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About 40% of the King James Bible was original with about 20% each coming from the Geneva, Tyndale and the Great Bible of Henry VIII. The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved. All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy.
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), 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 ...
- Overview
- Background
- Preparation and early editions
- Reputation since the early 20th century
King James Version (KJV), English translation of the Bible, published in 1611 under the auspices of King James I of England. The translation had a marked influence on English literary style and was generally accepted as the standard English Bible from the mid-17th to the early 20th century.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) succeeded in imposing a high degree of uniformity upon the Church of England. Protestantism was reinstated as the official religion of England after the short reign of Mary I (1553–58), who had attempted to restore Roman Catholicism in the country. In 1604, soon after James’s coronation as king of England,...
Given the perceived need for a new authorized translation, James was quick to appreciate the broader value of the proposal and at once made the project his own. By June 30, 1604, James had approved a list of 54 revisers, although extant records show that 47 scholars actually participated. They were organized into six companies, two each working separately at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge on sections of the Bible assigned to them. Richard Bancroft (1544–1610), archbishop of Canterbury, served as overseer and established doctrinal conventions for the translators. The new Bible was published in 1611.
Not since the Septuagint—the Greek-language version of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) produced between the 3rd and the 2nd centuries bce—had a translation of the Bible been undertaken under royal sponsorship as a cooperative venture on so grandiose a scale. An elaborate set of rules was contrived to curb individual proclivities and to ensure the translation’s scholarly and nonpartisan character. In contrast to earlier practice, the new version was to use vulgar forms of proper names (e.g., “Jonas” or “Jonah” for the Hebrew “Yonah”), in keeping with its aim to make the Scriptures popular and familiar. The translators used not only extant English-language translations, including the partial translation by William Tyndale (c. 1490–1536), but also Jewish commentaries to guide their work. The wealth of scholarly tools available to the translators made their final choice of rendering an exercise in originality and independent judgment. For this reason, the new version was more faithful to the original languages of the Bible and more scholarly than any of its predecessors. The impact of the original Hebrew upon the revisers was so pronounced that they seem to have made a conscious effort to imitate its rhythm and style in their translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The literary style of the English New Testament actually turned out to be superior to that of its Greek original.
In the early 20th century the King James Version fell into disfavour among many mainstream Protestant churches, which viewed it as antiquated. Beginning in the middle of the century, they increasingly turned to more-modern translations, such as the Revised Standard Version (1952), the New International Version (1978), and the New Revised Standard Version (1989). The King James Version, however, remained a popular source for the more famous Psalms and for the Gospels.
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English-speaking Roman Catholics used an authorized English Bible, the Douai-Reims (1609), which was produced from the Latin Vulgate by English Catholic exiles in France, who also worked from many of the same English sources used by translators of the King James Version. Yet among English Catholics the King James Version was widely accepted from the 18th century; moreover, when the Douai-Reims Bible was updated in the mid-18th century, the translator, Richard Challoner (1691–1781), a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, largely worked from the King James Version. Both the King James Version and the Douai-Reims Bible were finally supplanted in popularity by the Jerusalem Bible (1966).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dec 8, 2023 · The Athenaeum, no. No. 3148 (February 25, 1888): 243–45; Edwin Eliott Willoughby, The Making of the King James Bible: A Monograph with Comparisons from the Bishops Bible and the Manuscript Annotations of 1602, with an Original Leaf from the Great “She” Bible of 1611 (Los Angeles: Printed for Dawson’s Book Shop at The Plantin Press, 1956); Adam Nicolson, Power and Glory: Jacobean ...
1611 Publication of the King James Bible. A team of scholars produced an English Bible translation unsurpassed in linguistic beauty and longevity. “To the most high and mighty Prince James by ...
The King James Bible was read in every church throughout the country and the archaic language which was heard so regularly by so many imbedded itself in the nation’s consciousness and vernacular, as every day and familiar as the practice of Christian worship itself. The most striking characteristic of the translation is its simplicity.
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Jun 8, 2011 · In 2011 we celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication in 1611 of the King James Version of the Bible. It is by far the best-known of all Bible translations, still used worldwide. In 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference, the more puritan wing of the Church of England pressed King James I to reform various ecclesiastical ...
