To oversee the translation, James commissioned six committees made up of 47 scholars from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Related: Was the 'forbidden fruit' in the Garden of Eden really an apple? How the KJV was translated 'It's almost as if he got the ball rolling, then washed his hands of the whole thing,' Gordon said. But even during his lifetime, after James commissioned the translation, he didn't oversee the process himself. James died from a stroke in March 1625, so he never saw his Bible become widely accepted.

Despite James' efforts, Gordon said, 'the KJV didn't really succeed while James was alive.' That's because the market for James' version didn't really arise until the 1640s, when Archbishop William Laud, who 'hated the Puritans,' suppressed the Geneva Bible that the Puritans followed, Gordon said. To moderate such divisions, James commissioned a Bible that aimed to please both parishioners of the Church of England and the growing Protestant sects by removing the problematic and unpopular annotations of the Geneva Bible while remaining true to the style and translations from both Bibles that each group revered. (Image credit: Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images) The portrait, painted by the Dutch painter Daniel Mytens (also spelled Daniël Mijtens) in 1621, is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. 'Mary's death made James keenly aware of how easily he could be removed if he upset the wrong people,' Gordon said.Ī portrait of James VI and I, King of Scotland, England and Ireland (1566-1625). James' own mother - Mary, Queen of Scots - had been executed 16 years earlier in part because she was perceived to be a Catholic threat to Queen Elizabeth's Protestant reign. What's more, when James assumed the English throne in March 1603, following the death of Queen Elizabeth I, he inherited a complicated political situation, as the Puritans and the Calvinists - religious followers of reformer John Calvin - were openly questioning the absolute power of the Church of England's bishops. However, he disliked the lengthy and distracting annotations in the margins, some of which even questioned the power of a king, according to Gordon. The Geneva Bible was the Bible of choice among Protestants and Protestant sects, and as a Presbyterian, James also read that version. Why did King James want a newly translated Bible?īefore James commissioned the KJV in 1604, most people in England were learning from two different Bibles - the Church of England's translation, commonly read during worship services (known as the Bishops' Bible, first published in 1568), and the more popular version most Brits read at home, known as the Geneva Bible, first published in 1560. All these books, however, were arguably not included in the Hebrew Bible of the Jewish people at the time of Christ, which is why Protestants do not recognize them as Scripture.But there's more to the story that goes back to the translation's inception.

Eastern Orthodoxy has a few more books in addition to the Roman Catholic Deuterocanonical works. Protestants refer to these books as the Apocrypha and Roman Catholics call them Deuterocanonical. These books were written in the Second Temple Period. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Roman Catholicism, the OT has a number of additional books and additions not found in the Protestant OT or Hebrew Bible. Additionally, the Greek version of the OT (called the Septuagint and abbreviated as LXX) has different names for 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings. The Hebrew Bible has different names for Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. In the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) the books are arranged in three groups: the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. In Protestant English bibles, the OT books are arranged mostly by genre: Pentatuach, Historical Books, Wisdom Literature, and Prophetic Books. The Protestant OT canon has the same books as the Hebrew Bible (HB), but their arrangement differs.

List of bible versions