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History of the English Bibles

Preliminary Translations

2nd Century - The Old Latin version was translated from the Greek Septuagint OT and Greek NT Manuscripts.

5th Century - Jerome wrote his Latin Vulgate He used Hebrew texts for the Old Testament and the Old Latin revised with Greek texts for the New Testament.

1382 - John Wycliffe - Wycliffe is called, "The Morning Star of the Reformation". He translated the Latin Vulgate New Testament into English, working with Nicholas Hereford who translated the Vulgate Old Testament. The Wycliffe Bible had an English-language revision by John Purvey after Wycliffe's death, around 1395.

1456 - John Guttenburg - Germans invent the printing press, Print the Mazarin Latin Bible a.k.a. "The Guttenburg Bible".

1516 - Erasmus - Desiderius Erasmus publishes the 1st edition of his Latin/Greek Novum Instrumentum Omne (aka the Textus Receptus). There were four revisions by Erasmus 1519-1535. Used by Martin Luther and by William Tyndale (and others). - more info

1522 - Martin Luther - published his German translation of the NT from the Erasamus' Greek. He later published OT Books individually, and published his complete Bible in 1534.

For historic context, note that in 1517 Luther had posted his "95 Theses", and from 1519-1521 (Leipzig Debate, Diet of Worms), Luther had established his stance of the fallibility of the Pope and the Church with sole inerrent authority being Scriptures, "Sola Scriptura!"

English from Hebrew and Greek

1525 - William Tyndale (1490-1536) - Translated the original Greek & Hebrew into English. He used Erasamus' Greek (the TR) and a Messoretic text (the 1525 Ben Chayyim Rabbinic Bible) for the Hebrew. For comparisons Tyndale used the Vulgate, Erasamus' Latin, and Luther's German translation. Tyndale published the New Testament (1525), the Pentateuch (1530), and the book of Jonah (1531), and completed translations (unpublished manuscripts) on the books of Joshua through II Chronicles.

Tyndale was violently opposed by the Church of England under Henry VIII, and thousands (~6,000) of his printed editions were gathered and destroyed. Tyndale himself was kidnapped, imprisoned, and eventually executed as a heretic under Emperor Charles V (ruled Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain).

1535 - Miles Coverdale (1488-1569) - Worked with Tyndale, was first to complete the Old & New Testaments in English (1535). For the New Testament, Coverdale used Tyndale's work, revised against the work of Luther. Coverdale also separated out the Apocrypha. He used Tyndale's Pentateuch. For the rest of the Old Testament, Coverdale used a Swiss-German publication by Zwingli and Leo Juda, as well as Latin (Vulgate and Pagnini) and Luther's German. It is basically Coverdale's translation of the poetic and prophetic books which is in the KJV. Unfortunately, the close association with Tyndale's work made the Bible unacceptable for the Church of England.

1537 - The Matthew Bible - Tyndale's primary assistant was John Rogers. Thomas Matthew is understood to be a nom de plume for Rogers, because John Rogers had Tyndale's unpublished OT manuscripts and there is no record of a Thomas Matthew apart from the name being used for the Bible. "Matthew" added margin notes to Tyndale's Bible and also "slightly" revised Tyndale's work by a French translation. Matthew was the first to license & mass produce his Bible. His Bible used Tyndale for all of his completed books, and Coverdale for Ezra through Malachi and for the Apocrypha.

1539 - The Great Bible Named for it's sheer size, this Bible was a work of Miles Coverdale. Coverdale was commissioned by Thomas Cromwell to revise the "Thomas Matthew" Bible, obstensibly for the sole purpose of separating the translation from the Tyndale name. Significantly, Coverdale revised the Old Testament by Münster's Latin version, which was superior to the translation by Zwingli and Leo Juda.

The Great Bible was a major success and was proclaimed for public and private use, issued to every church and purchased by many individuals. It was extremely popular and widespread, as well as being long lived, being well used even years after the release of the KJV. It was "The Great Bible" in truth, being the first English version which broke in to the common use and common homes.

1539 - Taverner's Bible - Richard Taverner created an independant revision of the Matthew Bible's New Testament, but did no original language translation, focusing on refining the English for clarity and consistency. Taverner's Bible had little influence on later Bibles.

1557 - Geneva Bible (1557, 1560, Revised in 1576) - Under renewed English persecution, English Bibles were removed from churches and it became illegal for individuals to read these translations publically or privately. This drove the translation work to Geneva, Switzerland. Wiliam Whittingham, in collaboration with Theodore Baza (and others), published his New Testament in 1557 and then the whole Bible in 1560. This was a revision of the Great Bible with the greatest changes being improvements to the Old Testament Books following II Kings. The New Testament was further revised by Laurence Tomson in 1576.

There were sereral noteworthy aspects of this very successful Bible:

Better Greek and Hebrew translation.
More conservative in notes.
Smaller paper, more legible - Roman type.
First English Bible using chapter and verse divisions.
Italics for added words for clear translation.
140 editions - published through 1617.
More popular than Bishop's Bible.
Very strong influence on KJV.

1568 - Bishops' Bible - Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, orchestrated and served as general editor for a revision of the Great Bible, assigned to different scholars by section. Most of the revisers were Bishops, hence the name. The Bible immediately replaced the Great Bible in English churches, but the translation was "uneven" and inferior to the Geneva Bible. The Bible was not nearly as popular as the Great Bible or the Geneva Bible and brought no improvements.

1582 - The Rheims and Douai (Douay-Rheims) Bible - This Bible was a Roman Catholic answer to the Protestant English Bibles. It was not translated from Greek and Hebrew, but from the Latin Vulgate, and included commentary in line with Roman Catholic theology. The New Testament was first published in 1582 (Rheims, France), the Old Testament in 1609 (Douai, France). The name, Douay-Rhimes, is from the two cities inhabited by the seminary, The English College, which created the Bible and which changed location during the development period.

The Douay-Rheims Bible is very significant within the Roman Catholic denomination and had major revisions in 1749-1752 By Bishop Richard Challoner - it is the 1749-1750 editions which comprise most modern printings and electronic copies. Also significant are a series of Dublin editions from 1783 to 1810 which was revised by Bernard MacMahon, the bulk of these revisions being to the New Testament.

The King James Bible (1611)

1604 - Commissioned - Originally commissioned by King James at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference, it was decided that for the next Bible:

The revision would be executed mainly by universities
King James would approve the list of revisors
The Bible would have no marginal commentary (no religious bias)
The revision would be approved by bishops and "most learned" of the church, and by King James

1607 - Actual Translation Project - The translation project was initiated in 1607 and took 2 years and 9 months to complete (excluding printing).

The KJV was 'officially' based on the Bishop's Bible, but all the Bibles listed above (from Tyndale to Douay-Rheims) were compared and referenced.

There were 47 translators arranged into 6 groups, 2 from each university, with each group being responsible for one section of the Bible, and all groups being responsible for the review of all completed sections. The teams were assigned passages as follows:

Westminster

Genesis thru 2 Kings
Romans thru Jude

Oxford

Isaiah thru Malachi
The Gospels, Acts, Revelation

Cambridge

I Chronicles thru Song of Solomon
The Apocrypha

1611 - Printing Completed - The initial publisher of the 1611 KJV, Robert Barker (The King's Printer), subleased the effort to two other printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill, and all three ended up printing their own editions. Additionally, by 1629, both Cambridge and Oxford universities obtained separate licenses and began printing the Bible.

In its early years the King James Version competed strongly with both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible, both of which were very popular, but the Bishops' Bible (and subsequently the KJV) had already replaced the Great Bible in churches and the Great Bible was no longer being printed (after 1606). The Geneva Bible stayed very popular over the next 50 years, but did not compete well against the KJV in terms of new printings, and was no longer printed after 1616.

The King James Version was end of the Tyndale family of Bibles and essentially the last English version to be developed for over 250 years, having finally satisfied the need of having an excellent translation based on the original languages, with literary beauty and political acceptability.

Article - Revisions to the KJV since 1611 (PDF)

200 Years later - Noah Webster and the KJV In his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), (AKA Webster's 1828 Dictionary) Webster incorporated biblical references into many definitions. This is a popular reference for KJV users as the English language has changed over time and Webster gives valuable insight into how English words were used in 1611.

Webster also publised a minor revison of the KJV, The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, in the Common Version (1833), (AKA Webster's Bible - WBT) which updated grammar and replaced obsolete words, but was not a manuscript/translation-based revision.

250 Years After the King James Version

1860 - 'A' Codex Alexandrinus (AD 400-440) - First published edit of manuscript.

1862 - 'א' Codex Sinaiticus (AD 330-360) - First published edit of manuscript.

1862 - Young's Literal Translation (YLT) Robert Young, general editor of Young's Concordance, published his literal English translation of the full Bible in 1862, with two revisions. Young used the the Masoretic Hebrew for the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus Greek for the New Testament. This translation is word-for-word literal.

1868-1881 - 'B' Codex Vaticanus (4th C.) - First published edit of manuscript.

The Beginning of the Critical Text (CT) Bibles

1881 - KJV Variorum Bible - A King James Version Bible published in 1881 which is marked inline and in footnotes to distinguish the various readings from at least 23 different manuscripts and at least 6 versions in Latin, Syrian, and Coptic, with notes from about 70 commentators. - more info

1881 - RV - English Revised a.k.a. Revised Version - The first to use the older manuscripts. The translation tended to be overly literal on a word-for-word basis and was not clearly written. It was received well into pastor's studies, but generally failed to enter common acceptance and use. Spurgeon's often quoted remark was that it was "...Strong in Greek, but weak in English."

1890 - DBY - Darby Bible - John N. Darby published an English New Testament in 1867, with revisions in 1872 and 1884 using the early Critical Texts. His work was completed by his students with an OT transalation based on Darby's French and German translations. The whole Bible was first published in 1890.

1901 - ASV - American Standard Version - Made very heavy use of the Revised Version, and was actually part of same project, but the translation was independent, being performed in America.

Prominant Modern Bibles

1946 - Revised Standard Version (RSV) Revised ASV

1971 - The Living Bible (TLB) Paraphrase of ASV

1971 - New American Standard Bible (NASB) Based on ASV, revised 1995, 2020

1978 - New International Version (NIV)

1982 - New King James (NKJV) Based on the KJV, with expanded manuscript considerations

1989 - New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) Catholic / Orthodox

1996 - New Living Translation (NLT) Planned to revise TLB, but became an independant translation

2001 - English Standard Version (ESV) Based on RSV of 1971

2001 - New English Translation (NET) 1st beta release, 2nd beta 2003, 1st edition 2006

2004 - Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

2017 - Christian Standard Bible (CSB) Major revision of the 2009 HCSB.

2024 - Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) Revision of 1995 version of NASB.