king james bible

Despite legal prohibitions against translating the Latin Bible into vernacular languages, the followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 15th century. These translations, usually dated to 1409, were banned due to their association with the Lollards.^[8] The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but was circulated widely in manuscript form. Often these manuscript Bibles were imprinted with a date from before 1409 so as to avoid the legal ban.

In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament.^[9] Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing Biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament.^[10] Despite some controversial translation choices, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.^[11] With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorized version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII.^[12] When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she sought to return the English Church to the Roman Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country,^[13] some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.^[14]

William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English in 1525.

These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible.^[15] This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages.^[16] Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible became painfully apparent.^[17] In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible - a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.^[18] While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age - in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds.^[19] Accordingly, Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version - small editions were available at a relatively low cost. At the same time, there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay-Rheims New Testament of 1582, undertaken by exiled Roman Catholics. This translation, though still derived from Tyndale, claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate.^[20]

In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English.^[21] Two years later, he acceded to the throne of England as King James I of England.