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Chapter X - English Versions since 1611

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Luther A. Weigle  and
C. F. D. Moule
Edited by
S. L. Greenslade
Luther A. Weigle
Affiliation:
Yale University Divinity School
C. F. D. Moule
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
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Summary

Acceptance of the King James Version

The King James version of the Bible was a revision of prior English translations. In their preface, the scholars who were charged to make this revision show that they were fully aware that their work would encounter strong opposition:

“Zeale to promote the common good…findeth but cold intertainment in the world.…Many mens mouths have bene open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand, or rather perusals of Translations made before: and aske what may be the reason, what the necessitie of the employment: Hath the Church bene deceived, say they, all this while?… Was their Translation good before? Why doe they now mend it? Was it not good? Why then was it obtruded to the people?”

For eighty years after its publication in 1611, the King James version endured bitter attacks. It was denounced as theologically unsound and ecclesiastically biased, as truckling to the king and unduly deferring to his belief in witchcraft, as untrue to the Hebrew text and relying too much on the Septuagint. The personal integrity of the translators was impugned. Among other things, they were accused of ‘blasphemy’, ‘most damnable corruptions’, ‘intolerable deceit’, and ‘vile imposture’, the critic who used these epithets being careful to say that they were not ‘the dictates of passion, but the just resentment of a zealous mind’.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Bible , pp. 361 - 382
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1963

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References

Bridges, R. and Weigle, L. A., The Bible Word Book (New York, 1960).Google Scholar
Chambers, T. W., A Companion to the Revised Version (London, 1885).Google Scholar
Cotton, Henry, Editions of the Bible and Parts thereof in English (2nd ed., Oxford, 1852).Google Scholar
Darlow, T. H. and Moule, H. T., Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 4 vols. (London, 1903–11).Google Scholar
Hemphill, Samuel, A History of the Revised Version of the New Testament (London, 1906).Google Scholar
Knox, R., On Englishing the Bible (London, 1949).Google Scholar
Metzger, Bruce M., An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York, 1957).Google Scholar
Moulton, W. F., The History of the English Bible (5th ed., London, 1911).Google Scholar
Murray, J. H., Mistranslated Passages in Our Bible (London, 1881).Google Scholar
Pope, O.P., English Versions of the Bible, revised and amplified by Rev. Sebastian Bullough, O.P. (London, 1952).Google Scholar
Price, Ira M., The Ancestry of Our English Bible (2nd revised ed., New York, 1949).Google Scholar
Robertson, E. H., The New Translations of the Bible (London, 1959).Google Scholar
Robinson, H. Wheeler (ed.), The Bible in Its Ancient and English Versions (Oxford, 1940; revised ed. 1954).Google Scholar
Schaff, Philip, A Companion to the Greek Testament and English Version (4th ed., New York, 1894).Google Scholar
Scrivener, F. H. A. The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1611), its Subsequent Reprints and Modern Representatives (Cambridge, 1884).Google Scholar
Weigle, L. A., Bible Words in Living Language (Edinburgh, 1957).Google Scholar
Weigle, L. A., The English New Testament from Tyndale to the Revised Standard Version (Nashville, 1949; Edinburgh, 1950).Google Scholar
Westcott, B. F., A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3rd ed., revised by Wright, W. A. (London, 1905).Google Scholar

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