The Text of the King James Version

The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of the originall tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised by his Majesties speciall comandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. London: Robert Barker, 1611. (00037)

The text created by the translators in 1611 has enjoyed four centuries of near-universal praise, despite or perhaps because of the fact that its language has become increasingly archaic. Numerous familiar phrases come from this Bible, and its vocabulary and syntax profoundly shaped English literature. The poetry of the King James version speaks for itself: displayed is the text of the 23^rd Psalm.

The King James version remained the unchallenged English translation throughout the following three centuries; it underwent its first serious revisions and linguistic updating only in the later nineteenth century. Today there are countless English Bible versions, but virtually all owe something to the King James version. It provided the source text for John Eliot’s “Indian Bible” of 1663, a translation into the indigenous Massachuset language that was the first Bible printed in the Americas. The first English Bible printed in the United States, Robert Aitken’s Philadelphia edition of 1782, was a King James Bible. And when John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament for his Methodist followers in 1755, he naturally based his work on the King James version.

_{The Thomas J. Harrison Bible Collection.}