King James Bible (1611): The Authorized Version's Origins

The King James Bible, also called the Authorized Version, is the English translation of the Bible commissioned by James I in 1604 and first printed in London in 1611. Produced by teams of scholars at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge, it became the standard Bible of English-speaking Protestants for about three hundred years. Its rhythms and phrases left a deeper mark on the English language than almost any other book.

Background: rival English Bibles

When James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, through the Union of the Crowns, he inherited a church that used more than one Bible. English translation had begun in earnest with William Tyndale, whose New Testament was printed in 1526 and who was executed for heresy near Brussels in 1536. His work fed into the Great Bible of 1539, authorised under Henry VIII after the English Reformation.

Under Elizabeth I two versions competed. The Geneva Bible of 1560, made by English Protestant exiles, was cheap, readable and hugely popular in homes. Its marginal notes, however, had a strongly Calvinist tone, and some could be read as questioning the authority of kings. The official Bishops’ Bible of 1568 was read in churches but was never much loved.

James disliked the Geneva notes. He objected, for example, to a note approving the Hebrew midwives’ disobedience to Pharaoh, and to one suggesting that King Asa should have had his mother executed rather than merely deposed. A Bible without such commentary suited his idea of a united church under royal authority.

The Hampton Court Conference

In January 1604 James met bishops and Puritan clergy at the Hampton Court Conference to discuss church reform. Most Puritan requests were rejected, but John Rainolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, proposed a new translation of the Bible. The king took up the idea with enthusiasm.

Responsibility for organising the work was given to Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London and from late 1604 Archbishop of Canterbury. In July 1604 James wrote that he had appointed 54 translators, though the number who actually took part is usually given as about 47.

How the translators worked

Bancroft issued a set of fifteen rules. The translators were to revise the Bishops’ Bible, altering it only as far as the original texts required. Traditional church words were to be kept, so “church” rather than the Protestant “congregation”. Marginal notes were allowed only to explain Hebrew or Greek words or to give cross-references, not to argue doctrine.

The scholars were divided into six companies, each given a section of the Bible:

• First Westminster Company, led by Lancelot Andrewes: Genesis to 2 Kings.
• First Cambridge Company, led by Edward Lively: 1 Chronicles to the Song of Songs.
• First Oxford Company, led by John Harding: Isaiah to Malachi.
• Second Oxford Company, led by Thomas Ravis: the Gospels, Acts and Revelation.
• Second Westminster Company, led by William Barlow: the New Testament letters.
• Second Cambridge Company, led by John Duport: the Apocrypha.

Each translator worked on a passage, then the company compared drafts, and finished books were sent to the other companies for comment. The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic Masoretic text, and the New Testament from the printed Greek texts of the time, later known as the Textus Receptus. The translators also consulted the Latin Vulgate, earlier English Bibles and modern versions in other languages.

In 1610 a smaller committee met for about nine months at Stationers’ Hall in London to review the whole text. Notes taken by one member, John Bois, survive and give a rare glimpse of the scholars debating single words. Miles Smith and Thomas Bilson made final revisions, and Smith wrote the long preface, “The Translators to the Reader”.

The translators were among the best scholars in England. Most were Church of England clergymen and fellows or former fellows of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, and many were expert in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic and other ancient languages. They received no salary for the work; instead, Bancroft asked bishops to reward them with church posts as these fell vacant.

Lancelot Andrewes, later Bishop of Winchester, was the most celebrated preacher of his day and was reputed to read many languages. John Rainolds, who had proposed the translation, worked with the Oxford company translating the prophets until his death in 1607. John Bois of Cambridge was said to have read the Hebrew Bible as a small child. Others are now little known, and a few died before the work was finished.

The preface explains their approach. The translators did not claim to start afresh but aimed “to make a good one better”, improving on earlier versions. They also defended using different English words for the same original term, a deliberate choice that adds variety and richness to the text, though it makes it less consistent than a modern study translation.

Publication in 1611

The new Bible was printed in 1611 by Robert Barker, the King’s Printer, as a large folio meant for reading aloud in church. The exact date of publication is not recorded. It opened with a dedication to James and contained the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and the New Testament.

The first editions contained printing errors. The best known gives Ruth 3:15 as “he went into the city” in one issue and “she went into the city” in another, which is why collectors speak of the “He Bible” and the “She Bible”. Later printings added their own mistakes; the “Wicked Bible” of 1631 omitted the word “not” from the commandment against adultery, and its printers were heavily fined.

Despite its later name, there is no record that the version was ever formally authorised by king, Parliament or Church. Its title page states only that it was “appointed to be read in Churches”. In practice it replaced the Bishops’ Bible in services fairly quickly.

Reception and slow success

Success at home took longer. Many readers stayed loyal to the Geneva Bible, which continued to be printed into the 1640s and was the Bible of Shakespeare and many early colonists. Some scholars criticised the new version; the Hebraist Hugh Broughton, left off the translation teams, attacked it bitterly.

Over the following decades, helped by the end of Geneva printing and by royal and church backing, the King James Version became the only English Bible most people knew. It travelled with settlers to North America and later across the British Empire, and it was the basis for countless translations, hymns and sermons.

The text itself kept changing in small ways. Editors at Cambridge in 1762 and at Oxford in 1769, the latter under Benjamin Blayney, standardised spelling, punctuation and italics. Most King James Bibles printed today follow Blayney’s text rather than the exact words of 1611. From the nineteenth century many editions also left out the Apocrypha.

Influence on the English language

The translators deliberately kept older, dignified forms such as “thee” and “thou” and the “-eth” endings of verbs, which already sounded slightly old-fashioned in 1611. Combined with the plain vocabulary they inherited from Tyndale, the result had a rhythm well suited to being read aloud.

Many everyday English expressions are found in the King James Version, including “the salt of the earth”, “the powers that be”, “a labour of love”, “a law unto themselves” and “the skin of my teeth”. The linguist David Crystal counted 257 idioms in modern English that come from or were popularised by it. Many of these phrases first appeared in earlier versions, but the King James Bible gave them lasting currency.

Its influence on literature is also wide. Writers from John Bunyan and John Milton to Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. drew on its language, whether they were religious believers or not.

Myths and facts

Myth: King James wrote or translated it. James commissioned the work and approved its rules, but he took no part in the translation itself.

Myth: It was translated from scratch. The translators revised existing English versions. Studies of the text suggest that roughly three-quarters or more of the New Testament wording comes from Tyndale.

Myth: It is the original, unchanged 1611 text. Modern printings follow the 1769 revision, with thousands of small changes of spelling and punctuation.

Myth: Shakespeare secretly helped translate it. There is no evidence for this popular legend, often linked to Psalm 46.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1526: William Tyndale’s English New Testament is printed at Worms.
• 1560: The Geneva Bible is published by English exiles.
• 1568: The Bishops’ Bible becomes the official church Bible.
• 1604, January: John Rainolds proposes a new translation at the Hampton Court Conference.
• 1604, July: James I announces the appointment of the translators.
• 1610: The general review committee meets at Stationers’ Hall, London.
• 1611: Robert Barker prints the first edition.
• 1631: The “Wicked Bible” misprint leads to heavy fines for the king’s printers.
• 1769: Benjamin Blayney’s Oxford edition sets the standard modern text.
• 1881–1885: The Revised Version, the first official revision, is published.

Why it matters

The King James Bible was a work of committee scholarship that became one of the most influential books in the English language. For three centuries it shaped worship, literature, oratory and everyday speech wherever English was spoken, and phrases from it remain part of the language today.