THE HISTORY OF THE KING JAMES VERSION

The Authorized King James Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible conceived in 1604 and brought to fruition in 1611 by the Church of England. Printed by the King’s Printer, Robert Barker, the first edition included schedules unique to the Church of England; for example, a lectionary for morning and evening prayer. The first “authorized version” was the Great Bible commissioned by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII. In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans, a faction within the Church of England.

The king gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the Episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus series of the Greek texts. The Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek Septuagint (LXX), except for 2 Esdras, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate.

While the Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops’ Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England, it was apparently (unlike the Great Bible) never specifically “authorized”, although it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. However, the King’s Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops’ Bible; so necessarily the Authorized Version supplanted it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England. In the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible - the Epistle and Gospel readings - and as such was “authorized” by Act of Parliament. In the United States, the Authorized Versions are known as King James Bibles. The earliest appearance in print of the phrase “authorized version”, to mean this particular version of the bible, was published in 1824. The phrase ‘King James version’ first appeared in print in 1884.