The year 2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and to celebrate this ByFaith has produced some articles on the
history of the translation of God’s Word.
BC-1000AD
In around 1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.
Around 500-400 BC: Completion of all original Hebrew manuscripts which make up the 39 Books of the Old Testament.
200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain the 39 Old Testament Books and 14 Apocrypha Books.
1st Century AD: Completion of all original Greek manuscripts which make up the 27 Books of the New Testament.
315 AD: Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the Canon of Scripture.
382 AD: Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Manuscripts produced which contain All 80 Books (39 Old Testament + 14 Apocrypha + 27 New Testament).
500 AD: Scriptures have been translated into Over 500 Languages.
600 AD: Latin was the only language allowed for Scripture.
995 AD: Anglo-Saxon (Early roots of the English language) translations of the New Testament produced.
1384-1582
1384 AD: John Wycliffe is the first person to produce a manuscript copy of the Complete Bible; All 80 Books. It was written by hand!
1454-55 AD: Gutenberg invents the printing press; books may now be mass-produced instead of individually hand-written. The first book ever printed is Gutenberg’s Bible in Latin.
1516 AD: Erasmus Produces a Greek / Latin Parallel New Testament.
1522 AD: Martin Luther’s German New Testament.
1526 AD: William Tyndale’s New Testament; the first New Testament printed in the English Language. The Bishop of London burnt these
New Testaments in the 1526-30s on what is now the steps / entrance area of St Paul's Cathedral, London, England.
1535 AD: Myles Coverdale’s Bible; the first complete Bible printed in the English Language (80 Books: O/T and N'T. and Apocrypha).
1537 AD: Tyndale-Matthews Bible; the second complete Bible printed in English. Done by John “Thomas Matthew” Rogers (80 Books).
1539 AD: The “Great Bible” was printed; the first English language Bible authorized for public use (80 Books).
1560 AD: The Geneva Bible was printed; the first English language Bible to add numbered verses to each chapter (80 Books).
1568 AD: The Bishops Bible was printed; the Bible of which the King James was a revision (80 Books).
1609 AD: The Douay Old Testament is added to the Rheims New Testament (of 1582) making the first complete English Catholic Bible; translated from the Latin Vulgate (80 Books).
1611-2011
1611 AD: The King James Bible Printed (Authorised Version; AV otherwise known as King James Version; KJV); originally
with all 80 books. The Apocrypha was officially removed in 1885 leaving only 66 Books. *The exact month of publication is not known
as records were destroyed in a fire several hundred years ago, however the month of May has been suggested during the 400th
anniversary celebrations.
1782 AD: Robert Aitken’s Bible; the first English language Bible (AV or KJV) to be printed in America.
1791 AD: Isaac Collins and Isaiah Thomas respectively produce the first family Bible and first illustrated Bible printed in America. Both were King James Versions, with all 80 Books.
1808 AD: Jane Aitken’s Bible (Daughter of Robert Aitken); the first Bible to be printed by a woman.
1833 AD: Noah Webster’s Bible; after producing his famous dictionary, Webster printed his own revision of the King James Bible.
1841 AD: English Hexapla New Testament; an early textual comparison showing the Greek and six famous English translations in parallel columns.
1846 AD: The Illuminated Bible; the most lavishly illustrated Bible printed in America. A King James Version, with all 80 Books.
1885 AD: The “English Revised Version” Bible; the first major English revision of the KJV.
1901 AD: The “American Standard Version;” the first major American revision of the KJV.
*1910-11 AD: A few publishers issue 300th anniversary 1611 AV Bibles, some are facsimiles.
1971 AD: The “New American Standard Bible” (NASB) is Published as a “Modern and Accurate Word for Word English Translation” of the Bible.
1973 AD: The “New International Version” (NIV) is Published as a “Modern and Accurate Phrase for Phrase English Translation” of the Bible.
1982 AD: The “New King James Version” (NKJV) is Published as a “Modern English Version Maintaining the Original Style of the King James.”
2002 AD: The English Standard Version (ESV) is published as a translation to bridge the gap between the accuracy of the NASB and the readability of the NIV.
*2010-11 AD: A number of publishers issue 400th anniversary 1611 AV Bibles (though most omit the Apocrypha). Most use modern spelling whilsts other are facsimiles.
1st edition King James Version 1611 translation of John 3:16, “For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.”
*2011 AD: There are 6,912 known spoken languages of the world, 2,479 with some books of the Bible or the entire Bible completed; with
1,300 in progress and the remainder (3,133) needing translation work! This represents 300 million people without access to ANY
portion of the Holy Bible out of a world population of just under 7 billion.
English Bible History
John Wycliffe
The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in the 1380’s AD by John Wycliffe,
an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian. Wycliffe, (also spelled “Wycliff” and “Wyclif”), was well-known
throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed to be contrary
to the Bible. With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, and his assistant Purvey, and many
other faithful scribes, Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures.
They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe.
The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years
after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
John Hus
One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that people should be permitted
to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened
anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with Wycliffe’s
manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, “in 100 years,
God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.”
Almost exactly 100 years later, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses of Contention (a list of 95
issues of heretical theology and crimes of the Roman Catholic Church) onto the church door at Wittenberg. The prophecy
of Hus had come true! Martin Luther went on to be the first man to print the Bible in the German language.
"Foxe’s Book of Martyrs" records that in the same year, 1517, seven people were burned at the stake
by the Roman Catholic Church for the crime of teaching their children to say the Lord’s Prayer in English
rather than Latin!
Johann Gutenberg
Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1450s, and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin
language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany. Gutenberg’s Bibles were surprisingly beautiful, as each leaf
Gutenberg printed was later colourfully hand-illuminated. Born as “Johann Gensfleisch” (John Gooseflesh),
he preferred to be known as “Johann Gutenberg” (John Beautiful Mountain).
Ironically, though he had created what many believe to be the most important invention in history,
Gutenberg was a victim of unscrupulous business associates who took control of his business and left
him in poverty. Nevertheless, the invention of the movable-type printing press meant that Bibles and
books could finally be effectively produced in large quantities in a short period of time.
This was essential to the success of the Reformation.
Thomas Linacre
In the 1490’s another Oxford professor, and the personal physician to King Henry VII and VIII,
Thomas Linacre, decided to learn Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the
Latin Vulgate, he wrote in his diary, “Either this (the original Greek) is not the Gospel… or we are not
Christians.”
The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church
still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… though Latin was
not an original language of the Scriptures.
John Colet
In 1496, John Colet, another Oxford professor and the son of the Mayor of London, started reading
the New Testament in Greek and translating it into English for his students at Oxford, and later
for the public at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.
The people were so hungry to hear the Word of God in a language they could understand, that within six months there were 20,000 people packed in
the church and at least that many outside trying to get in! (Sadly, while the enormous and beautiful
Saint Paul’s Cathedral remains the main church in London today, as of 2003, typical Sunday morning
worship attendance is only around 200 people… and most of them are tourist).
Fortunately for Colet, he was a powerful man with friends in high places, so he amazingly managed to avoid execution.
Erasmus
In considering the experiences of Linacre and Colet, the great scholar Erasmus was so moved to
correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, that in 1516, with the help of printer John Froben, he published
a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh
rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from
a half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired.
This milestone was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium… and
the first ever to come off a printing press. The 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus further
focused attention on just how corrupt and inaccurate the Latin Vulgate had become, and how
important it was to go back and use the original Greek (New Testament) and original Hebrew
(Old Testament) languages to maintain accuracy… and to translate them faithfully into the
languages of the common people, whether that be English, German, or any other tongue.
No sympathy for this “illegal activity” was to be found from Rome… even as the words of Pope
Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was quite profitable to him" continued through
the years to infuriate the people of God.
William Tyndale (part 1)
William Tyndale was the Captain of the Army of Reformers, and was their spiritual leader.
Tyndale holds the distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language.
Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one
would think any one of them to be his native tongue.
He is frequently referred to as the “Architect of the English Language”, (even more so than William
Shakespeare) as so many of the phrases Tyndale coined are still in our language today.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther had a small head-start on Tyndale, as Luther declared his intolerance for the Roman
Church’s corruption on Halloween in 1517 (31st October), by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg
Church door. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521
that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German for the first time
from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and publish it in September of 1522.
Luther also published a German Pentateuch in 1523, and another edition of the German New Testament in 1529.
In the 1530s he would go on to publish the entire Bible in German.
William Tyndale (part 2)
William Tyndale wanted to use the same 1516 Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the New
Testament in English for the first time in history. Tyndale showed up on Luther's doorstep in Germany
in 1525, and by year's end had translated the New Testament into English. Tyndale had been forced to
flee England, because of the wide-spread rumour that his English New Testament project was underway,
causing inquisitors and bounty hunters to be constantly on Tyndale's trail to arrest him and prevent his project.
God foiled their plans, and in 1525-1526 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of
the scripture in the English language. Subsequent printings of the Tyndale New Testament in the 1530s
were often elaborately illustrated.
They were burned as soon as the Bishop of London could confiscate them, but copies trickled through and actually
ended up in the bedroom of King Henry VIII. The more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution,
the more fascinated the public at large became. The church declared it contained thousands of errors
as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy, while in fact, they burned them
because they could find no errors at all. One risked death by burning if caught in mere possession
of Tyndale’s forbidden books.
Having God’s Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English, would have
meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the Scriptures.
If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power
would crumble.
They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences (the forgiveness of sins)
or selling the release of loved ones from a church-manufactured “Purgatory.” People would begin
to challenge the church’s authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves.
The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the public’s
eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church held.
Salvation through faith, not works or donations, would be understood. The need for priests would
vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of church-canonized Saints and
Mary would be called into question. The availability of the Scriptures in English was the
biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church. Neither side would give up without a fight.
Today, there are only two known copies left of Tyndale’s 1525-26 First Edition. Any copies printed
prior to 1570 are extremely valuable. Tyndale's flight was an inspiration to freedom-loving Englishmen
who drew courage from the 11 years that he was hunted. Books and Bibles flowed into England in bales
of cotton and sacks of flour. Ironically, Tyndale’s biggest customer was the King’s men, who would
buy up every copy available to burn them… and Tyndale used their money to print even more!
In the end, Tyndale was caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he had befriended. Tyndale was
incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. Tyndale’s
last words were, “Oh Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” This prayer would be answered just
three years later in 1539, when King Henry VIII finally allowed, and even funded, the printing
of an English Bible known as the “Great Bible”. But before that could happen…
Myles Coverdale
Myles Coverdale and John “Thomas Matthew” Rogers had remained loyal disciples the last six years
of Tyndale's life, and they carried the English Bible project forward and even accelerated it.
Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 he printed the first complete Bible
in the English language, making use of Luther's German text and the Latin as sources.
Thus, the first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535, and is known as the Coverdale Bible.
John Rogers
John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537. It was, however, the first
English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. He printed it
under the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew”, (an assumed name that had actually been used by Tyndale
at one time) as a considerable part of this Bible was the translation of Tyndale, whose
writings had been condemned by the English authorities.
It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535 edition) and Coverdale’s
Bible and some of Roger’s own translation of the text. It remains known most commonly as the
Matthew-Tyndale Bible. It went through a nearly identical second-edition printing in 1549.
Thomas Cranmer
In 1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King
Henry VIII to publish the “Great Bible.” It became the first English Bible authorized for public use,
as it was distributed to every church, chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so
that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in plain English. It would seem that William Tyndale's
last wish had been granted...just three years after his martyrdom.
Cranmer's Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible due to its great size:
a large pulpit folio measuring over 14 inches tall. Seven editions of this version were printed
between April of 1539 and December of 1541.
King Henry VIII
It was not that King Henry VIII had a change of conscience regarding publishing the Bible in English.
His motives were more sinister… but the Lord sometimes uses the evil intentions of men to bring
about His glory. King Henry VIII had in fact, requested that the Pope permit him to divorce his
wife and marry his mistress. The Pope refused. King Henry responded by marrying his mistress
anyway, (later having his wife executed), and thumbing his nose at the Pope by renouncing
Roman Catholicism, taking England out from under Rome’s religious control, and declaring
himself as the reigning head of State to also be the new head of the Church.
This new branch of the Christian Church, neither Roman Catholic nor truly Protestant,
became known as the Anglican Church or the Church of England. King Henry acted essentially
as its “Pope”. His first act was to further defy the wishes of Rome by funding the printing
of the scriptures in English… the first legal English Bible… just for spite.
Queen Mary
The ebb and flow of freedom continued through the 1540s...and into the 1550s. After King Henry VIII,
King Edward VI took the throne, and after his death, the reign of Queen “Bloody” Mary was the
next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English. She was possessed in her quest to return
England to the Roman Church.
In 1555, John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers and Thomas Cranmer were both
burned at the stake. Mary went on to burn reformers at the stake by the hundreds for the "crime"
of being a Protestant. This era was known as the Marian Exile, and the refugees fled from England with little hope
of ever seeing their home or friends again.
John Foxe
In the 1550s, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees
and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in Geneva, led by
Myles Coverdale and John Foxe (publisher of the famous Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which is to this
day the only exhaustive reference work on the persecution and martyrdom of Early Christians and
Protestants from the first century up to the mid-16th century), as well as Thomas Sampson and
William Whittingham.
There, with the protection of the great theologian John Calvin (author of the most famous theological
book ever published, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion) and John Knox, the great Reformer
of the Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their
families while they continued in
John Calvin
The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560.
It became known as the Geneva Bible. Due to a passage in Genesis describing the clothing that
God fashioned for Adam and Eve upon expulsion from the Garden of Eden as "Breeches" (an antiquated
form of "Britches"), some people referred to the Geneva Bible as the Breeches Bible.
John Knox
The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, so that referencing specific
passages would be easier. Every chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references
so thorough and complete that the Geneva Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible".
William Shakespeare quotes hundreds of times in his plays from the Geneva translation of the Bible.
The Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice for over 100 years of English speaking Christians.
Between 1560 and 1644 at least 144 editions of this Bible were published.
Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that its translators were influenced much more
by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva Bible itself retains over 90% of William
Tyndale's original English translation. The Geneva in fact, remained more popular than the
King James Version until decades after its original release in 1611!
The Geneva holds the honor of being the first Bible taken to America, and the Bible of the Puritans
and Pilgrims. It is truly the “Bible of the Protestant Reformation.” Strangely, the famous Geneva
Bible has been out-of-print since 1644, so the only way to obtain one is to either purchase an
original printing of the Geneva Bible, or a less costly facsimile reproduction of the original 1560 Geneva Bible.
With the end of Queen Mary's bloody reign, the reformers could safely return to England. The Anglican
Church, now under Queen Elizabeth I, reluctantly tolerated the printing and distribution of Geneva
version Bibles in England. The marginal notes, which were vehemently against the institutional
Church of the day, did not rest well with the rulers of the day.
Another version, one with a less inflammatory tone was desired, and the copies of the Great Bible were
getting to be decades old. In 1568, a revision of the Great Bible known as the Bishop's Bible was
introduced. Despite 19 editions being printed between 1568 and 1606, this Bible, referred to as
the “rough draft of the King James Version”, never gained much of a foothold of popularity among the people.
The Geneva may have simply been too much to compete with.
By the 1580s, the Roman Catholic Church saw that it had lost the battle to suppress the will of God:
that His Holy Word be available in the English language. In 1582, the Church of Rome surrendered their
fight for "Latin only" and decided that if the Bible was to be available in English, they would at
least have an official Roman Catholic English translation. And so, using the corrupt and inaccurate
Latin Vulgate as the only source text, they went on to publish an English Bible with all the distortions
and corruptions that Erasmus had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier.
Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims
New Testament (also spelled Rhemes). The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609
at the College in the city of Douay (also spelled Doway & Douai). The combined product is commonly referred
to as the "Doway/Rheims" Version.
In 1589, Dr. William Fulke of Cambridge published the "Fulke's Refutation",
in which he printed in parallel columns the Bishops Version along side the Rheims Version,
attempting to show the error and distortion of the Roman Church's corrupt compromise of an
English version of the Bible.
King James I
With the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England.
The Protestant clergy (and Dissenters - idependant ministers) approached the new King in 1604 and announced their desire for a new translation
to replace the Bishop's Bible first printed in 1568. They knew that the Geneva Version had won the
hearts of the people because of its excellent scholarship, accuracy, and exhaustive commentary.
However, they did not want the controversial marginal notes (proclaiming the Pope an Anti-Christ, etc.)
Essentially, the leaders of the church desired a Bible for the people, with scriptural references only
for word clarification or cross-references.
This “translation to end all translations” (for a while at least) was the result of the combined effort
of about fifty scholars. They took into consideration: The Tyndale New Testament, The Coverdale Bible,
The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even the Rheims New Testament. The great
revision of the Bishop's Bible had begun. From 1605 to 1606 the scholars engaged in private research.
From 1607 to 1609 the work was assembled. In 1610 the work went to press, and in 1611 the first of the
huge (16 inch tall) pulpit folios known today as “The 1611 King James Bible” came off the printing press.
A typographical discrepancy in Ruth 3:15 rendered a pronoun "He" instead of "She" in that verse in
some printings. This caused some of the 1611 First Editions to be known by collectors as "He" Bibles,
and others as "She" Bibles. Starting just one year after the huge 1611 pulpit-size King James Bibles
were printed and chained to every church pulpit in England; printing then began on the earliest normal-size
printings of the King James Bible. These were produced so individuals could have their own personal copy
of the Bible.
John Bunyan
Anglican Church’s King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant Church’s
Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant Christian churches
today embrace the King James Bible exclusively as the “only” legitimate English language translation… yet
it is not even a Protestant translation! It was printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible,
by authorities who throughout most of history were hostile to Protestants… and killed them.
While many Protestants are quick to assign the full blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church,
it should be noted that even after England broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500s, the
Church of England (The Anglican Church) continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600s.
One famous example of this is John Bunyan, who while in prison for the crime of preaching the Gospel,
(12 years in total) wrote one of Christian history’s greatest books, Pilgrim’s Progress. Throughout the 1600s, as the
Puritans and the Pilgrims fled the religious persecution of England to cross the Atlantic and start
a new free nation in America, they took with them their precious Geneva Bible, and rejected the King’s
Bible. America was founded upon the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible.
Geneva and the 1611 Bible
Protestants today are largely unaware of their own history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible
(which is textually 95% the same as the King James Version, but 50 years older than the King James
Version, and not influenced by the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament that the King James
translators admittedly took into consideration). Nevertheless, the King James Bible turned
out to be an excellent and accurate translation, and it became the most printed book
in the history of the world, and the only book with one billion copies in print.
In fact, for over 250 years...until the appearance of the English Revised Version of 1881-1885...the
King James Version reigned without much of a rival. One little-known fact, is that for the past 200
years, all King James Bibles published in America are actually the 1769 Baskerville spelling and
wording revision of the 1611. The original “1611” preface is deceivingly included by the publishers,
and no mention of the fact that it is really the 1769 version is to found, because that might hurt
sales.
The only way to obtain a true, unaltered, 1611 version is to either purchase an original pre-1769
printing of the King James Bible, or a less costly facsimile reproduction of the original 1611 King
James Bible.
John Eliot
Although the first Bible printed in America was done in the native Algonquin Indian Language
by John Eliot in 1663; the first English language Bible to be printed in America by Robert Aitken
in 1782 was a King James Version. Robert Aitken’s 1782 Bible was also the only Bible ever
authorized by the United States Congress. He was commended by President George Washington
for providing Americans with Bibles during the embargo of imported English goods due to
the Revolutionary War.
In 1808, Robert’s daughter, Jane Aitken, would become the first woman to ever print a Bible… and
to do so in America, of course. In 1791, Isaac Collins vastly improved upon the quality and
size of the typesetting of American Bibles and produced the first "Family Bible" printed
in America... also a King James Version. Also in 1791, Isaiah Thomas published the first
Illustrated Bible printed in America...in the King James Version.
For more information
on the earliest Bibles printed in America from the 1600s through the early 1800s,
you may wish to review www.greatsite.com for more detailed discussion of The Bibles of Colonial
America.
Noah Webster and Other Bibles
While Noah Webster, just a few years after producing his famous Dictionary of the English Language,
would produce his own modern translation of the English Bible in 1833; the public remained too loyal
to the King James Version for Webster’s version to have much impact.
It was not really until the 1880s that England’s own planned replacement for their King James Bible,
the English Revised Version (E.R.V.) would become the first English language Bible to gain popular
acceptance as a post-King James Version modern-English Bible. The widespread popularity of this
modern-English translation brought with it another curious characteristic: the absence of the 14 Apocryphal books.
Up until the 1880s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66!
The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha”
were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible,
the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their
removal in the 1880s! The original 1611 King James contained the Apocrypha, and King
James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha with heavy
fines and a year in jail. Only for the last 130+ years has the Protestant Church rejected
these books, and removed them from their Bibles.
Other Bible Translations
The Americans responded to England’s E.R.V. Bible by publishing the nearly-identical American
Standard Version (A.S.V.) in 1901. It was also widely-accepted and embraced by churches throughout
America for many decades as the leading modern-English version of the Bible.
In the 1971, it was again revised and called New American Standard Version Bible (often referred
to as the N.A.S.V. or N.A.S.B. or N.A.S.). This New American Standard Bible is considered by nearly
all evangelical Christian scholars and translators today, to be the most accurate, word-for-word
translation of the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures into the modern English language that has
ever been produced. It remains the most popular version among theologians, professors, scholars,
and seminary students today.
Some, however, have taken issue with it because it is so direct and literal a translation
(focused on accuracy), that it does not flow as easily in conversational English.
For this reason, in 1973, the New International Version (N.I.V.) was produced, which was offered
as a “dynamic equivalent” translation into modern English. The N.I.V. was designed not for
“word-for-word” accuracy, but rather, for “phrase-for-phrase” accuracy, and ease of reading
even at a Junior High-School reading level. It was meant to appeal to a broader (and in some
instances less-educated) cross-section of the general public.
Critics of the N.I.V. often jokingly refer to it as the “Nearly Inspired Version”, but that has
not stopped it from becoming the best-selling modern-English translation of the Bible ever published.
Modern Bible Translations
In 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers produced what they called the “New King James Version.” Their original intent
was to keep the basic wording of the King James to appeal to King James Version loyalists, while only
changing the most obscure words and the Elizabethan “thee, thy, thou” pronouns.
This was an interesting marketing ploy, however, upon discovering that this was not enough of a
change for them to be able to legally copyright the result, they had to make more significant
revisions, which defeated their purpose in the first place. It was never taken seriously by scholars,
but it has enjoyed some degree of public acceptance, simply because of its clever “New King James
Version” marketing name.
In 2002, a major attempt was made to bridge the gap between the simple readability of the N.I.V.,
and the extremely precise accuracy of the N.A.S.B. This translation is called the English Standard
Version (E.S.V.) and is rapidly gaining popularity for its readability and accuracy. The 21st
Century will certainly continue to bring new translations of God’s Word in the modern English language.
Which Translation
As Christians, we must be very careful to make intelligent and informed decisions about what translations
of the Bible we choose to read. On the liberal extreme, we have people who would give us heretical new
translations that attempt to change God’s Word to make it politically correct. One example of this, which
has made headlines recently, is the Today’s New International Version (T.N.I.V.) which seeks to remove
all gender-specific references in the Bible whenever possible!
Not all new translations are good… and some are very bad. But equally dangerous, is the other extreme… of
blindly rejecting ANY English translation that was produced in the four centuries that have come after
the 1611 King James. We must remember that the main purpose of the Protestant Reformation was to
get the Bible out of the chains of being trapped in an ancient language that few could understand,
and into the modern, spoken, conversational language of the present day.
William Tyndale fought and died for the right to print the Bible in the common, spoken, modern
English tongue of his day… as he boldly told one official who criticized his efforts,
“If God spare my life, I will see to it that the boy who drives the ploughshare knows more
of the scripture than you, Sir!”
Will we now go backwards, and seek to imprison God’s Word once again exclusively in ancient
translations? Clearly it is not God’s will that we over-react to SOME of the bad modern translations,
by rejecting ALL new translations and “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
The Word of God is unchanging from generation to generation, but language is a dynamic and
ever-changing form of communication. We therefore have a responsibility before God as
Christians to make sure that each generation has a modern translation that they can easily
understand, yet that does not sacrifice accuracy in any way.
Let’s be ever mindful that we are not called to worship the Bible. That is called idolatry.
We are called to worship the God who gave us the Bible, and who preserved it through the centuries
of people who sought to destroy it. We are also called to preserve the ancient, original English
translations of the Bible… and that is what www.greatsite.com aims to do.
Textual Comparisons from 1611-995
Consider the following textual comparison of the earliest English translations of John 3:16,
as shown in the English Hexapla Parallel New Testament:
1st Edition King James (1611): “For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.”
Rheims (1582): “For so God loued the vvorld, that he gaue his only-begotten sonne: that euery one that beleeueth in him, perish not, but may haue life euerlasting.”
Geneva (1560): “For God so loueth the world, that he hath geuen his only begotten Sonne: that none that beleue in him, should peryshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe.”
Great Bible (1539): “For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in him, shulde not perisshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe.”
Tyndale (1534): “For God so loveth the worlde, that he hath geven his only sonne, that none that beleve in him, shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe.”
Wycliff (1380): “for god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif.”
Anglo-Saxon Proto-English Manuscripts (995 AD): “God lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan sunu, dat nan ne forweorde de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif.”
This English Bible History Article & Timeline is ©2002 by author & editor: John L. Jeffcoat III.
special thanks are also given to Dr. Craig H. Lampe for his valuable contributions to the text.
Used by permission from www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/index.html - www.greatsite.com.
*Additonal information added by the ByFaith Team, www.ByFaith.co.uk.
Recommended Links:
The Evolving English Language and Bible Translation
The Bible - its History, Overview and Application
A Brief Overview of each Book of the Bible
Leviticus: The Mosaic Law. Sacrifices, the Feasts and Festivals; Jesus and the Law
In Search of the Exodus
Bible and Church Sitemap
Britain Sitemap
The History / Origins of the English Language
The History of England / Britain
Christianity and the Development of Democracy and Human Rights (1215 - present day Britain)
The Bicentenary of the End of the Slave Trade 1807-2007 - William Wilberforce - A Christian Warrior for Justice