The Texts

The new translation authorized by King James was done by six committees, three assigned to work on the Old Testament, two on the New Testament, and one on the Apocrypha. Once the work of the committees was completed, two members from each committee met for the final review before publication. The text was not really newly translated as claimed. Translators were told to follow the Bishops' Bible as much as possible, and to be guided by the previous translations of Tyndale and Coverdale when they agreed better with the original texts and manuscripts, supported by translations of available Biblical manuscripts. The New Testament was translated using the Textus Receptus (Received Text) series of Greek texts. For the Old Testament, the Masoretic Hebrew text was used, and for the Apocrypha, the Greek Septuagent text was used primarily. Since the translators were instructed to use the Bishops' Bible (1568) as a guide, which was a revision of the Great Bible (1539), which was a revision of the Matthew's Bible (1537), which was a revision of Coverdale's first Bible that included all of Tyndale's translation work (1535), the King James version includes much of the wording of the Tyndale and Coverdale translations. Thus the preface to the first edition says that the translators never set out to make a totally new translation, but to make out of many good ones, one principal good one. Interestingly enough then, the King James Bible reflects the spoken English of the early 1500's rather than the early 1600s in which it was printed. Scholars agree, that though the translation work was done by a committee, this large group of men, with diverse resources, produced a better version of the English Bible than had previously been available. It certainly was not perfect nor was the English text inspired, but it was carefully done, faithful as possible to the available texts and manuscripts, and has stood the test of time and study.