Timothy Berg

A Newly Digitized Bible Reveals the Origins of the King James Version

A one-of-a-kind Bible used by the King James translators offers a rare glimpse of their textual decisions.

Though often thought to be a fresh translation, the King James Bible is, at heart, a revision of the 1602 Bishops’ Bible that was produced in three stages (translation companies, General Meeting, and final revisions). It was a monumental feat and one that has influenced English Bibles ever since. Fortunately, we know more about the process that produced the King James Bible (KJB) than just about any other translation of its time.

One key source involves the actual Bibles used by the revisers. According to an extant bill dated 10 May 1605, King James I purchased “40 large church bibles for the translators” from Royal Printer Robert Barker for the translators to use.¹ The translators worked directly on these unbound pages in the first stage of work. As far as we know, only a single copy remains.

This remaining copy, a 1602 Bishops’ Bible in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, collects handwritten notes reflecting alterations made while crafting the KJB. Thankfully, it has recently been digitized and made completely accessible online for the first time ever.² The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate. This article introduces the history of its study and gives a small sample of its value for understanding the work of the KJB translators.

The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate.

The 1602 Bishops’ Bible with the translators’ notes (left) and the final product in the 1611 KJB (right). Images from Bodleian Library and UPenn

Previous scholarship

The Bodleian Library acquired the volume in 1646 when it was described as “a large Bible wherein is written downe all the Alterations of the last translacōn.”³ The first critical notice was in 1868 by B. F. Westcott. When preparing his history of the English Bible, he requested a summary of its notes from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and Bodleian Librarian Henry Coxe. Unfortunately, Westcott mistakenly thought it represented “a scholar’s collation of the [KJB] and Bishops’ texts” rather than the source for the KJB itself.

In 1888, Nicolas Pocock pronounced Westcott’s judgment “very doubtful,” and Edwin Willoughby later took the document more seriously as a genuine draft and brought it to public attention.⁴ In the 20th century, Edward Jacobs examined the Old Testament annotations in detail in his 1972 dissertation but, sadly, had to rely on microfilms; he extended this study in later articles to its New Testament annotations.⁵ As Jacobs finished his dissertation, Irena Backus started a thesis studying Theodore Beza’s impact on the KJB New Testament which also employed the document, their different conclusions interacting only in a footnote.⁶ A decade later Jacobs published, with Ward Allen, a transcription of the Gospels with an introduction and, more recently, David Norton has used the document to sift translators’ intentions from printers’ errors while editing the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible for Cambridge University Press.

What’s in this Bible?

What’s in the document and what makes it so important to scholars? The answer is the handwritten notes themselves. In the Old Testament, these annotations cover almost every book, though in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, they end after chapter four. (Lamentations and the Apocrypha are unannotated.)

Letters were used to identify other translations as the sources for suggested changes. Source

The notes also reveal other translations used by the revisers besides the Bishops’ Bible itself. Back in 1868, Westcott described a set of miniscule letters (g, t, and j) which identify these other sources. He correctly identified “g” as the Geneva Bible, the KJB’s famous predecessor. Other scholars have suggested that “t” is for Tremellius and “j” is for Junius or Jerome’s Vulgate.⁷

Dating the translators’ notes

Dating the Old Testament annotations is complicated as they stretch across text assigned to all three translation companies and are written in what Jacobs believed is the same hand. This means, as Miller points out, that “the Old Testament annotations, in the aggregate, must postdate the company stage of the translation process, since one person could not have been part of three different translation companies in three different locations.”⁸

Several dates have been proposed, including ones that suggest the notes are an actual printers’ master copy, a copy of the printers’ master copy, notes made at the General Meeting, or a revision sent to the General Meeting. Miller argues that, most likely, “the annotations were made in preparation for the general, revisory meeting in London, assimilating into a single working manuscript the changes that had been separately proposed by the three Old Testament translation companies.” This would mean the handwriting is likely that of a scribe, though it is also possible they “could have been made at the general meeting itself.”⁹

The New Testament annotations are less extensive. The text of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is heavily revised, but in John, only chapters 17–21 are annotated. Elsewhere, only brief notes are found in a handful of places (Eph. 4:8; 2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 3:13; and 2 Pet. 1:10).

Dating the New Testament annotations is simplified by the fact that they occur across text assigned to only one company. Even here, however, the dating is complicated by the fact that the annotations are in three separate hands.¹⁰ Miller gives this as a reason why “the draft of the Gospels seems to be assignable to the company stage of the translation process, distinct from the draft of the Old Testament now bound together in the same Bodleian volume.”¹¹ The different hands would then represent either the company internally critiquing its own draft or the input of one or more of the other companies upon it. The process of producing the most famous English Bible in history was obviously not a simple one!

Insights into the translators’ decisions

One of the most interesting and unexplored areas of the translators’ work that this document illuminates is how they wrestled with textual issues. Here are four examples.

1. Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22)

I have noted before that, in the Christmas story, the translators’ base text for Luke 2:22 explains that Mary brought Jesus to the temple because it was the time of “her purification,” without any notes. Virtually all the textual data read “their purification” (including either Joseph or Jesus in the purification). Greek editions at the time differed, particularly those of Erasmus and Beza.

What did the KJB translators do? This document shows a complex back-and-forth. First, “Or, theyr” was added to the main text (which read “her”) to indicate a textual variant. Then they changed their minds on the base text but still wanted a note. “Her” was crossed out in the text, “theyr” written above it, and in the margin “theyr” was replaced by “her.” Now the main text would read “theyr” with a marginal note giving the alternative: “Or, her.” This revision too was apparently overturned, presumably at the General Meeting. In the end, the KJB ended where it began: “her” in the text and nothing in the margin.

The text at Luke 2:22, showing a series of changes from “her” to “their” and back to “her.” Source

2. Jesus’ rebuke of Satan (Matt. 4:10)

Another example appears in Matthew 4:10 in the case of Jesus’ rebuke of the Devil, a rebuke later echoed after Peter’s confession (Matt. 16:23). The translators’ base text has “get thee hence behind me” (opisō mou). But they crossed out this last phrase. Why? Because the editions of the Greek New Testament they had available from Erasmus (1535), Stephanus (1550), and Beza (1598) all have the shorter reading in the text (though each mentions the longer reading).

The words “behinde mee” are crossed out in Matt 4:10. Source

3. Greeting our friends (Matt. 5:47)

Matthew 5:47 provides an example of how the translators wanted their readers to see more textual variation than what ultimately made it into the final version. The Bishops’ text has Jesus asking if his followers only greet “your brethren”—with no note. The KJB revisers added a marginal note that read “Or, frendes,” indicating the variant in Greek (philous vs. adelphous). As before, the two readings were known to them because of the Greek New Testaments of Erasmus and Beza. But, this note was not to survive. It was struck down by later revisers and didn’t make it to the published 1611 KJB.

The words “or friends” were added to the margin but never made it into the final King James. Source

4. Two longer marginal notes (Luke 17:36; Matt. 26:26)

Other marginal changes did make the cut. In Luke 17:36, the Bishops’ Bible has no marginal note, but the revisers wanted to alert their readers to a variant by adding a note saying: “The 36 verse is wanting here in the most of the Greeke copyes.” The revisers at Stationers’ Hall made a few minor changes in wording to the note but included it in the published text.

A note added in the left margin about manuscripts missing Luke 17:36. Source

Likewise, in Matthew 26:26 the text of the Last Supper says that he broke the bread when he had taken it and “given thankes,” without a note. The revisers crossed this out, added “blessed and” beside it, and added the marginal note, “Many Greeke copies have, given thankes.” This switched the base text from “given thankes” (eucharistēsas) to “blessed” (eulogēsas) and alerted the reader to the variant. The note was tweaked slightly but still published.

The note added in the left margin for Matthew 26:26. Source

This is just a sample of what this Bible reveals about the translators’ textual work. All the KJB’s notes that reflect textual variants were collected by F. H. A. Scrivener and his list remains the best treatment of the translators as textual critics. Scrivener, however, never examined this document.

Conclusion

For the translators, textual variants like these were part of a larger category they called “differences of readings.” This category included not only textual uncertainties but also lexical uncertainties, where words could have several different meanings. Today, we tend to think of these as separate categories. But applying our distinction to the KJB translators would be an anachronism.¹² Perhaps detailed examination of the document in the future from a text-critical perspective can catalogue all annotations reflecting textual decisions, painting a clearer picture of the KJB translators as textual critics.

Viewing the images online is a visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make.

This is just a small sample of the kind of insight that can be gained from studying this source of the most important English Bible in history. Viewing the images online provides an immediate, visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make. Further study will undoubtedly bring to light further insights into how the translators made their decisions. May we all be grateful for the push towards open access upon which human knowledge thrives!

An earlier version of this article could have given the impression that F. H. A. Scrivener’s list of the KJB’s notes was collected by him in 1910. What was meant is that his list was last published, posthumously, in 1910.

Notes

1
“MS. Don. c. 88” (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, n.d.); Paul Morgan, “A King’s Printer At Work: Two Documents of Robert Barker,” The Bodleian Library Record 13, no. 5 (1990): 370; A massive cache of documents relating to the King’s printing house, the largest collection of manuscript materials relating to any single printing house in the Jacobean period, have recently been studied by Graham Rees and Maria Wakely, Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
2
Previously catalogued as BL Bib. Eng. 1602 b.1, it was given a new pressmark in Sep. 2013: Arch. A b. 18. My thanks to Chris Yetzer for informing me about its digitization.
3
William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: With a Notice of the Earlier Library of the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890), 102.
4
Nicholas Pocock, “The Bishops’ Bible of 1568, 1572, and 1602.,” The Athenaeum, no. No. 3148 (February 25, 1888): 243–45; Edwin Eliott Willoughby, The Making of the King James Bible: A Monograph with Comparisons from the Bishops Bible and the Manuscript Annotations of 1602, with an Original Leaf from the Great “She” Bible of 1611 (Los Angeles: Printed for Dawson’s Book Shop at The Plantin Press, 1956); Adam Nicolson, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible (London: Harpercollins, 2003), 151–52.
5
Edward Craney Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1602 b. 1): A Preliminary Study of the Old Testament Annotations and Their Relationship to the Authorized Version, 1611.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Alabama, Auburn University, 1972), 14; Edward Craney Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible,” The Library S6-II, no. 1 (March 1, 1980): 16, fn. 2; Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1)”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “An Old Testament Copytext for the 1611 Bible,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 69, no. 1 (1975): 1–15; Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “King James’s Translators: The Bishops’ Bible New Testament Revised,” The Library s6–14, no. 2 (June 1, 1992): 100–126.
6
Irena Dorota Backus, “Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament” (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1976); Irena Backus, The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament, ed. Dikran Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Wipf & Stock, 1980), 28, fn. 63.
7
See Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1),” 30–31, fn. 44; Jeffrey Alan Miller, “‘Better, as in the Geneva’: The Role of the Geneva Bible in Drafting the King James Version,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 47, no. 3 (September 2017): 517–43.
8
Jeffrey Alan Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible: Samuel Ward’s Draft of 1 Esdras and Wisdom 3–4,” in Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord, 2018, 216.
9
Miller, 216.
10
Allen and Jacobs, The Coming of the King James Gospels, 5–7.
11
Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible,” 216.
12
As seen in the comments of Miles Smith defending the KJB’s marginal notes, which discuss both textual and lexical differences in the same section, and in the report of translator Samuel Ward to the Synod of Dordt, suggests. Samuel Ward, “SSC MS Ward L1” (Sidney Sussex College, n.d.), fol. 5r; Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), vol. 13, Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), 138–40; Christian Moser, Donald Sinnema, and Herman J. Selderhuis, eds., Acta of the Synod of Dordt, vol. I, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618-1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 17, 203; Samuel Ward, “British Statement on the Method of Bible Translation,” in Early Sessions of the Synod of Dordt, ed. Anthony Milton, vol. II/2, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618–1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 69, 70.

Seven Common Misconceptions about the King James Bible

The most widely read English Bible translation has sprouted a series of fictions about it. It’s time to prune them.

Timothy Berg

Finding praise for the 1611 King James Bible (KJB) is not hard. It is “the single most influential book in the English language and arguably the greatest work ever completed by a committee” according to Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones in their edited book marking the 400th anniversary of the KJB. Showing just how influential it has been on our language, renowned linguist David Crystal traces hundreds of expressions it cemented into the English mind while Angelica Duran, English professor at Purdue, has edited a book arguing that the KJB transcends English, rising to the level of a key text in world literature and achieving a global impact.

All this praise is warranted. But when a book blossoms into such a literary lotus, myths also begin to sprout. Grains of truth rendering them plausible grow into weeds of fiction. Blocking the light of contrary facts and pilfering life-giving nuance, truth eventually withers. The following are seven myths about the KJB that now need pruning.

Myth 1: The KJB isn’t copyrighted

Many claim the KJB is not copyrighted and can be reproduced freely. Through American eyes the KJB is “public domain” (see, for example, the work of Roger Syn and Jason Cohn), but it was printed under patent to the royal printer or “crown copyright,” with permissions later extended to the university presses at Cambridge and Oxford. Since the copyright has never lapsed in the UK, its unenforceability in the US reflects not an absence of copyright but rather a disregard of the KJB’s creators. Roger Syn explains that after the Revolutionary War, “English patents were disregarded. This caused the Authorised Version – still protected by royal patents – to enter the public domain outside the United Kingdom.”¹ The copyright at Cambridge University Press requires the abbreviation “KJV” following all citations, which cannot exceed 500 verses or 25 percent of a document. You can learn more on the enduring KJB copyright here.

Myth 2: The KJB was a new translation

Some deem the KJB a new translation—an original language text, freshly translated on blank pages from the original languages. In fact, the translators actually worked on unbound pages of the Bishops’ Bible. The first rule of their procedures commanded that this text “be followed, and as little altered as the truth of the original will permit.”

Miles Smith’s preface to the KJB was clear on this point too: “Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one … but to make a good one better.” Samuel Ward, one of the revisers, reported that “caution was given that an entirely new version was not to be furnished, but an old version, long received by the Church, to be purged from all blemishes and faults.”

Existing quarries were mined for lexical gold. Rule 14 required using five prior Bibles “where they agree better with the text than the Bishops’ Bible.” The KJB preface records digging “out of many good” Bibles to make “one principal good one,” thereby rendering “better” what prior translators had “left so good.” They were now “building on their foundation that went before us,” being helped by their labors, which could now be “rubbed and polished.” The “former translations” were “diligently compared and revised” as the very title page boasts of its “newly translated” work. The KJB is thus best understood as a thorough revision of the 1602 edition of the Bishops’ Bible, carefully rendering the original languages and mining prior Bibles for verbal ore.

The King James Bible is best understood as a thorough revision, carefully rendering the original languages and mining prior Bibles for verbal ore.

Myth 3: The text of the KJB has never changed

It’s not uncommon for King James readers to assume their KJB is textually identical to the 1611, except for spelling. This isn’t true. Frederick Scrivener, a major scholar of the KJB, concluded from his study that “numberless and not inconsiderable departures” from the 1611 abound in modern editions, mostly “deliberate changes, introduced silently and without authority” by unnamed men. He listed over fifty pages of variations from the 1611 edition that had been adopted by later editions and that he retained. He also gives more than twenty pages of variations from the 1611 that he rejected in his own edition of the KJB. David Norton’s more recent study of the textual history of the KJB scrupulously lists over 150 pages of variant readings supporting his updated edition.

Most changes to the original text were made in 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769 editions, others in hundreds of humbler editions. These alterations are extremely minor compared to differences between distinct translations (say, KJB vs. NKJV) and so, they shouldn’t be exaggerated.

At the same time, they shouldn’t be minimized either. D. A. Waite, for example, did this when he compared an audio version of the Old Scofield Reference Bible and a 1611 facsimile, and said he heard only 421 changes. Setting aside changes of form, he claimed there were only 136 changes of “substance” from 1611 to today.² A pastor in North Carolina called for a recount; using the same two editions in print, he enumerated over 2,000. Waite’s count was reportedly updated some but still gets repeated.

Myth 4: The translators spoke in unison

Some treat the KJB as its architects’ united opinion. If one suggests that alterations are needed to the KJB the response today is sometimes, “Why contradict so many brilliant scholars?” But we should not imagine that all the translators reached some sort of consensus in a large meeting room. Instead, the KJB is the result of three broad stages of work.

The Bible was divided, in 1604, among six companies, one at Westminster, one at Cambridge, and one at Oxford (a Greek and Hebrew team at each). Some of these subdivided. Individuals were to bring personal drafts to meetings where a company’s eight or nine men worked over selections. Review was then to take place through other companies and appointed overseers, with input from outside consultants.
Twelve men made veto revisions in a “general meeting” at Stationers’ Hall in 1610.
Several final editors added para-textual material and finishing touches.

An elaborate process of cross-checking was envisioned, but scholars still debate the amount completed. Most agree that some was skipped. The translators met in small groups in tiny rooms; they never met all together. Further, the KJB ultimately reflects, not unanimous votes, but veto decisions. Rules 9–10 explained that, where differences remained, they would be settled “at the general meeting” (step two of the process).

The translators’ handwritten revisions in a 1602 Bishops’ Bible. Bodleian Library Arch. A b.18

For example, in Luke 2:22, the translators’ base text read “her purification,” explaining why Mary brought Jesus to the temple, without any notes. Virtually all the textual data read “their” purification (including either Joseph or Jesus in the purification). Greek texts at the time differed. A manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford shows a back-and-forth between reviewers.

At Luke 2:22, this manuscript shows that “her” is first crossed out in the text, “their” written above, and then “her” is again added to the margin. This proposed revision and note got crossed out. Then “her” stood in the text and “their” in the margin. This revision too was overturned. The KJB ended where it began: “her” in the text and nothing in the margin. Documentary evidence vividly challenges any assumption that the translators always agreed.

Myth 5: Little is known about the KJB’s formation

Some today think that loss of records has obscured the KJB’s formation. It’s true that data has been lost, but what remains is impressive. Bod. 1602, the manuscript just mentioned, records revisions to various texts assigned to four different companies. Another manuscript at Lambeth Palace (Ms. 98) records revisions to another company. More recently, Jeffery Miller has added Samuel Ward’s Apocrypha notes to this list of documentary evidence. This leaves us extant manuscript work from every company’s assigned text.

And this isn’t all. We also have sixteen contemporary accounts of the Hampton Court Conference where the idea for the KJB was first hatched; the receipt for the pages translators worked on; numerous correspondence about the translation, including letters from King James and Richard Bancroft, the bishop of London; copies of the translators’ rules; lists of translators; library records of the translators’ borrowing helps; John Bois’s notes from stage two and his annotated Septuagint; and Samuel Ward’s summary report to the Synod of Dort (a draft of which remains in his own hand).

The garden at Hampton Court Palace, where the idea for the King James Bible was born. Stu Smith

And documents continue to multiply, as Nicholas Hardy of the University of Birmingham explains. As one of the premier KJB scholars today puts it, Shakespeare scholars only dream of having this kind of data about his plays. Likewise, Hamlin and Jones are right to say that, “Despite the peculiar popular legend that the translation of the KJB is shrouded in mystery, it isn’t. We know a great deal about it.”³

Myth 6: The KJB is a perfectly literal translation

Some assume the KJB is the most “literal” translation possible, rendering every word with exact precision. Generally speaking, the KJB is more literal than many more recent translations (although even here, Young’s certainly overtakes it). Further, the translators shunned one aspect of exactness which is known as “concordance.” Concordance is the consistent rendering of the same word from the original languages with the same English word whenever feasible. The KJB preface records that the translators instead celebrated verbal variety, untethered by “uniformity of phrasing,” or “ identity of words,” to make “verbal and unnecessary changings.” Alister McGrath illustrates this point using Romans 5:1–11, a text that exemplifies their linguistic liberties. In the KJB, Christians “rejoice” in hope, “glory” in tribulations, and “joy” in God: three distinct words all rendering the same Greek word. More on this myth here.

Myth 7: The KJB is written in Old English

Finally, many Bible readers today think that the 1611 KJB is unreadable Old English. But, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the following historical stages in the English language: Old English until 1150, Middle English until 1500, Early Modern English until 1700. As a work of Early Modern English, the KJB is certainly still readable. That said, some grammatical forms are foreign. The obvious examples are pronouns like “thee/thou/thy” or “ye”; the possessives “thine/mine”; and verbs ending in -est (2nd person) and -eth (3rd person).

Further, Mark Ward rightly cautions readers to be on the lookout for dead words which have fallen out of the language now. He also laments that everyone trips over false friends, words that have dramatically changed their meaning since 1611. That said, if someone can read at a college level and is willing to learn unfamiliar grammar, most of the KJB is not impossible; it merely requires work.