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The 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible
The Crowning Result of Tyndale's Sacrifice
Page 2

AUTHORIZATION OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE

Four days after Elizabeth's death, the new king departed for London. The date was April 5, 1603.

Before arriving at his destination, he was met by a delegation of Puritan ministers who presented him with a statement of grievances against the Church of England. What came to be known as the Millenary Petition was signed by nearly a thousand English clergymen, about 10 percent of the ministers in the nation.

Considering the matter carefully, King James issued a proclamation, "touching a meeting for the hearing and for the determining; things pretended to be amiss in the church."

The conference was held on January 14, 16, and 18 of the year 1604. The meeting place was Hampton Court. The largest of the royal palaces, it contained a thousand rooms.

The black plague was killing people in London (for Europeans still did not know the cause of the bubonic plague; it was caused by the droppings of the common [Norway] rat in the foodstuffs); so Hampton Court, located 15 miles southwest of London on the north bank of the Thames River, was considered a safe distance from the plague-ridden capital. Before the year was over, over 30,000 Englishmen would die.

But James did not like the Puritans. They did not believe in having bishops rule the church, and James considered church democracy a threat to his throne.

The four Puritans who came to the gathering were excluded on the opening day. Then, on January 16, they were led in to face over fifty high church officials (including the Archbishop of Canterbury) led by Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London.

The chairman's convictions were easily detectable from his invitation to discuss "things pretended to be amiss in the church." Although James appreciated the Puritans' anti-Catholic position, he strongly disapproved of their Presbyterian form of government as a threat to his royal absolutism. On one occasion, he stated that "presbytery and monarchy agreed together as well as God and the devil." The king's best-remembered words expressing his fears of a Puritan-sponsored ouster of his politically supportive bishops was his cliché, "No bishops-No king." It was for such reasons that the Mayflower sailed to America in 1621.

As the meeting progressed, subjects of lesser importance began causing even more dissension.

After having one request after another denied, the leader of the Puritan delegation, Dr. Rainolds (also spelled "Reynolds" at times) made the request that changed Bible history.

"'May your Majesty be pleased,' said Dr. John Rainolds in his address to the king, 'to direct that the Bible be now translated, such versions as are extant not answering to the original.'

"Rainolds was a Puritan, and the Bishop of London felt it his duty to disagree. 'If every man's humor might be followed,' His Grace, 'there would be no end to translating.'

"King James was quick to put both factions down. 'I profess,' he said, 'I could never yet see a Bible well translated in English, but I think that of Geneva is the worst.' These few dissident words started the greatest writing project the world has ever known."-G.S. Paine, Men behind the King James Version, p. 1.

God works in mysterious ways, His purposes to perform. At the time of James' coronation, an unfortunate spirit of rivalry existed between the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible. The Geneva Bible was, by far, the more popular of the two among the common people. But church officials preferred the Bishops' Bible. The King did not like the fact that the Geneva Bible had not been prepared and printed in England. In addition, it had some Calvinistic notes in it and the King remembered how John Knox, in his homeland of Scotland, had spoken to his mother.

The King was only too aware that his prosperous subjects owed a "national debt" to the liberating doctrines of Holy Scripture. Having abandoned the Catholicism of his own mother, James had observed firsthand that, "The entrance of thy words giveth light" (Psalm 119:130).

In order to see what the Bible had accomplished for England, all James had to do was to look at what had happened to England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when everybody had access to the Bible:

"No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the Long Parliament. England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was as yet the one English book which was familiar to every Englishman; it was read at churches and read at home, and everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom had not deadened to their force and beauty, kindled a startling enthusiasm...

"The popularity of the Bible was owing to other causes besides that of religion. The whole prose literature of England, save the forgotten tracts of Wycliffe, has grown up since the translation of the Scriptures by Tyndale and Coverdale. No history, no romance, no poetry, save the little-known verse of Chaucer, existed for any practical purpose in the English tongue when the Bible was ordered to be set up in churches...

"As a mere literary monument, the English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English tongue. Its perpetual use made it from the instant of its appearance the standard of our language. But for the moment its literary effect was less than its social. The power of the book over the mass of Englishmen showed itself in a thousand superficial ways, and in none more conspicuously than in the influence it exerted on ordinary speech. It formed, we must repeat, the whole literature which was practically accessible to ordinary Englishmen; and when we recall the number of common phrases which we owe to great authors, the bits of Shakespeare, or Milton, or Dickens, or Thackeray, which unconsciously interweave themselves in our ordinary talk, we shall better understand the strange mosaic of Biblical words and phrases which colored English talk two hundred years ago. The mass of picturesque allusion and illustration which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers were forced to borrow from one...

"But far greater than its effect on literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible on the character of the people at large. Elizabeth

might silence or tune the pulpits; but it was impossible for her to silence or tune the great preachers of justice, and mercy, and truth, who spoke from the book which she had again opened for the people.

"The whole moral effect which is produced nowadays by the religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary report, the sermon, was then produced by the Bible alone. And its effect in this way, however dispassionately we examine it, was simply amazing. The whole temper of the nation was changed. A new conception of life and of man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse spread through every class . . the whole nation became, in fact, a church."-J.R. Green, A Short History of the English People, pp. 455-457.

James did not like the fact that the Geneva Bible, which was so extremely popular with the English people, had been translated and printed in a foreign country.

He saw that he now had an excellent opportunity to provide his subjects with a Bible that would be truly English, totally translated and printed on English soil. The prestige gained from successful completion of the project could only enhance his fledgling reign. So King James ordered the translation to be made.

"That a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek; and this to be set out and printed, without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of England, in time of Divine service."-Decree of King James, quoted in McClure, Translators Revised, p. 59.

Interestingly enough, every possible excuse is today made to downgrade the King James Bible. One is that James never authorized its translation. But that is not true.

Writing at the time the project began, Bishop Bancroft wrote this to an assistant:

"I move you in his majesty's name that, agreeably to the charge and trust committed unto you, no time may be overstepped by you for the better furtherance of this holy work. You will scarcely conceive how earnest his majesty is to have this work begun!"-Quoted in G.S. Paine, Men behind the King James Version, p. 11.

In the Preface to the Authorized (King James) Bible, we are told:

"Hereupon did his Majesty begin to bethink himself of the good that might ensue by a new translation, and presently after gave order for this translation which is now presented unto thee."

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