The Story of Our King James Bible

Other early editions

There were 2 exceptions to Barker’s monopoly

• The University of Cambridge

• The University of Oxford• Cambridge was the first to

compete with the King’s printer (Robert Barker)

There was some legal wrangling• In 1534, Henry VIII had

granted a charter to Cambridge to print

• But in 1623 the king’s privy council refused permission to Cambridge to print Bibles

• With the ascension of Charles the I (1628), he restored the 1534 charter

The first Cambridge edition was published in 1629• It was much higher

quality than Barker’s• It made 200+ changes

to the text

• Many of these changes standardized names– The 1611 used “Sem,” and

“Shem,” “Caldees,” and “Chaldees,” for example

• Most of the other changes dealt with grammar: singular and plural forms of words– Song of Solomon 4.6 had

mountains, and hill– The Cambridge made both

singular

The only revision of a verse…• Is Job 4.6• Which was redrafted 3

times• Until the form in which we

have it, which dates to the second Cambridge edition, 1638– Which is viewed as the best

Bible of the 17th century Bibles

– With the exception of Acts 6.3, in which “ye” was changed to “we”

Oxford obtained permission in 1632• But accepted payments in

lieu of printing for 40 years

• So the first Oxford Bible wasn’t printed until 1673

• The 1679 Oxford used an unusual dating system: ”anno mundi”-numbering years consecutively from creation.

• In 1701 the chronology changed again: James Ussher’s was used

• He dated creation as Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC (on the Calendar then in use)

• By 1683 Oxford was the largest printer of Bibles in England

The reception of the KJV• Puritans were generally

happy, but disliked the Apocrypha

• In the early 17th century, Bishop’s Bibles were replaced with KJV’s in Churches

• Opposition to the KJV generally took the form of buying another translation-Geneva

• After 1644 it was no longer printed or imported

The Civil war (1649) saw little impact• Some KJV’s were printed

with Geneva’s notes• There was a

Parliamentary call for a revision of the KJV– Some wanted to review the

translation– Others wanted to deal with

the misprinted editions– Nothing ever came of it

By 1660 (the Restoration)

• Most attacks on the KJV had ended

• All the Protestant factions accepted it