Four hundred years ago, on May 5^th, 1611, Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majestie, James I of England and VI of Scotland, published a volume with this title:  “The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament, and the New, Newly Translated out of the Original tongues & with former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his Majestie’s speciall Commandement.  Appointed to be read in Churches.”

In the United Kingdom, it came to be known (inaccurately) as the Authorised Version; in North America (on the strength of its florid dedication to him) as the King James Bible.  It was not thefirst important translation of the Bible into English, and in the last hundred years there has been an ever expanding number of alternatives, but its influence remains enormous. More than any other, it is the English Bible – and those who care about the Bible, about English, and about the Bible in English, must care about it also.

Translation of Scripture into the vernacular was not unknown in the Middle Ages, but in 15^th century England draconian legislation had made the possession, much less the translation or publication of the Bible into the vernacular, a criminal offence with severe penalties. The climate of fear this legislation engendered meant that more than a century later, when an English priest, William Tyndale, inspired by the example of Martin Luther, began the translation of the New Testament into English (first published in 1526 with a number of revisions to follow), he did so in exile, and in hiding. Venomously vilified by the not-always-saintly Thomas More, Tyndale eventually paid for his daring with his life, being strangled and burnt at the stake in Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6^th, 1536. Ironically, More had been beheaded a year before.

Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament was completed after his death by Miles Coverdale, and became the basis of the first official English Bible, the Great Bible of 1539, re-issued with an important preface by Thomas Cranmer in 1540. The Great Bible lives on the Prayer Book psalter (based on Coverdale’s work) and in the Comfortable Words. In the reign of Elizabeth I, Tyndale’s translation was the basis of yet further revisions: one unofficial (the successful and popular Geneva Bible of 1560), and the official (the unsuccessful and unpopular Bishops’ Bible of 1568).  The Roman Catholic Church published its own belated and highly Latinate English translation in 1582, subsequently known as the Douai-Rheims Version.

It was on the basis of these earlier translations that the 1611 translators worked.  Consequently, the excellence of the King James Version – its general clarity and accuracy; its rhythm, diction, and cadence, so exquisite and so direct -  must very often be ascribed to William Tyndale, together with refinements of his successors.  Yet it took good taste and sound learning to recognize and retain this excellence, and to contribute their own refinements.  There are times when they stumbled. Anglican snobbery prevented them from making better use of the Geneva Bible, whose useful annotations were abandoned. Some passages are unnecessarily opaque. Yet such imperfections only compel us to render thanks to the providence for a translation worthy of its reputation.

The work of the translators of 1611 is marked by two decisions:  a preference for a literal rendering over paraphrase, and for the archaic over the idiomatic. (Thus the retention of the second person singular and intimate of “thou, thee, and thy”, which was already falling out of use among English-speakers of the time.)   Especially when read aloud in the Church’s liturgy – the very purpose for which it was made – this combination of the literal and the archaizing expresses the majesty of the word of God written.   Notoriously, majesty is the quality missing from the spate of new translations in the late 20^th and early 21^st century. Though some of these are not without some merits, too often intelligibility has been sought at the expense of accuracy and felicity of expression, in prose of bland and inoffensive efficiency, and the result is a sad diminishment of the Bible in English. The King James Version is often challenging, sometimes obscure:  but it is almost never flat.  Its words have the strength to carry Scripture’s depth of meaning and weight of conviction.  If they are read audibly, with under-standing, and without rushing (ahem) the listener knows he has heard the word of God.

For further reading:

David Daniell, The Bible in English (Yale, 2003);

David C. Burke, ed, Translation that openeth the window:  reflections on the history and legacy of the King James Bible (Atlanta, 2009);

Adam Nicolson:  God’s Secretaries:  the making of the King James Bible (New York, 2003).

Tyndale’s translations of the New Testament and of the Old have been edited by David Daniell. Facsimile editions of the 1560 and 1599 Geneva Bible are also in print.