King James Version of the Bible

:This page is about the version of the Bible; for the Harvey Danger album, see King James Version (album).

Subsequent history

While the King James Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version of the Church of England, it apparently was never specifically approved to do so. It nevertheless began to replace earlier editions in the Church of England.

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Its acceptance by the general public took longer. The Geneva Bible continued to be quite popular, and continued to be reprinted well into the period of the English Civil War, in which soldiers of the New Model Army were issued Genevan New Testaments called "The Soldiers' Bible". One early printing of the King James Bible combines the King James translation text with the Genevan marginal notes. After the English Restoration, however, the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect, and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era. The King James Bible then became the only current version circulated among English speaking people as familiarity and stylistic merits won it the respect of the populace.

Related Topics:
English Civil War - New Model Army - English Restoration - Puritan

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Current printings of the King James Bible differ from the original in several ways.

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Difference in the contents

The original printing of the King James Version included the "Apocrypha", so named in the text. This section includes the "deuterocanonical books" accepted as canonical by Roman Catholicism, but no longer considered Scripture under the Thirty-Nine Articles, the doctrinal confession of the Church of England. This section also includes other non-canonical texts from the Vulgate's appendix. This includes the Prayer of Manasseh and First Book of Esdras, accepted as canon by Eastern Orthodox Christianity but not by Roman Catholics or Protestants; and the apocalyptic Second Book of Esdras, accepted by the Ethiopian Orthodox 81-book canon. These texts are printed separately, between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. The Septuagint's emendations to the Book of Esther and the Book of Daniel (The Prayer of Azariah, Bel and the Dragon, Susanna) are included here, rather than added to the texts of those books. From approximately 1769, many editions have omitted this section, and the most common contemporary editions rarely include them.

Related Topics:
Apocrypha - Deuterocanonical books - Roman Catholicism - Thirty-Nine Articles - Vulgate - Prayer of Manasseh - First Book of Esdras - Eastern Orthodox Christianity - Apocalyptic - Second Book of Esdras - Ethiopian Orthodox - Book of Esther - Book of Daniel - The Prayer of Azariah - Bel and the Dragon - Susanna - 1769

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The original printing also included a number of variant readings and alternative translations of some passages; most current printings omit these. (One American edition that does still print these notes is the Cornerstone UltraThin Reference Bible, published by Broadman and Holman.) The original printing also included some marginal references to indicate where one passage of Scripture quoted or directly related to another. Most current printings omit these.

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Prefatory material

The original printing contained two prefatory texts; the first was a rather fulsome Epistle Dedicatory to "the most high and mighty Prince" King James. Many British printings reproduce this, while a few cheaper or smaller American printings fail to include it.

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The second, and more interesting preface was called The Translators to the Reader, a long and learned essay that defends the undertaking of the new version. It observes that their goal was not to make a bad translation good, but a good translation better, and says that "we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession... containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God". Few editions anywhere include this text.

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The first printing contained a number of other apparatus, including a table for the reading of the Psalms at matins and vespers, and a calendar, an almanac, and a table of holy days and observances. Much of this material has become obsolete with the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by the UK and its colonies in 1752 and thus modern editions invariably omit it.

Related Topics:
Apparatus - Matins - Vespers - Calendar - Almanac - Gregorian Calendar - 1752

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Typeface, spelling, and format

The original printing was made before English spelling was standardised. They wrote "v" invariably for lower-case initial "u" and "v", and "u" for "u" and "v" everywhere else. They used long "ſ" for non-final "s". The letter "j" occurs only after "i" or as the final letter in a Roman numeral. Punctuation was used differently. The printers sometimes used ye for the, (replacing the Middle English thorn with the continental y) and wrote ã for an or am (in the style of scribe's shorthand) and so forth when space needed to be saved. Current printings remove most, but not all, of the variant spellings; the punctuation has also been changed, but still varies from current usage norms.

Related Topics:
English spelling - ſ - Roman numeral - Punctuation - Middle English - Thorn - Shorthand

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The first printing used a black letter typeface instead of a Roman typeface. This contrasted with the Geneva Bible, which was the first English Bible printed in a Roman typeface. It also used Roman type instead of italics to indicate text that had been supplied by the translators, or thought needful for English grammar but which was not present in the Greek or Hebrew. The first printing used the device of using different type faces to show supplied words sparsely and inconsistently. This is perhaps the most significant difference between the original text and the current text.

Related Topics:
Black letter - Typeface - Italics - Grammar

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Even the typeface made a political and a religious statement. Like the Great Bible and the Bishop's Bible, the King James Bible was "appointed to be read in churches". It was a large folio volume meant for public use, not private devotion; the weight of the type mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it. The Geneva Bible was always printed in Roman type, usually of the Garamond family; it was meant to be user-friendly for personal and private use. A folio Roman typeface edition of the King James Bible followed in 1614.

Related Topics:
Folio - Garamond - User-friendly - 1614

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The current text

Current printings of the King James Bible are typically based on an edition published at Oxford University in 1769, edited by Benjamin Blayney, rather than on the 1611 text. The Oxford edition applied the device of supplying italics for absent words much more thoroughly, corrected a number of minor errors in punctuation, and made the spelling more consistent and updated (that is, to the standards of the 18th century). However, in 2005, Cambridge University Press released its New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, edited by David Norton, which modernizes the spelling much more thoroughly (that is, to present-day standards) and introduces quotation marks into the text.

Related Topics:
1769 - 18th century - 2005 - Cambridge University Press - New Cambridge Paragraph Bible

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