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The King James (Authorized) Version
Because of changing conditions, another official revision of the Protestant Bible in English was needed. The reign of Queen Elizabeth had succeeded in imposing a high degree of uniformity upon the church. However, the failure of the Bishops’ Bible to supplant its Geneva rival made for a discordant note in the quest for unity.
A conference of churchmen in 1604 became noteworthy for its request that the English Bible be revised because existing translations “were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original.” King James I was quick to appreciate the broader value of the proposal and at once made the project his own.
By June 30, 1604, King 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. The Bible was finally published in 1611.
Not since the Septuagint 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 its scholarly and nonpartisan character. In contrast to earlier practice, the new version was to preserve vulgarly used forms of proper names, in keeping with its aim to make the Scriptures popular and familiar.
The impact of Jewish sources upon the King James Version is one of its noteworthy features. 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 Hebrew upon the revisers was so pronounced that they seem to have made a conscious effort to imitate its rhythm and style in the Old Testament. The English of the New Testament actually turned out to be superior to its Greek original.
Two editions were actually printed in 1611, later distinguished as the “He” and “She” Bibles because of the variant readings “he” and “she” in the final clause of Ruth 3:15—“and he went into the city.” Both printings contained errors. Some errors in subsequent editions have become famous: the so-called Exodus 20:14—“Thou shalt commit adultery”—for which the printers were fined £300, and the “Vinegar Bible” (1717) stems from a misprinting of “vineyard” in the heading of Luke 20.
By the 18th century the King James Version had supplanted the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible in popularity and use. Even before the 20th century it was regarded as a masterpiece of English-language literature. By the late 20th century it had become the favoured translation of English-speaking Christian fundamentalists, some of whom regarded it as divinely inspired.
The remarkable and total victory of the King James Version could not entirely obscure those inherent weaknesses that were independent of its typographical errors. The manner of its execution had resulted in a certain unevenness and lack of consistency. Because the translators’ understanding of the Hebrew tense system was often limited, their version contains inaccurate and infelicitous renderings. In particular, the Greek text of the New Testament that they used as their base was a poor one. The great early Greek codices were not then known or available, and the Hellenistic papyri which were to shed light on the common Greek dialect had not yet been discovered.
A committee established by the Convocation of Canterbury in February 1870 reported favourably three months later on the idea of revising the King James Version; two companies were formed, one each for the Old and New Testaments. A novel development was the inclusion of scholars representative of the major Christian traditions, except Roman Catholics (who declined the invitation to participate). Another innovation was the formation of parallel companies in the United States, to whom the work of the British scholars was submitted and who in turn sent back their reactions. The instructions to the committees made clear that only a revision, not a new translation, was contemplated.
The New Testament was published in Britain on May 17, 1881, and three days later in the United States, after 11 years of labour. Over 30,000 changes were made, of which more than 5,000 represent differences between the Greek text used for the Revised Version and that used as the basis of the King James Version. Most of the other changes were made in the interest of consistency or modernization.
The publication of the Old Testament in 1885 stirred far less excitement, partly because it was less well known than the New Testament and partly because fewer changes were involved. The poetic and prophetic books, especially Job, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah, benefited greatly.
The revision of the Apocrypha, not originally contemplated, came to be included only because of copyright arrangements made with the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge and was first published in 1895.
According to the original agreement between the British and American scholars who worked on the Revised Version, the preferred readings and renderings of the American revisers that their British counterparts had declined to accept were published in an appendix to the Revised Version. In 1900 the American edition of the New Testament, which incorporated the American scholars’ preferences into the body of the text, was produced. A year later the Old Testament was added but not the Apocrypha. The alterations covered a large number of obsolete words and expressions and replaced Anglicisms with the diction then in vogue in the United States.