King James Version

The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I.^[d] The 80 books of the King James Version^[4] include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.

Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.^[5][6] The King James Version remains the preferred translation of many Protestant Christians, and is considered the only valid one by some Evangelicals. It is considered one of the important literary accomplishments of early modern England. The KJV 1611 is a 17th-century translation and thus contains a large number of archaisms and false friends—words that contemporary readers may think they understand but that actually carry obsolete or unfamiliar meanings—making understanding the text difficult for modern readers, even pastors and preachers trained in formal theological institutes.^[7]

The KJV was the third translation into English approved by the Church of England. The first had been the Great Bible in 1535, and the second had been the Bishops' Bible in 1568.^[8] Meanwhile in Switzerland the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible^[9] which was published in 1560^[10] which proved more popular among the laity. However, the footnotes represented a Calvinistic Puritanism that was too radical for James.

James convened the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, where a new English version was conceived in response to the problems of the earlier translations perceived by the Puritans,^[11] a faction of the Church of England.^[12] James gave translators instructions intended to ensure the new version would conform to the ecclesiology, and reflect the episcopal structure, of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.^[13][14] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament from Hebrew and Aramaic, and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin.^[15]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version had become effectively unchallenged as the only English translation used in Anglican and other English Protestant churches, except for the Psalms and some short passages in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Over the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English-speaking scholars. With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha. Today the unqualified title "King James Version" usually indicates this Oxford standard text.

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