
  168. ^ Barber 1997, p. 212.
  169. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 229.
  170. ^ Bobrick 2001, p. 252.
  171. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 5.
  172. ^ Job 28:1–11
  173. ^ Bruce 2002, p. 145.
  174. ^ (PDF). DBSJ. 1999. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  175. ^ "BibleGateway – : Einhorn". biblegateway.com.
  176. ^ Hall 1881.
  177. ^ MacGregor 1968, p. 170.
  178. ^ "When the King Saved God". Vanity Fair. 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
  179. ^ "Why I want all our children to read the King James Bible". The Guardian. 20 May 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2017.
  180. ^ The Canons of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church: Canon 2: Of Translations of the Bible 24 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  181. ^ Grammich, Clifford Anthony (1999). Local Baptists, Local Politics: Churches and Communities in the Middle and Uplands South. University of Tennessee Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-57233-045-0.
  182. ^ Dunkard Brethren Church Polity. Dunkard Brethren Church. 1 November 2021. p. 7.
  183. ^ "Biblical Studies". Department of Christian Education – Orthodox Church in America. 2014. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
  184. ^ Durken, Daniel (17 December 2015). New Collegeville Bible Commentary: Old Testament. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-3587-2. The King James tradition was continued in the Revised Version of 1881 and 1885, the Revised Standard Version of 1946 and 1952, and the New Revised Standard Version of 1989.
  185. ^ a b Metzger & Coogan 1993, p. 618.
  186. ^ CDPA s171(1)(b)
  187. ^ "Bibles". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  188. ^ "Shakespeare's Globe takes issue with the Queen over Bible royalties – The Daily Telegraph". Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  189. ^ "The Queen's Printer's Patent". Cambridge University Press. Archived from the original on 14 April 2013. Retrieved 11 December 2012. We grant permission to use the text, and license printing or the importation for sale within the UK, as long as we are assured of acceptable quality and accuracy.
  190. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 187.
  191. ^ Hill 1993, p. 338.
  192. ^ Kenyon 1909.
  193. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 600.
  194. ^ Daniell 2003, p. 622.
  195. ^ Browne 1859, pp. 362–.
  196. ^ Melton 2005, p. 38.
  197. ^ "Russian: New Testament Bible with Job through Song of Solomon". Bible Baptist Bookstore. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
  198. ^ "description". harvestukraine.org. Retrieved 25 September 2018.
  199. ^ "Heilaga Bíblia" (in Danish). Retrieved 6 August 2021.

Works cited

  • Adams, David Phineas; Thacher, Samuel Cooper; Emerson, William (1811). The Monthly Anthology, and Boston Review. Munroe and Francis.
  • Anon (1783). A call to the Jews. J. Johnson.
  • Anon (1801). The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine. J. Whittle.
  • Anon (1814). Missionary Register. Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday for the Church Missionary Society.
  • Anon (1856). The Original Secession Magazine. Vol. ii. Edinburgh: Moodie and Lothian.
  • Anon (1996). The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Bible Collection: A Checklist. Bridwell Library. ISBN 978-0-941881-19-7.
  • Barber, Charles Laurence (1997). Early modern English (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0835-4.
  • Bobrick, Benson (2001). Wide as the waters: the story of the English Bible and the revolution it inspired. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84747-7.
  • Bois, John; Allen, Ward; Walker, Anthony (1969). Translating for King James; being a true copy of the only notes made by a translator of King James's Bible, the Authorized Version, as the Final Committee of Review revised the translation of Romans through Revelation at Stationers' Hall in London in 1610–1611. Taken by John Bois ... these notes were for three centuries lost, and only now are come to light, through a copy made by the hand of William Fulman. Here translated and edited by Ward Allen. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. OCLC 607818272.
  • Browne, George (1859). History of the British and Foreign Bible Society. p. 362.
  • Bruce, Frederick Fyvie (2002). History of the Bible in English. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press. ISBN 0-7188-9032-9.
  • Butler, Charles (1807). Horae Biblicae. Vol. 1 (4th ed.). London: J. White. OCLC 64048851.
  • Chadwick, Owen (1970). The Victorian Church Part II. Edinburgh: A&C Black. ISBN 0-334-02410-2.
  • Chapman, James L. (1856). Americanism versus Romanism: or the cis-Atlantic battle between Sam and the pope. Nashville, TN: the author. OCLC 1848388.
  • Daiches, David (1968). The King James Version of the English Bible: An Account of the Development and Sources of the English Bible of 1611 With Special Reference to the Hebrew Tradition. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books. ISBN 0-208-00493-9.
  • Daniell, David (2003). The Bible in English: its history and influence. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09930-4.
  • DeCoursey, Matthew (2003). Edward A. Malone (ed.). British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660: Second series. Gale Group. ISBN 978-0-7876-6025-3.
  • Dore, John Read (1888). Old Bibles: An Account of the Early Versions of the English Bible (2nd ed.). Eyre and Spottiswoode.
  • Douglas, James Dixon, ed. (1974). New International Dictionary of the Christian Church. Zondervan.
  • Greenslade, S. L. (1963). "English Versions of the Bible, 1525–1611". In Greenslade, S. L. (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume III: The West From Reformation to Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 141–75.
  • Melton, J. Gordon (2005). Encyclopedia of Protestantism. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-6983-5.
  • Hacket, John (1715). Bishop Hacket's Memoirs of the Life of Archbishop Williams ... Abridg'd: With the Most Remarkable Occurrences and Transactions in Church and State. Sam. Briscoe.
  • Hague, Dyson (1948). Through the Prayer Book. Church Book Room Press.
  • Hall, Isaac Hollister (1881). The Revised New Testament and History of Revisions. Hubbard Bros.
  • Herbert, A. S. (1968). Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible, 1525–1961, Etc. British and Foreign Bible Society.
  • Hill, Christopher (1993). The English Bible and the seventeenth-century revolution. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9078-3.
  • Hill, Christopher (1997). Society and Puritanism in pre-revolutionary England. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-17432-2.
  • Hobbes, Thomas (2010). Leviathan. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55481-003-1.
  • Holmes, A. (1815). "An Historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible". In Worcester, Noah (ed.). The Christian Disciple. Vol. iii. Boston, MA: Cummings & Hilliard.
  • Horne, Thomas Hartwell (1818). An introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the holy Scriptures, Volume 2. London: T. Cadell and A Davies.
  • Kenyon, Sir Frederic G. (1909). "English Versions". In James Hastings (ed.). Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 978-1-56563-915-7.
  • Kimber, Isaac (1775). The history of England, from the earliest accounts, to the accession of his present Majesty King George III (fifth ed.). London: J. Buckland. OCLC 14263883.
  • "Epistle Dedicatorie" . The Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible . 1611 – via Wikisource.
  • "Translators to the Reader" . The Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible . 1611 – via Wikisource.
  • Metzger, Bruce M. (1964). The Text of the New Testament. Clarendon.
  • Metzger, Bruce M.; Coogan, Michael D., eds. (1993). The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504645-5.
  • Norton, David (2011). "Editor's introduction". The new Cambridge paragraph Bible with the apocrypha : King James version (Revised ed.). Cambridge: University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-76284-7. OCLC 665139368.
  • Procter, Francis; Frere, Walter Howard (1902). A New History of the Book of Common Prayer. MacMillan & Co.
  • MacGregor, Geddes (1968). A Literary History of the Bible: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Abingdon Press. LCCN 68011477.
  • Newcome, William (1792). Historical View of the English Biblical Translations. John Exshaw.
  • Newgass, Edgar (1958). An outline of Anglo-American Bible history. London : B.T. Batsford.
  • Norton, David (2005). A Textual History of the King James Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77100-5.
  • Norton, David, ed. (2006). The Bible. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-144151-8.
  • Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192115454.
  • Pearse, Salem (1761). "A Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English". The Second Part of the Celestial Diary. London: Robert Brown. p. 79.
  • Prickett, Stephen; Carroll, Robert P., eds. (2008). The Bible: Authorized King James Version. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-953594-1.
  • Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose (1884). The Authorized Edition of the English Bible, 1611, its subsequent reprints and modern representatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Archived from the original on 2008.
  • Smith, William (1814). The reasonableness of setting forth the most worthy praise of Almighty God: according to the usage of the primitive church. New York: T. and J. Swords. OCLC 3512140.
  • Story, G.M. (1967). Lancelot Andrewes Sermons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Thomas, Isaiah (1874). The history of printing in America, with a biography of printers. Vol. I. New York, B. Franklin.
  • Twells, Leonard (1731). A critical examination of the late new text and version of the New Testament ... Part I. London: R.Gosling.
  • Wallechinsky, David; Wallace, Irving (1975). The People's Almanac. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-385-04186-7.
  • White, James R. (2009). The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?. Baker Books. ISBN 978-0-7642-0605-4.

Further reading

Chronological order of publication (newest first)

  • Joalland, Michael. "Isaac Newton Reads the King James Version: The Marginal Notes and Reading Marks of a Natural Philosopher." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 113, no. 3 (2019): 297–339.
  • Burke, David G., John F. Kutsko, and Philip H. Towner, eds. The King James Version at 400: Assessing Its Genius as Bible Translation and Its Literary Influence (Society of Biblical Literature; 2013) 553 pages; scholars examine such topics as the KJV and 17th-century religious lyric, the KJV and the language of liturgy, and the KJV in Christian Orthodox perspective.
  • Crystal, David (2011). Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19969518-8.
  • Hallihan, C.P. (2010). Authorized Version: A Wonderful and Unfinished History. Trinitarian Bible Society. ISBN 978-1-86228-049-6. Published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the initial publication, in 1611, of the Authorized ("King James") Version of the Bible
  • Keay, Julia (2005). Alexander the Corrector: the tormented genius who unwrote the Bible. London: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-00-713196-8.
  • Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the Bible and why. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-073817-0.
  • Nicolson, Adam (2003). Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-00-710893-1. In US:  (2003). God's secretaries: the making of the King James Bible. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-018516-3. Paperback:  (2011). When God Spoke English: The Making of the King James Bible. London: Harper. ISBN 978-0-00-743100-7.
  • McGrath, Alister E. (2002). In the beginning: the story of the King James Bible and how it changed a nation, a language and a culture. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 0-385-72216-8.
  • The Diary Of Samuel Ward: A Translator Of The 1611 King James Bible, eds. John Wilson Cowart and M.M. Knappen, contains surviving pages of Samuel Ward's diary from 11 May 1595 to 1 July 1632.
  • Ward, Thomas (1903). Errata of the Protestant Bible [i.e. mostly of the Authorized "King James" Version]; or, The Truth of the English Translations Examined, in a Treatise Showing Some of the Errors That Are to Be Found in the English Translations of the Sacred Scriptures, Used by Protestants. A new ed., carefully rev. and corr., in which are add[itions]. New York: P.J. Kennedy and Sons. N.B.: A polemical Roman Catholic work, first published in the late 17th century.
  • Collection of English Almanacs for the Years 1702–1835. 1761.

External links

 
Wikiquote has quotations related to King James Version.
 
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Authorized King James Version
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to King James Bible.
  • The Holy Bible: An Exact Reprint Page for Page of the Authorized Version Published in the Year MDCXI. Oxford: The University Press, 1833, "a scrupulous original-spelling, page-for-page, and line-for-line reprint of the 1611 edition (including all chapter headings, marginalia, and original italicization, but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original)" cited in Footnote d above. Complete pdf of the original book.
  • The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version: With the Text Revised by a Collation of Its Early and Other Principal Editions, the Use of the Italic Type Made Uniform, the Marginal References Remodelled, and a Critical Introduction Prefixed. Cambridge, UK: The University Press, 1873. Complete pdf of the original book.
  • "King James Version (text of original 1611 Bible)". kingjamesbibleonline.org. from the original on 27 April 2011. Retrieved 5 April 2011. Online searchable database of the original 1611 text, including the Apocrypha and introductory text. It also contains the 1769 standard edition.
  • "Online gallery: Sacred texts: King James Bible". British Library. from the original on 23 August 2007. Retrieved 27 September 2007. On-line image of a page (beginning of St John's gospel) with a written description by the British Library.
  • "The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament, and the New. Imprinted at London: By Robert Barker ..., 1611". Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Imaging, University of Pennsylvania Library. Retrieved 27 September 2007. On-line facsimile (page images) of the 1611 printing of the King James Bible, "He" Bible variant.
  • "King James Version (facsimile of alternative 1611 edition, "She" Bible)". Retrieved 31 August 2011. On-line facsimile (page images) of the 1611 printing of the King James Bible.
  • Holy-Bible.online - King James Version
  • Works by King James Version at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  

April 24, 2023
king, james, version, redirects, here, other, uses, disambiguation, disambiguation, also, king, james, bible, authorized, version, early, modern, english, translation, christian, bible, church, england, which, commissioned, 1604, published, 1611, sponsorship, . KJB redirects here For other uses see KJB disambiguation and King James Version disambiguation The King James Version KJV also the King James Bible KJB and the Authorized Version is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611 by sponsorship of King James VI and I d e The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament 14 books of Apocrypha and the 27 books of the New Testament Noted for its majesty of style the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English speaking world 3 4 King James VersionThe title page to the 1611 first edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible by Cornelis Boel shows the Apostles Peter and Paul seated centrally above the central text which is flanked by Moses and Aaron In the four corners sit Matthew Mark Luke and John the traditionally attributed authors of the four gospels with their symbolic animals The rest of the Apostles with Judas facing away stand around Peter and Paul At the very top is the Tetragrammaton י ה ו ה written with Hebrew diacritics AbbreviationKJV a Complete Biblepublished1611Online asKing James Version at WikisourceTextual basisOT Masoretic Text Septuagint Latin VulgateNT Textus ReceptusApocrypha Septuagint Latin VulgateTranslation typeFormal equivalence 1 Version revision1769CopyrightPublic domain b Religious affiliationAnglican 1 c Genesis 1 1 3In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters And God said Let there be light and there was light John 3 16For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life The KJV was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker who both held the post of the King s Printer and was the third translation into English language approved by the English Church authorities The first had been the Great Bible commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII 1535 and the second had been the Bishops Bible commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I 1568 5 In Geneva Switzerland the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560 6 from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version In January 1604 King James convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans 7 a faction of the Church of England 8 James gave the translators instructions intended to ensure that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy 9 The translation was done by 6 panels of translators 47 men in all most of whom were leading biblical scholars in England who had the work divided up between them the Old Testament was entrusted to three panels the New Testament to two and the Apocrypha to one 10 In common with most other translations of the period the New Testament was translated from Greek the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible for Epistle and Gospel readings but not for the Psalter which substantially retained Coverdale s Great Bible version and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament 11 By the first half of the 18th century the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England Over the course of the 18th century the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769 extensively re edited by Benjamin Blayney at Oxford and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha Today the unqualified title King James Version usually indicates this Oxford standard text Contents 1 Name 2 History 2 1 Earlier English translations 2 2 Considerations for a new version 2 3 Translation committees 2 4 Printing 2 5 Authorized Version 2 6 Standard text of 1769 2 7 Editorial criticism 3 Literary attributes 3 1 Translation 3 1 1 Old Testament 3 1 2 New Testament 3 1 3 Apocrypha 3 1 4 Sources 3 2 Variations in recent translations 3 3 Style and criticism 3 4 Mistranslations 4 Influence 5 Copyright status 5 1 Permission 5 2 Apocrypha 5 3 King James Only movement 6 See also 7 References 7 1 Notes 7 2 Citations 7 3 Works cited 7 4 Further reading 8 External linksName Edit John Speed s Genealogies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures 1611 bound into first King James Bible in quarto size 1612 The title of the first edition of the translation in Early Modern English was THE HOLY BIBLE Conteyning the Old Teſtament AND THE NEW Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues amp with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed by his Maiesties ſpeciall Comandement The title page carries the words Appointed to be read in Churches 12 and F F Bruce suggests it was probably authorised by order in council but no record of the authorisation survives because the Privy Council registers from 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618 19 13 For many years it was common not to give the translation any specific name In his Leviathan of 1651 Thomas Hobbes referred to it as the English Translation made in the beginning of the Reign of King James 14 A 1761 Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English refers to the 1611 version merely as a new compleat and more accurate Translation despite referring to the Great Bible by its name and despite using the name Rhemish Testament for the Douay Rheims Bible version 15 Similarly a History of England whose fifth edition was published in 1775 writes merely that a new translation of the Bible viz that now in Use was begun in 1607 and published in 1611 16 King James s Bible is used as the name for the 1611 translation on a par with the Genevan Bible or the Rhemish Testament in Charles Butler s Horae Biblicae first published 1797 17 Other works from the early 19th century confirm the widespread use of this name on both sides of the Atlantic it is found both in a historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible published in Massachusetts in 1815 18 and in an English publication from 1818 which explicitly states that the 1611 version is generally known by the name of King James s Bible 19 This name was also found as King James Bible without the final s for example in a book review from 1811 20 The phrase King James s Bible is used as far back as 1715 although in this case it is not clear whether this is a name or merely a description 21 The use of Authorized Version capitalized and used as a name is found as early as 1814 22 For some time before this descriptive phrases such as our present and only publicly authorised version 1783 23 our Authorized version 1731 24 1792 25 and the authorized version 1801 uncapitalized 26 are found A more common appellation in the 17th and 18th centuries was our English translation or our English version as can be seen by searching one or other of the major online archives of printed books In Britain the 1611 translation is generally known as the Authorized Version today The term is somewhat of a misnomer because the text itself was never formally authorized nor were English parish churches ever ordered to procure copies of it 27 King James Version evidently a descriptive phrase is found being used as early as 1814 28 The King James Version is found unequivocally used as a name in a letter from 1855 29 The next year King James Bible with no possessive appears as a name in a Scottish source 30 In the United States the 1611 translation actually editions following the standard text of 1769 see below is generally known as the King James Version today History EditEarlier English translations Edit See also English translations of the Bible The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 14th century These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards 31 The Wycliffe Bible pre dated the printing press but it was circulated very widely in manuscript form often inscribed with a date which was earlier than 1409 in order to avoid the legal ban Because the text of the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate and because it also contained no heterodox readings the ecclesiastical authorities had no practical way to distinguish the banned version consequently many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries such as Thomas More took these manuscripts of English Bibles and claimed that they represented an anonymous earlier orthodox translation William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English in 1525 In 1525 William Tyndale an English contemporary of Martin Luther undertook a translation of the New Testament 32 Tyndale s translation was the first printed Bible in English Over the next ten years Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament 33 Despite some controversial translation choices and in spite of Tyndale s execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible the merits of Tyndale s work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English 34 With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale in 1539 Tyndale s New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible This was the first authorised version issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII 5 When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553 she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country 35 some establishing an English speaking colony at Geneva Under the leadership of John Calvin Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship 36 These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible 37 This translation dated to 1560 was a revision of Tyndale s Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages 38 Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558 the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible namely that the Geneva Bible did not conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy became painfully apparent 39 In 1568 the Church of England responded with the Bishops Bible a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version 40 While officially approved this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds 41 Accordingly Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version small editions were available at a relatively low cost At the same time there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay Rheims New Testament of 1582 undertaken by exiled Catholics This translation though still derived from Tyndale claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate 42 In May 1601 King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St Columba s Church in Burntisland Fife at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English 43 Two years later he ascended to the throne of England as James I 44 Considerations for a new version Edit The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604 That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles First Galatians iv 25 from the Bishops Bible The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is bordereth neither expressing the force of the word nor the apostle s sense nor the situation of the place Secondly psalm cv 28 from the Great Bible They were not obedient the original being They were not disobedient Thirdly psalm cvi 30 also from the Great Bible Then stood up Phinees and prayed the Hebrew hath executed judgment 45 Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use Formal Equivalence and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible 9 King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy 46 Exodus 1 19 where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives and also II Chronicles 15 16 where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous mother Queen Maachah Maachah had actually been Asa s grandmother but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary Queen of Scots 46 Further the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England 9 Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church 9 For example old ecclesiastical words such as the word church were to be retained and not to be translated as congregation 9 The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy 9 James instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and readers The text of the Bishops Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained If the Bishops Bible was deemed problematic in any situation the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre approved list the Tyndale Bible the Coverdale Bible Matthew s Bible the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible In addition later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner s Bible and the New Testament of the Douay Rheims Bible 47 It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty s special commandment As the work proceeded more detailed rules were adopted as to how variant and uncertain readings in the Hebrew and Greek source texts should be indicated including the requirement that words supplied in English to complete the meaning of the originals should be printed in a different type face 48 The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars although 54 were originally approved 10 All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy 49 The scholars worked in six committees two based in each of the University of Oxford the University of Cambridge and Westminster The committees included scholars with Puritan sympathies as well as high churchmen Forty unbound copies of the 1602 edition of the Bishops Bible were specially printed so that the agreed changes of each committee could be recorded in the margins 50 The committees worked on certain parts separately and the drafts produced by each committee were then compared and revised for harmony with each other 51 The scholars were not paid directly for their translation work instead a circular letter was sent to bishops encouraging them to consider the translators for appointment to well paid livings as these fell vacant 49 Several were supported by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge while others were promoted to bishoprics deaneries and prebends through royal patronage The committees started work towards the end of 1604 King James VI and I on 22 July 1604 sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project Right trusty and well beloved we greet you well Whereas we have appointed certain learned men to the number of 4 and 50 for the translating of the Bible and in this number divers of them have either no ecclesiastical preferment at all or else so very small as the same is far unmeet for men of their deserts and yet we in ourself in any convenient time cannot well remedy it therefor we do hereby require you that presently you write in our name as well to the Archbishop of York as to the rest of the bishops of the province of Cant erbury signifying unto them that we do well and straitly charge everyone of them that all excuses set apart when a prebend or parsonage shall next upon any occasion happen to be void we may commend for the same some such of the learned men as we shall think fit to be preferred unto it Given unto our signet at our palace of West minister on 2 and 20 July in the 2nd year of our reign of England France and of Ireland and of Scotland xxxvii 52 They had all completed their sections by 1608 the Apocrypha committee finishing first 53 From January 1609 a General Committee of Review met at Stationers Hall London to review the completed marked texts from each of the six committees The General Committee included John Bois Andrew Downes and John Harmar and others known only by their initials including AL who may be Arthur Lake and were paid for their attendance by the Stationers Company John Bois prepared a note of their deliberations in Latin which has partly survived in two later transcripts 54 Also surviving of the translators working papers are a bound together set of marked up corrections to one of the forty Bishops Bibles covering the Old Testament and Gospels 55 and also a manuscript translation of the text of the Epistles excepting those verses where no change was being recommended to the readings in the Bishops Bible 56 Archbishop Bancroft insisted on having a final say making fourteen further changes of which one was the term bishopricke at Acts 1 20 57 Translation committees Edit First Westminster Company translated Genesis to 2 Kings Lancelot Andrewes John Overall Hadrian a Saravia Richard Clarke John Layfield Robert Tighe Francis Burleigh Geoffrey King Richard Thomson William Bedwell First Cambridge Company translated 1 Chronicles to the Song of Solomon Edward Lively John Richardson Lawrence Chaderton Francis Dillingham Roger Andrewes Thomas Harrison Robert Spaulding Andrew Bing First Oxford Company translated Isaiah to Malachi John Harding John Rainolds or Reynolds Thomas Holland Richard Kilby Miles Smith Richard Brett Daniel Fairclough William Thorne 58 Second Oxford Company translated the Gospels Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation Thomas Ravis George Abbot Richard Eedes Giles Tomson Sir Henry Savile John Peryn Ralph Ravens John Harmar John Aglionby Leonard Hutten Second Westminster Company translated the Epistles William Barlow John Spenser Roger Fenton Ralph Hutchinson William Dakins Michael Rabbet Thomas Sanderson who probably had already become Archdeacon of Rochester Second Cambridge Company translated the Apocrypha John Duport William Branthwaite Jeremiah Radcliffe Samuel Ward Andrew Downes John Bois Robert Ward Thomas Bilson Richard Bancroft 59 Printing Edit Archbishop Richard Bancroft was the chief overseer of the production of the Authorized Version The original printing of the Authorized Version was published by Robert Barker the King s Printer in 1611 as a complete folio Bible 60 It was sold looseleaf for ten shillings or bound for twelve 61 Robert Barker s father Christopher had in 1589 been granted by Elizabeth I the title of royal Printer 62 with the perpetual Royal Privilege to print Bibles in England f Robert Barker invested very large sums in printing the new edition and consequently ran into serious debt 63 such that he was compelled to sub lease the privilege to two rival London printers Bonham Norton and John Bill 64 It appears that it was initially intended that each printer would print a portion of the text share printed sheets with the others and split the proceeds Bitter financial disputes broke out as Barker accused Norton and Bill of concealing their profits while Norton and Bill accused Barker of selling sheets properly due to them as partial Bibles for ready money 65 There followed decades of continual litigation and consequent imprisonment for debt for members of the Barker and Norton printing dynasties 65 while each issued rival editions of the whole Bible In 1629 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge successfully managed to assert separate and prior royal licences for Bible printing for their own university presses and Cambridge University took the opportunity to print revised editions of the Authorized Version in 1629 66 and 1638 67 The editors of these editions included John Bois and John Ward from the original translators This did not however impede the commercial rivalries of the London printers especially as the Barker family refused to allow any other printers access to the authoritative manuscript of the Authorized Version 68 Two editions of the whole Bible are recognized as having been produced in 1611 which may be distinguished by their rendering of Ruth 3 15 69 the first edition reading he went into the city where the second reads she went into the city 70 these are known colloquially as the He and She Bibles 71 The opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews of the 1611 edition of theAuthorized Version shows the original typeface Marginal notes reference variant translations and cross references to other Bible passages Each chapter is headed by a precis of contents There are decorative initial letters for each chapter and a decorated headpiece to each book but no illustrations in the text The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized and when printers as a matter of course expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places so as to achieve an even column of text 72 They set v for initial u and v and u for u and v everywhere else They used long ſ for non final s 73 The glyph j occurs only after i as in the final letter in a Roman numeral Punctuation was relatively heavy and differed from current practice When space needed to be saved the printers sometimes used ye for the replacing the Middle English thorn TH with the continental y set a for an or am in the style of scribe s shorthand and set amp for and On the contrary on a few occasions they appear to have inserted these words when they thought a line needed to be padded citation needed Later printings regularized these spellings the punctuation has also been standardized but still varies from current usage norms The first printing used a blackletter typeface instead of a roman typeface which itself made a political and a religious statement Like the Great Bible and the Bishops Bible the Authorized Version was appointed to be read in churches It was a large folio volume meant for public use not private devotion the weight of the type mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it citation needed However smaller editions and roman type editions followed rapidly e g quarto roman type editions of the Bible in 1612 74 This contrasted with the Geneva Bible which was the first English Bible printed in a roman typeface although black letter editions particularly in folio format were issued later In contrast to the Geneva Bible and the Bishops Bible which had both been extensively illustrated there were no illustrations at all in the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version the main form of decoration being the historiated initial letters provided for books and chapters together with the decorative title pages to the Bible itself and to the New Testament citation needed In the Great Bible readings derived from the Vulgate but not found in published Hebrew and Greek texts had been distinguished by being printed in smaller roman type 75 In the Geneva Bible a distinct typeface had instead been applied to distinguish text supplied by translators or thought needful for English grammar but not present in the Greek or Hebrew and the original printing of the Authorized Version used roman type for this purpose albeit sparsely and inconsistently 76 This results in perhaps the most significant difference between the original printed text of the King James Bible and the current text When from the later 17th century onwards the Authorized Version began to be printed in roman type the typeface for supplied words was changed to italics this application being regularized and greatly expanded This was intended to de emphasize the words 77 The original printing contained two prefatory texts the first was a formal Epistle Dedicatory to the most high and mighty Prince King James Many British printings reproduce this while most non British printings do not citation needed The second preface was called Translators to the Reader a long and learned essay that defends the undertaking of the new version It observes the translators stated goal that they never thought from the beginning that they should need to make a new translation nor yet to make of a bad one a good one but to make a good one better or out of many good ones one principal good one not justly to be excepted against that hath been our endeavour that our mark They also give their opinion of previous English Bible translations stating We do not deny nay we affirm and avow that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English set forth by men of our profession for we have seen none of theirs Catholics of the whole Bible as yet containeth the word of God nay is the word of God As with the first preface some British printings reproduce this while most non British printings do not Almost every printing that includes the second preface also includes the first citation needed The first printing contained a number of other apparatus including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and evensong and a calendar an almanac and a table of holy days and observances Much of this material became obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain and its colonies in 1752 and thus modern editions invariably omit it citation needed So as to make it easier to know a particular passage each chapter was headed by a brief precis of its contents with verse numbers Later editors freely substituted their own chapter summaries or omitted such material entirely citation needed Pilcrow marks are used to indicate the beginnings of paragraphs except after the book of Acts g Authorized Version Edit The Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England No record of its authorization exists it was probably effected by an order of the Privy Council but the records for the years 1600 to 1613 were destroyed by fire in January 1618 19 13 and it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom The King s Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops Bible 62 so necessarily the Authorized Version replaced it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer the text of the Authorized Version finally supplanted that of the Great Bible in the Epistle and Gospel readings 78 though the Prayer Book Psalter nevertheless continues in the Great Bible version 79 The case was different in Scotland where the Geneva Bible had long been the standard church Bible It was not until 1633 that a Scottish edition of the Authorized Version was printed in conjunction with the Scots coronation in that year of Charles I 80 The inclusion of illustrations in the edition raised accusations of Popery from opponents of the religious policies of Charles and William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury However official policy favoured the Authorized Version and this favour returned during the Commonwealth as London printers succeeded in re asserting their monopoly on Bible printing with support from Oliver Cromwell and the New Translation was the only edition on the market 81 F F Bruce reports that the last recorded instance of a Scots parish continuing to use the Old Translation i e Geneva as being in 1674 82 The Authorized Version s acceptance by the general public took longer The Geneva Bible continued to be popular and large numbers were imported from Amsterdam where printing continued up to 1644 in editions carrying a false London imprint 83 However few if any genuine Geneva editions appear to have been printed in London after 1616 and in 1637 Archbishop Laud prohibited their printing or importation In the period of the English Civil War soldiers of the New Model Army were issued a book of Geneva selections called The Soldiers Bible 84 In the first half of the 17th century the Authorized Version is most commonly referred to as The Bible without notes thereby distinguishing it from the Geneva Bible with notes 80 There were several printings of the Authorized Version in Amsterdam one as late as 1715 85 which combined the Authorized Version translation text with the Geneva marginal notes 86 one such edition was printed in London in 1649 During the Commonwealth a commission was established by Parliament to recommend a revision of the Authorized Version with acceptably Protestant explanatory notes 83 but the project was abandoned when it became clear that these would nearly double the bulk of the Bible text After the English Restoration the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era citation needed Furthermore disputes over the lucrative rights to print the Authorized Version dragged on through the 17th century so none of the printers involved saw any commercial advantage in marketing a rival translation citation needed The Authorized Version became the only current version circulating among English speaking people A small minority of critical scholars were slow to accept the latest translation Hugh Broughton who was the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time but had been excluded from the panel of translators because of his utterly uncongenial temperament 87 issued in 1611 a total condemnation of the new version 88 He especially criticized the translators rejection of word for word equivalence and stated that he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than that this abominable translation KJV should ever be foisted upon the English people 89 Walton s London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the Authorized Version and indeed the English language entirely 90 Walton s reference text throughout is the Vulgate The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes s Leviathan of 1651 91 indeed Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers e g Job 41 24 not Job 41 33 for his head text In Chapter 35 The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God Hobbes discusses Exodus 19 5 first in his own translation of the Vulgar Latin and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James and The Geneva French i e Olivetan Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred For most of the 17th century the assumption remained that while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so Biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of Latin It was only in 1700 that modern bilingual Bibles appeared in which the Authorized Version was compared with counterpart Dutch and French Protestant vernacular Bibles 92 In consequence of the continual disputes over printing privileges successive printings of the Authorized Version were notably less careful than the 1611 edition had been compositors freely varying spelling capitalization and punctuation 93 and also over the years introducing about 1 500 misprints some of which like the omission of not from the commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery in the Wicked Bible 94 became notorious The two Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 attempted to restore the proper text while introducing over 200 revisions of the original translators work chiefly by incorporating into the main text a more literal reading originally presented as a marginal note 95 A more thoroughly corrected edition was proposed following the Restoration in conjunction with the revised 1662 Book of Common Prayer but Parliament then decided against it citation needed By the first half of the 18th century the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the sole English translation in current use in Protestant churches 11 and was so dominant that the Catholic Church in England issued in 1750 a revision of the 1610 Douay Rheims Bible by Richard Challoner that was very much closer to the Authorized Version than to the original 96 However general standards of spelling punctuation typesetting capitalization and grammar had changed radically in the 100 years since the first edition of the Authorized Version and all printers in the market were introducing continual piecemeal changes to their Bible texts to bring them into line with current practice and with public expectations of standardized spelling and grammatical construction 97 Over the course of the 18th century the Authorized Version supplanted the Hebrew Greek and the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars and divines and indeed came to be regarded by some as an inspired text in itself so much so that any challenge to its readings or textual base came to be regarded by many as an assault on Holy Scripture 98 In the 18th century there was a serious shortage of Bibles in the American colonies To meet the demand various printers beginning with Samuel Kneeland in 1752 printed the King James Bible without authorization from the Crown To avert prosecution and detection of an unauthorized printing they would include the royal insignia on the title page using the same materials in its printing as the authorized version was produced from which were imported from England 99 100 Standard text of 1769 Edit Title page of the 1760 Cambridge edition By the mid 18th century the wide variation in the various modernized printed texts of the Authorized Version combined with the notorious accumulation of misprints had reached the proportion of a scandal and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge both sought to produce an updated standard text First of the two was the Cambridge edition of 1760 the culmination of 20 years work by Francis Sawyer Parris 101 who died in May of that year This 1760 edition was reprinted without change in 1762 102 and in John Baskerville s fine folio edition of 1763 103 This was effectively superseded by the 1769 Oxford edition edited by Benjamin Blayney 104 though with comparatively few changes from Parris s edition but which became the Oxford standard text and is reproduced almost unchanged in most current printings 105 Parris and Blayney sought consistently to remove those elements of the 1611 and subsequent editions that they believed were due to the vagaries of printers while incorporating most of the revised readings of the Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 and each also introducing a few improved readings of their own They undertook the mammoth task of standardizing the wide variation in punctuation and spelling of the original making many thousands of minor changes to the text In addition Blayney and Parris thoroughly revised and greatly extended the italicization of supplied words not found in the original languages by cross checking against the presumed source texts Blayney seems to have worked from the 1550 Stephanus edition of the Textus Receptus rather than the later editions of Theodore Beza that the translators of the 1611 New Testament had favoured accordingly the current Oxford standard text alters around a dozen italicizations where Beza and Stephanus differ 106 Like the 1611 edition the 1769 Oxford edition included the Apocrypha although Blayney tended to remove cross references to the Books of the Apocrypha from the margins of their Old and New Testaments wherever these had been provided by the original translators It also includes both prefaces from the 1611 edition Altogether the standardization of spelling and punctuation caused Blayney s 1769 text to differ from the 1611 text in around 24 000 places 107 The 1611 and 1769 texts of the first three verses from I Corinthians 13 are given below 1611 1 Though I speake with the tongues of men amp of Angels and haue not charity I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I haue all faith so that I could remooue mountaines and haue no charitie I am nothing 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore and though I giue my body to bee burned and haue not charitie it profiteth me nothing 1769 1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity I am nothing 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth me nothing There are a number of superficial edits in these three verses 11 changes of spelling 16 changes of typesetting including the changed conventions for the use of u and v three changes of punctuation and one variant text where not charity is substituted for no charity in verse two in the erroneous belief that the original reading was a misprint A particular verse for which Blayney s 1769 text differs from Parris s 1760 version is Matthew 5 13 where Parris 1760 has Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost his savour wherewith shall it be salted it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be troden under foot of men Blayney 1769 changes lost his savour to lost its savour and troden to trodden For a period Cambridge continued to issue Bibles using the Parris text but the market demand for absolute standardization was now such that they eventually adapted Blayney s work but omitted some of the idiosyncratic Oxford spellings By the mid 19th century almost all printings of the Authorized Version were derived from the 1769 Oxford text increasingly without Blayney s variant notes and cross references and commonly excluding the Apocrypha 108 One exception to this was a scrupulous original spelling page for page and line for line reprint of the 1611 edition including all chapter headings marginalia and original italicization but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original published by Oxford in 1833 h Another important exception was the 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible thoroughly revised modernized and re edited by F H A Scrivener who for the first time consistently identified the source texts underlying the 1611 translation and its marginal notes 110 Scrivener like Blayney opted to revise the translation where he considered the judgement of the 1611 translators had been faulty 111 In 2005 Cambridge University Press released its New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with Apocrypha edited by David Norton which followed in the spirit of Scrivener s work attempting to bring spelling to present day standards Norton also innovated with the introduction of quotation marks while returning to a hypothetical 1611 text so far as possible to the wording used by its translators especially in the light of the re emphasis on some of their draft documents 112 This text has been issued in paperback by Penguin Books 113 From the early 19th century the Authorized Version has remained almost completely unchanged and since due to advances in printing technology it could now be produced in very large editions for mass sale it established complete dominance in public and ecclesiastical use in the English speaking Protestant world Academic debate through that century however increasingly reflected concerns about the Authorized Version shared by some scholars a that subsequent study in oriental languages suggested a need to revise the translation of the Hebrew Bible both in terms of specific vocabulary and also in distinguishing descriptive terms from proper names b that the Authorized Version was unsatisfactory in translating the same Greek words and phrases into different English especially where parallel passages are found in the synoptic gospels and c in the light of subsequent ancient manuscript discoveries the New Testament translation base of the Greek Textus Receptus could no longer be considered to be the best representation of the original text 114 Responding to these concerns the Convocation of Canterbury resolved in 1870 to undertake a revision of the text of the Authorized Version intending to retain the original text except where in the judgement of competent scholars such a change is necessary The resulting revision was issued as the Revised Version in 1881 New Testament 1885 Old Testament and 1894 Apocrypha but although it sold widely the revision did not find popular favour and it was only reluctantly in 1899 that Convocation approved it for reading in churches 115 By the early 20th century editing had been completed in Cambridge s text with at least 6 new changes since 1769 and the reversing of at least 30 of the standard Oxford readings The distinct Cambridge text was printed in the millions and after the Second World War the unchanging steadiness of the KJB was a huge asset 116 Editorial criticism Edit F H A Scrivener and D Norton have both written in detail on editorial variations which have occurred through the history of the publishing of the Authorized Version from 1611 to 1769 In the 19th century there were effectively three main guardians of the text Norton identified five variations among the Oxford Cambridge and London Eyre and Spottiswoode texts of 1857 such as the spelling of farther or further at Matthew 26 39 117 In the 20th century variation between the editions was reduced to comparing the Cambridge to the Oxford Distinctly identified Cambridge readings included or Sheba 118 sin 119 clifts 120 vapour 121 flieth 122 further 123 and a number of other references In effect the Cambridge was considered the current text in comparison to the Oxford 124 These are instances where both Oxford and Cambridge have now diverged from Blayney s 1769 Edition The distinctions between the Oxford and Cambridge editions have been a major point in the Bible version debate 125 and a potential theological issue 126 particularly in regard to the identification of the Pure Cambridge Edition 127 Cambridge University Press introduced a change at 1 John 5 8 128 in 1985 reversing its longstanding tradition of printing the word spirit in lower case by using a capital letter S 129 A Rev Hardin of Bedford Pennsylvania wrote a letter to Cambridge inquiring about this verse and received a reply on 3 June 1985 from the Bible Director Jerry L Hooper claiming that it was a matter of some embarrassment regarding the lower case s in Spirit 130 Literary attributes EditTranslation Edit In obedience to their instructions the translators provided no marginal interpretation of the text but in some 8 500 places a marginal note offers an alternative English wording 131 The majority of these notes offer a more literal rendering of the original introduced as Heb Chal Chaldee referring to Aramaic Gr or Lat Others indicate a variant reading of the source text introduced by or Some of the annotated variants derive from alternative editions in the original languages or from variant forms quoted in the fathers More commonly though they indicate a difference between the literal original language reading and that in the translators preferred recent Latin versions Tremellius for the Old Testament Junius for the Apocrypha and Beza for the New Testament 132 At thirteen places in the New Testament 133 134 a marginal note records a variant reading found in some Greek manuscript copies in almost all cases reproducing a counterpart textual note at the same place in Beza s editions 135 A few more extensive notes clarify Biblical names and units of measurement or currency Modern reprintings rarely reproduce these annotated variants although they are to be found in the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible In addition there were originally some 9 000 scriptural cross references in which one text was related to another Such cross references had long been common in Latin Bibles and most of those in the Authorized Version were copied unaltered from this Latin tradition Consequently the early editions of the KJV retain many Vulgate verse references e g in the numbering of the Psalms 136 At the head of each chapter the translators provided a short precis of its contents with verse numbers these are rarely included in complete form in modern editions Also in obedience to their instructions the translators indicated supplied words in a different typeface but there was no attempt to regularize the instances where this practice had been applied across the different companies and especially in the New Testament it was used much less frequently in the 1611 edition than would later be the case 76 In one verse 1 John 2 23 an entire clause was printed in roman type as it had also been in the Great Bible and Bishop s Bible 137 indicating a reading then primarily derived from the Vulgate albeit one for which the later editions of Beza had provided a Greek text 138 Gods name JEHOVAH in Psalms 83 18 In the Old Testament the translators render the Tetragrammaton YHWH by the LORD in later editions in small capitals as LORD i or the LORD God for YHWH Elohim יהוה אלהים j except in four places by IEHOVAH 139 However if the Tetragrammaton occurs with the Hebrew word adonai Lord then it is rendered not as the Lord LORD but as the Lord God 140 In later editions it appears as Lord GOD with GOD in small capitals indicating to the reader that God s name appears in the original Hebrew Old Testament Edit For the Old Testament the translators used a text originating in the editions of the Hebrew Rabbinic Bible by Daniel Bomberg 1524 5 141 failed verification but adjusted this to conform to the Greek LXX or Latin Vulgate in passages to which Christian tradition had attached a Christological interpretation 142 For example the Septuagint reading They pierced my hands and my feet was used in Psalm 22 16 143 vs the Masoretes reading of the Hebrew like lions my hands and feet 144 Otherwise however the Authorized Version is closer to the Hebrew tradition than any previous English translation especially in making use of the rabbinic commentaries such as Kimhi in elucidating obscure passages in the Masoretic Text 145 earlier versions had been more likely to adopt LXX or Vulgate readings in such places Following the practice of the Geneva Bible the books of 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras in the medieval Vulgate Old Testament were renamed Ezra and Nehemiah 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras in the Apocrypha being renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras New Testament Edit For the New Testament the translators chiefly used the 1598 and 1588 89 Greek editions of Theodore Beza 146 k which also present Beza s Latin version of the Greek and Stephanus s edition of the Latin Vulgate Both of these versions were extensively referred to as the translators conducted all discussions amongst themselves in Latin F H A Scrivener identifies 190 readings where the Authorized Version translators depart from Beza s Greek text generally in maintaining the wording of the Bishops Bible and other earlier English translations 147 In about half of these instances the Authorized Version translators appear to follow the earlier 1550 Greek Textus Receptus of Stephanus For the other half Scrivener was usually able to find corresponding Greek readings in the editions of Erasmus or in the Complutensian Polyglot However in several dozen readings he notes that no printed Greek text corresponds to the English of the Authorized Version which in these places derives directly from the Vulgate 148 For example at John 10 16 149 the Authorized Version reads one fold as did the Bishops Bible and the 16th century vernacular versions produced in Geneva following the Latin Vulgate unum ovile whereas Tyndale had agreed more closely with the Greek one flocke mia poimnh The Authorized Version New Testament owes much more to the Vulgate than does the Old Testament still at least 80 of the text is unaltered from Tyndale s translation 150 Apocrypha Edit Unlike the rest of the Bible the translators of the Apocrypha identified their source texts in their marginal notes 151 From these it can be determined that the books of the Apocrypha were translated from the Septuagint primarily from the Greek Old Testament column in the Antwerp Polyglot but with extensive reference to the counterpart Latin Vulgate text and to Junius s Latin translation The translators record references to the Sixtine Septuagint of 1587 which is substantially a printing of the Old Testament text from the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and also to the 1518 Greek Septuagint edition of Aldus Manutius They had however no Greek texts for 2 Esdras or for the Prayer of Manasses and Scrivener found that they here used an unidentified Latin manuscript 151 Sources Edit The translators appear to have otherwise made no first hand study of ancient manuscript sources even those that like the Codex Bezae would have been readily available to them 152 In addition to all previous English versions including and contrary to their instructions 153 the Rheimish New Testament 154 which in their preface they criticized they made wide and eclectic use of all printed editions in the original languages then available including the ancient Syriac New Testament printed with an interlinear Latin gloss in the Antwerp Polyglot of 1573 155 In the preface the translators acknowledge consulting translations and commentaries in Chaldee Hebrew Syrian Greek Latin Spanish French Italian and German 156 The translators took the Bishops Bible as their source text and where they departed from that in favour of another translation this was most commonly the Geneva Bible However the degree to which readings from the Bishops Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own John Bois s notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of versions and patristic sources including explicitly both Henry Savile s 1610 edition of the works of John Chrysostom and the Rheims New Testament 157 which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes Variations in recent translations Edit Main article List of major textual variants in the New Testament See also List of Bible verses not included in modern translations A number of Bible verses in the King James Version of the New Testament are not found in more recent Bible translations where these are based on modern critical texts In the early seventeenth century the source Greek texts of the New Testament which were used to produce Protestant Bible versions were mainly dependent on manuscripts of the late Byzantine text type and they also contained minor variations which became known as the Textus Receptus 158 With the subsequent identification of much earlier manuscripts most modern textual scholars value the evidence of manuscripts which belong to the Alexandrian family as better witnesses to the original text of the biblical authors 159 without giving it or any family automatic preference 160 Style and criticism Edit A primary concern of the translators was to produce an appropriate Bible dignified and resonant in public reading 161 Although the Authorized Version s written style is an important part of its influence on English research has found only one verse Hebrews 13 8 for which translators debated the wording s literary merits While they stated in the preface that they used stylistic variation finding multiple English words or verbal forms in places where the original language employed repetition in practice they also did the opposite for example 14 different Hebrew words were translated into the single English word prince 3 needs context In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic like verily and it came to pass 87 The pronouns thou thee and ye you are consistently used as singular and plural respectively even though by this time you was often found as the singular in general English usage especially when addressing a social superior as is evidenced for example in Shakespeare 162 For the possessive of the third person pronoun the word its first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1598 is avoided 163 The older his is usually employed as for example at Matthew 5 13 164 if the salt have lost his savour wherewith shall it be salted 163 in other places of it thereof or bare it are found l Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of eth for the third person singular present form of the verb as at Matthew 2 13 the Angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dreame The rival ending e s as found in present day English was already widely used by this time for example it predominates over eth in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe 166 Furthermore the translators preferred which to who or whom as the relative pronoun for persons as in Genesis 13 5 167 And Lot also which went with Abram had flocks and heards amp tents 168 although who m is also found m The Authorized Version is notably more Latinate than previous English versions 153 especially the Geneva Bible This results in part from the academic stylistic preferences of a number of the translators several of whom admitted to being more comfortable writing in Latin than in English but was also in part a consequence of the royal proscription against explanatory notes 169 Hence where the Geneva Bible might use a common English word and gloss its particular application in a marginal note the Authorized Version tends rather to prefer a technical term frequently in Anglicized Latin Consequently although the King had instructed the translators to use the Bishops Bible as a base text the New Testament in particular owes much stylistically to the Catholic Rheims New Testament whose translators had also been concerned to find English equivalents for Latin terminology 170 In addition the translators of the New Testament books transliterate names found in the Old Testament in their Greek forms rather than in the forms closer to the Old Testament Hebrew e g Elias and Noe for Elijah and Noah respectively While the Authorized Version remains among the most widely sold modern critical New Testament translations differ substantially from it in a number of passages primarily because they rely on source manuscripts not then accessible to or not then highly regarded by early 17th century Biblical scholarship 171 In the Old Testament there are also many differences from modern translations that are based not on manuscript differences but on a different understanding of Ancient Hebrew vocabulary or grammar by the translators For example in modern translations it is clear that Job 28 1 11 172 is referring throughout to mining operations which is not at all apparent from the text of the Authorized Version 173 Mistranslations Edit The King James Version contains several alleged mistranslations especially in the Old Testament where the knowledge of Hebrew and cognate languages was uncertain at the time 174 Among the most commonly cited errors is in the Hebrew of Job and Deuteronomy where Hebrew ר א ם romanized Re em with the probable meaning of wild ox aurochs is translated in the KJV as unicorn following in this the Vulgate unicornis and several medieval rabbinic commentators The translators of the KJV note the alternative rendering rhinocerots sic in the margin at Isaiah 34 7 On a similar note Martin Luther s German translation had also relied on the Latin Vulgate on this point consistently translating ר א ם using the German word for unicorn Einhorn 175 Otherwise the translators are accused on several occasions to have mistakenly interpreted a Hebrew descriptive phrase as a proper name or vice versa as at 2 Samuel 1 18 where the Book of Jasher Hebrew ס פ ר ה י ש ר romanized sepher ha yasher properly refers not to a work by an author of that name but should rather be rendered as the Book of the Upright which was proposed as an alternative reading in a marginal note to the KJV text Influence EditDespite royal patronage and encouragement there was never any overt mandate to use the new translation It was not until 1661 that the Authorized Version replaced the Bishops Bible in the Epistle and Gospel lessons of the Book of Common Prayer and it never did replace the older translation in the Psalter In 1763 The Critical Review complained that many false interpretations ambiguous phrases obsolete words and indelicate expressions excite the derision of the scorner Blayney s 1769 version with its revised spelling and punctuation helped change the public perception of the Authorized Version to a masterpiece of the English language 3 By the 19th century F W Faber could say of the translation It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego 176 Geddes MacGregor called the Authorized Version the most influential version of the most influential book in the world in what is now its most influential language 177 the most important book in English religion and culture and the most celebrated book in the English speaking world David Crystal has estimated that it is responsible for 257 idioms in English examples include feet of clay and reap the whirlwind Furthermore prominent atheist figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being a giant step in the maturing of English literature and a great work of literature respectively with Dawkins then adding A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian 178 179 The King James Version is one of the versions authorized to be used in the services of the Episcopal Church and other parts of the Anglican Communion 180 as it is the historical Bible of this church Other Christian denominations have also accepted the King James Version The King James Version is used by English speaking Conservative Anabaptists along with Methodists of the conservative holiness movement in addition to certain Baptists 181 182 In the Orthodox Church in America it is used liturgically and was made the official translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox The later Service Book of the Antiochian archdiocese in vogue today also uses the King James Version n The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints continues to use its own edition of the Authorized Version as its official English Bible Although the Authorized Version s preeminence in the English speaking world has diminished for example the Church of England recommends six other versions in addition to it it is still the most used translation in the United States especially as the Scofield Reference Bible for Evangelicals However over the past forty years it has been gradually overtaken by modern versions principally the New International Version 1973 and the New Revised Standard Version 1989 3 the latter of which is seen as a successor to the King James Version 184 Copyright status EditThe Authorized Version is in the public domain in most of the world However in the United Kingdom the right to print publish and distribute it is a royal prerogative and the Crown licenses publishers to reproduce it under letters patent In England Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the King s Printer and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board The office of King s Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for centuries the earliest known reference coming in 1577 In the 18th century all surviving interests in the monopoly were bought out by John Baskett The Baskett rights descended through a number of printers and in England Wales and Northern Ireland the King s Printer is now Cambridge University Press which inherited the right when they took over the firm of Eyre amp Spottiswoode in 1990 185 Other royal charters of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Authorized Version independently of the King s Printer In Scotland the Authorized Version is published by Collins under licence from the Scottish Bible Board The terms of the letters patent prohibit any other than the holders or those authorized by the holders from printing publishing or importing the Authorized Version into the United Kingdom The protection that the Authorized Version and also the Book of Common Prayer enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom 185 Almost all provisions granting copyright in perpetuity were abolished by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 but because the Authorized Version is protected by royal prerogative rather than copyright it will remain protected as specified in CDPA s171 1 b 186 o Permission Edit Within the United Kingdom Cambridge University Press permits the reproduction of at most 500 verses for liturgical and non commercial educational use provided that their prescribed acknowledgement is included the quoted verses do not exceed 25 of the publication quoting them and do not include a complete Bible book 187 For use beyond this the Press is willing to consider permission requested on a case by case basis and in 2011 a spokesman said the Press generally does not charge a fee but tries to ensure that a reputable source text is used 188 189 Apocrypha Edit Further information on the Apocrypha Biblical canon Translations of the books of the biblical apocrypha were necessary for the King James version as readings from these books were included in the daily Old Testament lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer Protestant Bibles in the 16th century included the books of the Apocrypha generally following the Luther Bible in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments to indicate they were not considered part of the Old Testament text and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature especially in Puritan circles 190 191 The Apocrypha of the King James Version has the same 14 books as had been found in the Apocrypha of the Bishops Bible however following the practice of the Geneva Bible the first two books of the Apocrypha were renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras as compared to the names in the Thirty nine Articles with the corresponding Old Testament books being renamed Ezra and Nehemiah Starting in 1630 volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the Apocrypha section excluded In 1644 the Long Parliament forbade the reading of the Apocrypha in churches and in 1666 the first editions of the King James Bible without the Apocrypha were bound 192 The standardization of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print runs at very low unit prices For commercial and charitable publishers editions of the Authorized Version without the Apocrypha reduced the cost while having increased market appeal to non Anglican Protestant readers 193 With the rise of the Bible societies most editions have omitted the whole section of Apocryphal books 194 The British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew subsidies for Bible printing and dissemination in 1826 under the following resolution That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal 195 The American Bible Society adopted a similar policy Both societies eventually reversed these policies in light of 20th century ecumenical efforts on translations the ABS doing so in 1964 and the BFBS in 1966 196 King James Only movement Edit Main article King James Only movement The King James Only movement advocates the belief that the King James Version is superior to all other English translations of the Bible Most adherents of the movement believe that the Textus Receptus is very close if not identical to the original autographs thereby making it the ideal Greek source for the translation They argue that manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus on which most modern English translations are based are corrupted New Testament texts One of them Perry Demopoulos was a director of the translation of the King James Bible into Russian In 2010 the Russian translation of the KJV of the New Testament was released in Kyiv Ukraine 197 In 2017 the first complete edition of a Russian King James Bible was released 198 In 2017 a Faroese translation of the King James Bible was released as well 199 See also Edit Bible portal Christianity portal21st Century King James Version Bible errata Bible translations Charles XII Bible Dynamic and formal equivalence Modern English Bible translations King James Versions and derivatives New King James Version Red letter edition Young s Literal TranslationReferences EditNotes Edit The King James Version can also be found abbreviated as either the KJB King James Bible or the AV Authorized Version The King James Version has publication restrictions in the United Kingdom see the section regarding copyright status The King James Version has also been used throughout a multitude of Protestant denominations since its original publication In addition it has been used by various sects James acceded to the throne of Scotland as James VI in 1567 and to that of England and Ireland as James I in 1603 The correct style is therefore James VI and I And now at last it being brought unto such a conclusion as that we have great hope that the Church of England sic shall reape good fruit thereby 2 The Royal Privilege was a virtual monopoly Norton 2011 p x notes In all likelihood the first edition of the King James Bible was hurried through the press before the translators had fully completed their work One of the casualties of this hurry was the paragraphing It emerged rough and incomplete for instance there are no paragraph breaks marked in the New Testament after Acts 20 The Holy Bible an Exact Reprint Page for Page of the Authorized Version Published in the Year MDCXI Oxford Oxford University Press 1833 reprints ISBN 0 8407 0041 5 1565631625 According to J R Dore 109 the edition so far as it goes represents the edition of 1611 so completely that it may be consulted with as much confidence as an original The spelling punctuation italics capitals and distribution into lines and pages are all followed with the most scrupulous care It is however printed in Roman instead of black letter type Genesis 4 1 Genesis 2 4 אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם ביום עשות יהוה אלהים ארץ ושמים Edward F Hills made the following important statement in regard to the KJV and the Received Text The translators that produced the King James Version relied mainly it seems on the later editions of Beza s Greek New Testament especially his 4th edition 1588 9 But also they frequently consulted the editions of Erasmus and Stephanus and the Complutensian Polyglot According to Scrivener 1884 51 out of the 252 passages in which these sources differ sufficiently to affect the English rendering the King James Version agrees with Beza against Stephanus 113 times with Stephanus against Beza 59 times and 80 times with Erasmus or the Complutensian or the Latin Vulgate against Beza and Stephanus Hence the King James Version ought to be regarded not merely as a translation of the Textus Receptus but also as an independent variety of the Textus Receptus Edward F Hills The King James Version Defended p 220 e g Matthew 7 27 great was the fall of it Matthew 2 16 in Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof Leviticus 25 5 That which groweth of it owne accord of thy harvest Leviticus 25 5 is changed to its in many modern printings 165 e g at Genesis 3 12 The woman whom thou gavest to be with mee That which is most used liturgically is the King James Version It has a long and honorable tradition in our Church in America Professor Orloff used it for his translations at the end of the last century and Isabel Hapgood s Service Book of 1906 and 1922 made it the official translation for a whole generation of American Orthodox Unfortunately both Orloff and Hapgood used a different version for the Psalms that of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer thereby giving us two translations in the same services This was rectified in 1949 by the Service Book of the Antiochian Archdiocese which replaced the Prayer Book psalms with those from the King James Version and made some other corrections This beautiful translation reproducing the stately prose of 1611 was the work of Fathers Upson and Nicholas It is still in widespread use to this day and has familiarized thousands of believers with the KJV 183 The only other perpetual copyright grants Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children a right to a royalty in respect of the public performance commercial publication or communication to the public of the play Peter Pan by Sir James Matthew Barrie or of any adaptation of that work notwithstanding that copyright in the work expired on 31st December 1987 See CDPA 1988 s301 Citations Edit a b Bible Translation Spectrum Logos Bible Software Wiki Archived from the original on 7 January 2023 Retrieved 7 January 2023 KJV Dedicatorie 1611 a b c d 400 years of the King James Bible The Times Literary Supplement 9 February 2011 Archived from the original on 17 June 2011 Retrieved 8 March 2011 The King James Bible The Book That Changed the World BBC Two BBC a b Daniell 2003 p 204 The Sixth Point of Calvinism The Historicism Research Foundation Inc 2003 ISBN 09620681 4 4 Daniell 2003 p 435 Hill 1997 pp 4 5 a b c d e f Daniell 2003 p 439 a b Daniell 2003 p 436 a b Daniell 2003 p 488 Cross amp Livingstone 1974 Authorised Version of the Bible a b Douglas 1974 Bible English Versions Hobbes 2010 Chapter XXXV Pearse 1761 p 79 Kimber 1775 p 279 Butler 1807 p 219 Holmes 1815 p 277 Horne 1818 p 14 Adams Thacher amp Emerson 1811 p 110 Hacket 1715 p 205 Anon 1814 p 356 Anon 1783 p 27 Twells 1731 p 95 Newcome 1792 p 113 Anon 1801 p 145 Greenslade 1963 p 168 Smith 1814 p 209 Chapman 1856 p 270 Anon 1856 pp 530 31 Daniell 2003 p 75 Daniell 2003 p 143 Daniell 2003 p 152 Daniell 2003 p 156 Daniell 2003 p 277 Daniell 2003 p 291 Daniell 2003 p 292 Daniell 2003 p 304 Daniell 2003 p 339 Daniell 2003 p 344 Bobrick 2001 p 186 Daniell 2003 p 364 Bobrick 2001 p 221 Valpy Michael 5 February 2011 How the mighty has fallen The King James Bible turns 400 The Globe and Mail Retrieved 8 April 2014 Daniell 2003 p 433 a b Daniell 2003 p 434 Bobrick 2001 p 328 Norton 2005 p 10 a b Bobrick 2001 p 223 Daniell 2003 p 442 Daniell 2003 p 444 Wallechinsky amp Wallace 1975 p 235 Norton 2005 p 11 Bois Allen amp Walker 1969 Norton 2005 p 20 Norton 2005 p 16 Bobrick 2001 p 257 DeCoursey 2003 pp 331 32 Bobrick 2001 pp 223 44 Herbert 1968 p 309 Herbert 1968 p 310 a b Daniell 2003 p 453 Daniell 2003 p 451 Daniell 2003 p 454 a b Daniell 2003 p 455 Herbert 1968 p 424 Herbert 1968 p 520 Daniell 2003 p 4557 Ruth 3 15 Norton 2005 p 62 Anon 1996 Norton 2005 p 46 Bobrick 2001 p 261 Herbert 1968 pp 313 14 Scrivener 1884 p 61 a b Scrivener 1884 p 70 Norton 2005 p 162 Procter amp Frere 1902 p 187 Hague 1948 p 353 a b Daniell 2003 p 458 Daniell 2003 p 459 Bruce 2002 p 92 a b Hill 1993 p 65 Herbert 1968 p 577 Herbert 1968 p 936 Daniell 2003 p 457 a b Bobrick 2001 p 264 Bobrick 2001 p 266 Bobrick 2001 p 265 Daniell 2003 p 510 Daniell 2003 p 478 Daniell 2003 p 489 Norton 2005 p 94 Herbert 1968 p 444 Scrivener 1884 pp 147 94 Daniell 2003 p 515 Norton 2005 p 99 Daniell 2003 p 619 Newgass 1958 p 32 Thomas 1874 Vol I pp 107 108 Norton 2005 Herbert 1968 p 1142 Norton 2005 p 106 Herbert 1968 p 1196 Norton 2005 p 113 Scrivener 1884 p 242 Norton 2005 p 120 Norton 2005 p 125 Dore 1888 p 363 Daniell 2003 p 691 Norton 2005 p 122 Norton 2005 p 131 Norton 2006 Daniell 2003 p 685 Chadwick 1970 pp 40 56 Norton 2005 pp 115 126 Norton 2005 p 126 Joshua 19 2 2 Chronicles 33 19 Job 30 6 Psalm 148 8 Nahum 3 16 Matthew 26 39 Norton 2005 p 144 White 2009 Settings of the King James Bible PDF ourkjv com Retrieved 13 July 2013 tbsbibles org 2013 Editorial Report PDF Quarterly Record Trinitarian Bible Society 603 2nd Quarter 10 20 Archived from the original PDF on 16 April 2014 Retrieved 13 July 2013 1 John 5 8 CUP letter PDF ourkjv com Retrieved 13 July 2013 Asquith John M 7 September 2017 The Hooper Letter purecambridgetext com Retrieved 7 February 2019 Scrivener 1884 p 56 Scrivener 1884 p 43 Metzger Bruce 1968 Historical and Literary Studies Brill p 144 e g Luke 17 36 and Acts 25 6 Scrivener 1884 p 58 Scrivener 1884 p 118 Scrivener 1884 p 68 Scrivener 1884 p 254 Exodus 6 3 Psalm 83 18 Isaiah 12 2 and Isaiah 26 4 and three times in a combination form Genesis 22 14 Exodus 17 15 Judges 6 24 Psalm 73 28 etc Scrivener 1884 p 42 Bobrick 2001 p 262 Psalm 22 16 The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh copyright 1985 Daiches 1968 p 208 Scrivener 1884 p 60 Scrivener 1884 pp 243 263 Scrivener 1884 p 262 John 10 16 Daniell 2003 p 448 a b Scrivener 1884 p 47 Scrivener 1884 p 59 a b Daniell 2003 p 440 Bois Allen amp Walker 1969 p xxv Bobrick 2001 p 246 KJV Translators to the Reader 1611 Bois Allen amp Walker 1969 p 118 Metzger 1964 pp 103 06 Metzger 1964 p 216 Metzger 1964 p 218 For more see Timothy Berg Seven Common Misconceptions about the King James Bible Text amp Canon Institute 2022 Barber 1997 pp 153 54 a b Barber 1997 p 150 Matthew 5 13 Barber 1997 pp 150 51 Barber 1997 pp 166 67 Genesis 13 5 Barber 1997 p 212 Bobrick 2001 p 229 Bobrick 2001 p 252 Daniell 2003 p 5 Job 28 1 11 Bruce 2002 p 145 Errors in the King James Version by William W Combs PDF DBSJ 1999 Archived from the original PDF on 23 September 2015 Retrieved 25 April 2015 BibleGateway Einhorn biblegateway com Hall 1881 MacGregor 1968 p 170 When the King Saved God Vanity Fair 2011 Retrieved 10 August 2017 Why I want all our children to read the King James Bible The Guardian 20 May 2012 Retrieved 10 August 2017 The Canons of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church Canon 2 Of Translations of the Bible Archived 24 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine Grammich Clifford Anthony 1999 Local Baptists Local Politics Churches and Communities in the Middle and Uplands South University of Tennessee Press p 94 ISBN 978 1 57233 045 0 Dunkard Brethren Church Polity Dunkard Brethren Church 1 November 2021 p 7 Biblical Studies Department of Christian Education Orthodox Church in America 2014 Retrieved 28 April 2014 Durken Daniel 17 December 2015 New Collegeville Bible Commentary Old Testament Liturgical Press ISBN 978 0 8146 3587 2 The King James tradition was continued in the Revised Version of 1881 and 1885 the Revised Standard Version of 1946 and 1952 and the New Revised Standard Version of 1989 a b Metzger amp Coogan 1993 p 618 CDPA s171 1 b Bibles Cambridge University Press Retrieved 11 December 2012 Shakespeare s Globe takes issue with the Queen over Bible royalties The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 11 January 2022 Retrieved 11 December 2012 The Queen s Printer s Patent Cambridge University Press Archived from the original on 14 April 2013 Retrieved 11 December 2012 We grant permission to use the text and license printing or the importation for sale within the UK as long as we are assured of acceptable quality and accuracy Daniell 2003 p 187 Hill 1993 p 338 Kenyon 1909 Daniell 2003 p 600 Daniell 2003 p 622 Browne 1859 pp 362 Melton 2005 p 38 Russian New Testament Bible with Job through Song of Solomon Bible Baptist Bookstore Retrieved 25 September 2018 description harvestukraine org Retrieved 25 September 2018 Heilaga Biblia in Danish Retrieved 6 August 2021 Works cited Edit Adams David Phineas Thacher Samuel Cooper Emerson William 1811 The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review Munroe and Francis Anon 1783 A call to the Jews J Johnson Anon 1801 The Anti Jacobin Review and Magazine J Whittle Anon 1814 Missionary Register Seeley Jackson amp Halliday for the Church Missionary Society Anon 1856 The Original Secession Magazine Vol ii Edinburgh Moodie and Lothian Anon 1996 The Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Bible Collection A Checklist Bridwell Library ISBN 978 0 941881 19 7 Barber Charles Laurence 1997 Early modern English 2nd ed Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0 7486 0835 4 Bobrick Benson 2001 Wide as the waters the story of the English Bible and the revolution it inspired New York Simon amp Schuster ISBN 0 684 84747 7 Bois John Allen Ward Walker Anthony 1969 Translating for King James being a true copy of the only notes made by a translator of King James s Bible the Authorized Version as the Final Committee of Review revised the translation of Romans through Revelation at Stationers Hall in London in 1610 1611 Taken by John Bois these notes were for three centuries lost and only now are come to light through a copy made by the hand of William Fulman Here translated and edited by Ward Allen Nashville Vanderbilt University Press OCLC 607818272 Browne George 1859 History of the British and Foreign Bible Society p 362 Bruce Frederick Fyvie 2002 History of the Bible in English Cambridge Lutterworth Press ISBN 0 7188 9032 9 Butler Charles 1807 Horae Biblicae Vol 1 4th ed London J White OCLC 64048851 Chadwick Owen 1970 The Victorian Church Part II Edinburgh A amp C Black ISBN 0 334 02410 2 Chapman James L 1856 Americanism versus Romanism or the cis Atlantic battle between Sam and the pope Nashville TN the author OCLC 1848388 Daiches David 1968 The King James Version of the English Bible An Account of the Development and Sources of the English Bible of 1611 With Special Reference to the Hebrew Tradition Hamden Conn Archon Books ISBN 0 208 00493 9 Daniell David 2003 The Bible in English its history and influence New Haven Conn Yale University Press ISBN 0 300 09930 4 DeCoursey Matthew 2003 Edward A Malone ed British Rhetoricians and Logicians 1500 1660 Second series Gale Group ISBN 978 0 7876 6025 3 Dore John Read 1888 Old Bibles An Account of the Early Versions of the English Bible 2nd ed Eyre and Spottiswoode Douglas James Dixon ed 1974 New International Dictionary of the Christian Church Zondervan Greenslade S L 1963 English Versions of the Bible 1525 1611 In Greenslade S L ed The Cambridge History of the Bible Volume III The West From Reformation to Present Day Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 141 75 Melton J Gordon 2005 Encyclopedia of Protestantism Infobase Publishing ISBN 978 0 8160 6983 5 Hacket John 1715 Bishop Hacket s Memoirs of the Life of Archbishop Williams Abridg d With the Most Remarkable Occurrences and Transactions in Church and State Sam Briscoe Hague Dyson 1948 Through the Prayer Book Church Book Room Press Hall Isaac Hollister 1881 The Revised New Testament and History of Revisions Hubbard Bros Herbert A S 1968 Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525 1961 Etc British and Foreign Bible Society Hill Christopher 1993 The English Bible and the seventeenth century revolution London Allen Lane ISBN 0 7139 9078 3 Hill Christopher 1997 Society and Puritanism in pre revolutionary England New York St Martin s Press ISBN 0 312 17432 2 Hobbes Thomas 2010 Leviathan Broadview Press ISBN 978 1 55481 003 1 Holmes A 1815 An Historical sketch of the English translations of the Bible In Worcester Noah ed The Christian Disciple Vol iii Boston MA Cummings amp Hilliard Horne Thomas Hartwell 1818 An introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the holy Scriptures Volume 2 London T Cadell and A Davies Kenyon Sir Frederic G 1909 English Versions In James Hastings ed Hastings Dictionary of the Bible New York Charles Scribner s Sons ISBN 978 1 56563 915 7 Kimber Isaac 1775 The history of England from the earliest accounts to the accession of his present Majesty King George III fifth ed London J Buckland OCLC 14263883 Epistle Dedicatorie The Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible 1611 via Wikisource Translators to the Reader The Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible 1611 via Wikisource Metzger Bruce M 1964 The Text of the New Testament Clarendon Metzger Bruce M Coogan Michael D eds 1993 The Oxford Companion to the Bible Oxford UK Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 504645 5 Norton David 2011 Editor s introduction The new Cambridge paragraph Bible with the apocrypha King James version Revised ed Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 76284 7 OCLC 665139368 Procter Francis Frere Walter Howard 1902 A New History of the Book of Common Prayer MacMillan amp Co MacGregor Geddes 1968 A Literary History of the Bible From the Middle Ages to the Present Day Abingdon Press LCCN 68011477 Newcome William 1792 Historical View of the English Biblical Translations John Exshaw Newgass Edgar 1958 An outline of Anglo American Bible history London B T Batsford Norton David 2005 A Textual History of the King James Bible Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 77100 5 Norton David ed 2006 The Bible Penguin Classics ISBN 0 14 144151 8 Cross F L Livingstone E A eds 1974 Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Oxford University Press ISBN 9780192115454 Pearse Salem 1761 A Brief Account of the various Translations of the Bible into English The Second Part of the Celestial Diary London Robert Brown p 79 Prickett Stephen Carroll Robert P eds 2008 The Bible Authorized King James Version Oxford University Press USA ISBN 978 0 19 953594 1 Scrivener Frederick Henry Ambrose 1884 The Authorized Edition of the English Bible 1611 its subsequent reprints and modern representatives Cambridge Cambridge University Press Archived from the original on 2008 Smith William 1814 The reasonableness of setting forth the most worthy praise of Almighty God according to the usage of the primitive church New York T and J Swords OCLC 3512140 Story G M 1967 Lancelot Andrewes Sermons Oxford Oxford University Press Thomas Isaiah 1874 The history of printing in America with a biography of printers Vol I New York B Franklin Twells Leonard 1731 A critical examination of the late new text and version of the New Testament Part I London R Gosling Wallechinsky David Wallace Irving 1975 The People s Almanac Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 385 04186 7 White James R 2009 The King James Only Controversy Can You Trust Modern Translations Baker Books ISBN 978 0 7642 0605 4 Further reading Edit Chronological order of publication newest first Joalland Michael Isaac Newton Reads the King James Version The Marginal Notes and Reading Marks of a Natural Philosopher Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America vol 113 no 3 2019 297 339 Burke David G John F Kutsko and Philip H Towner eds The King James Version at 400 Assessing Its Genius as Bible Translation and Its Literary Influence Society of Biblical Literature 2013 553 pages scholars examine such topics as the KJV and 17th century religious lyric the KJV and the language of liturgy and the KJV in Christian Orthodox perspective Crystal David 2011 Begat The King James Bible and the English Language Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19969518 8 Hallihan C P 2010 Authorized Version A Wonderful and Unfinished History Trinitarian Bible Society ISBN 978 1 86228 049 6 Published to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the initial publication in 1611 of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible Keay Julia 2005 Alexander the Corrector the tormented genius who unwrote the Bible London Harper Perennial ISBN 0 00 713196 8 Ehrman Bart D 2005 Misquoting Jesus the story behind who changed the Bible and why San Francisco HarperSanFrancisco ISBN 0 06 073817 0 Nicolson Adam 2003 Power and Glory Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible London Harper Collins ISBN 0 00 710893 1 In US 2003 God s secretaries the making of the King James Bible London Harper Collins ISBN 0 06 018516 3 Paperback 2011 When God Spoke English The Making of the King James Bible London Harper ISBN 978 0 00 743100 7 McGrath Alister E 2002 In the beginning the story of the King James Bible and how it changed a nation a language and a culture New York Anchor Books ISBN 0 385 72216 8 The Diary Of Samuel Ward A Translator Of The 1611 King James Bible eds John Wilson Cowart and M M Knappen contains surviving pages of Samuel Ward s diary from 11 May 1595 to 1 July 1632 Ward Thomas 1903 Errata of the Protestant Bible i e mostly of the Authorized King James Version or The Truth of the English Translations Examined in a Treatise Showing Some of the Errors That Are to Be Found in the English Translations of the Sacred Scriptures Used by Protestants A new ed carefully rev and corr in which are add itions New York P J Kennedy and Sons N B A polemical Roman Catholic work first published in the late 17th century Collection of English Almanacs for the Years 1702 1835 1761 External links Edit Wikiquote has quotations related to King James Version Wikisource has original text related to this article Authorized King James Version Wikimedia Commons has media related to King James Bible The Holy Bible An Exact Reprint Page for Page of the Authorized Version Published in the Year MDCXI Oxford The University Press 1833 a scrupulous original spelling page for page and line for line reprint of the 1611 edition including all chapter headings marginalia and original italicization but with Roman type substituted for the black letter of the original cited in Footnote d above Complete pdf of the original book The Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version With the Text Revised by a Collation of Its Early and Other Principal Editions the Use of the Italic Type Made Uniform the Marginal References Remodelled and a Critical Introduction Prefixed Cambridge UK The University Press 1873 Complete pdf of the original book King James Version text of original 1611 Bible kingjamesbibleonline org Archived from the original on 27 April 2011 Retrieved 5 April 2011 Online searchable database of the original 1611 text including the Apocrypha and introductory text It also contains the 1769 standard edition Online gallery Sacred texts King James Bible British Library Archived from the original on 23 August 2007 Retrieved 27 September 2007 On line image of a page beginning of St John s gospel with a written description by the British Library The Holy Bible conteyning the Old Testament and the New Imprinted at London By Robert Barker 1611 Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text amp Imaging University of Pennsylvania Library Retrieved 27 September 2007 On line facsimile page images of the 1611 printing of the King James Bible He Bible variant King James Version facsimile of alternative 1611 edition She Bible Retrieved 31 August 2011 On line facsimile page images of the 1611 printing of the King James Bible Holy Bible online King James Version Works by King James Version at LibriVox public domain audiobooks Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title King James Version amp oldid 1150370657, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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