May 2, 1611

414 years ago today, the King James Bible was published for the first time in London, England. It was translated from the Majority Text (or Received Text), which was the text used by Bible believers for thousands of years.

The King James Version of 1611, also known as the Authorized Version of the Bible, “has been proven throughout history to be the greatest of all English translations.” The beautiful English prose contained in the King James Bible has had supreme influence in society, and is widely considered to be the greatest literary masterpiece known to man.

When King James the Sixth of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth the First of England after her death, many different translations of the Bible were in existence, including the Bishop’s Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. To settle various religious grievances, King James called the Hampton Court Conference in January of 1604. During the Conference, Dr. John Reynolds, a Puritan leader and Oxford scholar, “moved his Majesty, that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reigns of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the Original.” King James then replied, “I wish some special pains were taken for an uniform translation, which should be done by the best learned men in both Universities, then reviewed by the Bishops, presented to the Privy Council, lastly ratified by the Royal authority, to be read in the whole Church, and none other.”

The king commissioned a new English translation to be made by 54 revisers representing the Puritans and Traditionalists. Due to death and other circumstances, 47 scholars and theologians wound up working on it. They took into consideration: the Tyndale New Testament, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible. The great revision of the 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.

The process was a thorough one. These 47 men were organized into six Companies, two Companies at Cambridge, two Companies at Oxford and two Companies at Westminster. Each Company was given a portion of the scripture to translate. (Westminster was given Genesis – II Kings and Romans – Jude. Oxford was given Isaiah – Malachi, Matthew – Acts, and Revelation. Cambridge was given I Chronicles – Song of Solomon and the Apocrypha.)

Richard Bancroft came up with a set of rules that the translators were to follow. The process was guided by these rules. Rule #8 stated:

Every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand.

First, each one of the men from the company took a certain part. Then, privately, each individual member would go home and study and develop a proposed translation. Then they would get together as a Company and would review each copy. I’d give you my copy, and you’d give me yours, and we’d review and compare them until that Company of men came to the conclusion that “here is what we want to do.“

Bancroft’s Rule #9:

If any one Company hath dispatched any one book in this Manner [in other words, when they get through], they shall send it to the rest, to be considered seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point.

Next, each of the Companies (two at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster) would all go home and study. They would take the portion assigned to them and study it. Each man would take all these different versions, the Greek and the Hebrew, and then they would come together. For example, each man would say, “Here’s what I think Romans through Jude ought to look like.” Then they would all come together as a committee and compare what each one has done individually. In doing that they arrived at what the committee thought the translation ought to look like.

When these people finished with their section, they sent it to every other committee. Each of the committees reviewed what each of the other committees have done.

There are revisions, revisions, revisions, reviews, reviews, reviews. Everybody works independently and then everybody gets together, and they work together and hash out their differences. It is checked and checked again. The work isn’t done by just one or two guys. You’ve got a bunch of guys sitting there working – one looks at it, another looks at it, everybody looks at it until they feel they have it right.

Bancroft Rule #10:

If any Company, upon Review of the Book so sent, doubt or differ upon any Place, to send them Word thereof; note the Place and withal send the Reasons, to which if they Consent not, the Difference, then to be compounded at a General Meeting, which is to be of the chief Persons of each Company, at the end of the work.

The process is still not finished. Finally, from each company/committee two men were selected to represent their group. Two men from all 6 companies (12 men total) and form a General Revision Committee.

Basically what they are saying is, “Before we get through, we’re going to have one big meeting. Two men from each of these committees are going to bring their committee’s work to this General Revision Board. That General Revision Board is going to review and issue the final version.

In early 1610, the twelve-member critical Board of Review met at Stationer’s Hall in London. The work of this Committee of twelve men was the only time that anybody in this whole process ever got paid anything. None of these other men got paid for what they were doing. They only had the privilege of being involved in a tremendous undertaking. The men on the Revision Committee were paid for their work by those that published the translation.

Here is a poor drawing of the process:

The entire process was done openly and not in secret, as some want to say. The public even had a chance to be a part of the process if they were qualified. According to Bancroft’s rules:

Rule #11

When any Place of Special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters are to be directed, by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land for his Judgment of such a Place.

In other words, when they had something they were arguing about, and they couldn’t figure it out, but there was somebody over on the other side of the country who might have the answer, they were to go ask that guy to give them the answer and get his input. What Rule Number 11 did was to provide that specific help was to be sought for. “If you guys have an argument about a difficult passage, you should go find out if anybody who is not on the Committee knows.” This thing is not a closed group. Anybody in England can help, and you guys are supposed to go out and get them.

Rule #12 states:

Letters are to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them to this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many as being skillful in the Tongues; and having taken Pains in that kind to send this particular Observation to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge or Oxford.

If you knew something about these things, you weren’t supposed to keep it to yourself. The King put out a proclamation to be read in all the churches. He sent a letter to every preacher in England, and he saidbasically, “If you have anybody in your church who’s a good Bible translator, send him our way if he’s got some information and send it down here! “ In essence, the whole country was getting involved.

Published in 1611, the King James Bible spread quickly throughout Europe. Because of the wealth of resources devoted to the project, it was the most faithful and scholarly translation to date—not to mention the most accessible.

“Printing had already been invented, and made copies relatively cheap compared to hand-done copies,” says Carol Meyers, a professor of religious studies at Duke University. “The translation into English, the language of the land, made it accessible to all those people who could read English, and who could afford a printed Bible.”

Whereas before, the Bible had been the sole property of the Church, now more and more people could read it themselves. Not only that, but the language they read in the King James Bible was English, unlike anything they had read before. 400+ years later, and it is still in the hands of believers.

Sources: Textus Receptus Bibles (website), Britannica (website), Grace School of the Bible (Personal notes)

Friday Photo Flashback

I am a man of faith. I am not here to start a theological debate. I debated turning off the ability to comment on this post, but I didn’t. If you are a person of faith, too, you may enjoy a little history lesson.

Yesterday was Bring Your Bible Day. The idea is, that whether you were going to work or school, you have your Bible with you. I have my Bible in my cubby at work, so mine was already there. Coincidentally, today is another important biblical day.

On this day in 1535, the first complete English language Bible (that included both Old and New Testaments) was printed. The Photo Flashback is the title page from that Bible.

The Coverdale Bible, as it became known, was translated by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale. It is part of a line of Bibles referred to as the “Textus Receptus.” The phrase is Latin for the “Received Text.”

Here is a bit of history for you:

The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete English translation of the Bible to contain both the Old and New Testament and translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. The later editions (folio and quarto) published in 1539 were the first complete Bibles printed in England. The 1539 folio edition carried the royal license and was, therefore, the first officially approved Bible translation in English.

Tyndale never had the satisfaction of completing his English Bible; but during his imprisonment, he may have learned that a complete translation, based largely upon his own, had actually been produced. The credit for this achievement, the first complete printed English Bible, is due to Miles Coverdale (1488-1569), afterward bishop of Exeter (1551-1553).

The details of its production are obscure. Coverdale met Tyndale in Hamburg, Germany in 1529, and is said to have assisted him in the translation of the Pentateuch. His own work was done under the patronage of Oliver Cromwell, who was anxious for the publication of an English Bible; and it was no doubt forwarded by the action of Convocation, which, under Archbishop Cranmer’s leading, had petitioned in 1534 for the undertaking of such a work.

Coverdale’s Bible was probably printed by Froschover in Zurich, Switzerland and was published at the end of 1535, with a dedication to Henry VIII. By this time, the conditions were more favorable to a Protestant Bible than they had been in 1525. Henry had finally broken with the Pope and had committed himself to the principle of an English Bible. Coverdale’s work was accordingly tolerated by authority, and when the second edition of it appeared in 1537 (printed by an English printer, Nycolson of Southwark), it bore on its title-page the words, “Set forth with the King’s most gracious license.” In licensing Coverdale’s translation, King Henry probably did not know how far he was sanctioning the work of Tyndale, which he had previously condemned.

In the New Testament, in particular, Tyndale’s version is the basis of Coverdale’s, and to a somewhat less extent this is also the case in the Pentateuch and Jonah; but Coverdale revised the work of his predecessor with the help of the Zurich German Bible of Zwingli and others (1524-1529), a Latin version by Pagninus, the Vulgate, and Luther. In his preface, he explicitly disclaims originality as a translator, and there is no sign that he made any noticeable use of the Greek and Hebrew; but he used the available Latin, German, and English versions with judgment. In the parts of the Old Testament which Tyndale had not published he appears to have translated mainly from the Zurich Bible. [Coverdale’s Bible of 1535 was reprinted by Bagster, 1838.]

In one respect Coverdale’s Bible was groundbreaking, namely, in the arrangement of the books of the. It is to Tyndale’s example, no doubt, that the action of Coverdale is due. His Bible is divided into six parts — (1) Pentateuch; (2) Joshua — Esther; (3) Job — “Solomon’s Balettes” (i.e. Canticles); (4) Prophets; (5) “Apocrypha, the books and treatises which among the fathers of old are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the canon of the Hebrew”; (6) the New Testament. This represents the view generally taken by the Reformers, both in Germany and in England, and so far as concerns the English Bible, Coverdale’s example was decisive.

You can see more of the Coverdale Bible here:

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-coverdale-bible-1535/

One of the first classes I took in my Bible studies was a Manuscript Evidence class. Manuscript Evidence means you examine the manuscript for evidence about something. There is a line through history, down to the present time where God has preserved His Word. It looks like this:

HISTORY (After the Crucifixion)

100 AD	500-1000 AD	1000-1500 AD	1500-2000 AD
Original Text Written	Dark Ages	Dark Ages	Reformation

The Bible history and God’s preservation has a straight line flow through history:

The original text is written and collected;
The Bible is copied and sent out;
Bible Believers preach and teach from it.

This is called the Textus Receptus (TR), a Latin expression that is used around 1624 AD for this Greek Text, that goes back to 100 AD. TR means received text that is used commonly among the people. This text is written in Greek and most people do not speak Greek. Therefore in:

Syria there is a Syriac Bible Version made (150 AD)
Egypt there is a Coptic Bible Version made
Rome there is an Old Latin Bible Version made

This process has continued on throughout history whereby Bible versions were translated into the language of the various countries from the Greek Text, for the people.

Around 1522 AD Luther translates from the TR into German for the people he ministered to. After this came:

Tyndale 1525
Coverdale 1535
Matthews 1537
Great Bible 1539
Geneva Bible 1560
Bishop Bible 1568

After these, in 1611 you have the King James Bible. The various translations were gathered together from all the above versions and the final outcome was the King James Version.

My Manuscript Evidence class was a wealth of information and made my believe in God’s Word stronger.

It is hard to imagine the things that guys like Tyndale and Coverdale experienced as they worked. They wanted to get a Bible into the hands of anyone who wanted one. The quest to have a Bible written in the holders own language was very important to them. What did they get for their dedication? Torture. Ridicule. Prison. Death. What faith they must have had. I can only wish to have an ounce of that faith.

Thanks for reading such a deep post today.