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(Reader Ray Ruenes offered this background on the KJV Bible. Thanks Ray.)

I just wanted to shore up your understanding of this issue. The King James Bible, also known as the Authorized Version, might not have been the very first Bible published in English, but it was linked to the earlier and more obscure versions, and was so widespread that many scholars, including non-Christians, attribute the massive increase in English literacy to its distribution, just as the Reformation also permitted Scripture to be translated into the vernacular of non-English speakers, who were thus encouraged to learn how to read the languages they spoke.

A section in a secular textbook for my college British Literature class is of particular relevance to this discussion. I hope you enjoy it! -Ray

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From The Norton Anthology: English Literature, sixth edition, volume 1, copyright 1993 (pardon the non-MLA documentation, I'm lazy--Ramon)

TRANSLATING THE BIBLE

The Reformation made it imperative to read the Bible for oneself; hence translating the Bible from its Greek and Hebrew originals into the vernacular was a matter of the first importance. William Tyndale began an English translation in 1523, but he had to do it surreptitiously, outside the country, and he finally suffered martyrdom for his efforts. In 1530 a royal proclamation condemned Tyndale's translation and all other versions in the vernacular. In 1535 Miles Coverdale published, in Zurich, the first complete Bible in English. But by this time Henry VIII had broken with Rome and the official attitude was changing. The Geneva Bible (1560) was the work of Protestant refugees who fled to the Continent int he reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. This was the first Bible to divide the cahpters into verses in the modern manner, and the first English Bible to be printed in Roman type rather than the old black letter or Gothic type. It was handy in size and, in many instances, more accurate than its predecessors, and the marginal commentary was strongly Calvinist. The Bishops' Bible (1568) was an attempt on the part of the Elizabethan church to counter the extreme Protestantism of the Geneva Bible. The bishops who sponsored it directed that their Bible be the official one used in churches, but the people continued to read the Geneva Bible at home, and its influence remained very great throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. A Catholic translation into English, based on the Latin Vulgate, was a belated concession to the demand for the scriptures in the vernacular. It was published by Enlgish Catholic refugees abroad, the New Testament at Rheims in 1582 and the Old Testament in Douai in 1609-10.

King James did not like the popular Geneva Bible (some of its commentary was quite critical of kings). As part of the religious settlement that took place early in his reign, he authorized a distinguished group of forty-seven translators to make a new version in English. The resulting work, which owes more to Tyndale than to any other predecessor, has been called "the noblest monument of English prose."

Rev. 9.26.01