Ironically, the great ‘King James Version’ of the Bible was a direct result of the suggestion of the Puritan Dr Reynolds at the Hampton Court Conference. King James readily agreed to this proposal for two reasons. First, he recognized that the official Bible for public reading, the Bishop’s Version, was cumbersome in size and awkward in style. And second, he well knew that the popular Geneva Version contained notes heavily biased toward Reformed doctrines. (But he never ‘authorized’ the version named after him, even though it is now sometimes referred to as the AV or Authorized Version. It was only ‘appointed’ to be read in churches.)
The work was entrusted to forty-seven translators working in three panels on the Old Testament, the New Testament and the ‘Apocrypha’. The translators worked as much as possible with the original languages, their prime tool being the Greek New Testament produced by Erasmus of Rotterdam, called the Textus Receptus’ or ‘Received Text’. They also drew upon modern-language versions and other English versions (in fact, approximately 80% of the phraseology originated with Tyndale). Interpretative notes were eliminated.
While the translators themselves (with the possible exception of the great preacher and poet Launcelot Andrewes) are rarely remembered, this version achieved literary distinction rivalled only by Shakespeare. Many passages (e.g. Psalm 23, Isaiah 53, Matthew 5, 1 Corinthians 13, Hebrews 11) are classics of the English language. First published in 1611 by Robert Barker, stationer to the king, it remained the most popular English Bible until the second half of the twentieth century.