Translators commissioned by King James I of England
1 book analyzed
Biography
The King James Bible has no single author. It is the work of fifty-four scholars organized in six companies, overseen by Archbishop Richard Bancroft on the commission of King James I (reigned 1603-1625). The translators worked from 1604 to 1611, with the printed text appearing in 1611 through Robert Barker's royal press. Key figures include Lancelot Andrewes (Bishop of Winchester, led the First Westminster company translating Genesis-2 Kings; considered the finest preacher of his age); John Overall (Dean of St. Paul's, led the Second Westminster company translating 1 Chronicles-Song of Solomon); Edward Lively (Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, led the First Cambridge company until his death in 1605); John Duport (Master of Jesus College Cambridge, led the First Cambridge company after Lively); John Harmar (Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, led the Second Oxford company); Thomas Ravis (Bishop of London, led the First Oxford company); William Barlow (Bishop of Rochester, oversaw the Second Oxford company); Miles Smith (Bishop of Gloucester, one of the final revisers and author of the 1611 preface); and Thomas Bilson (Bishop of Winchester, the other final reviser). Behind all of them stands William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536), executed at Vilvoorde in Belgium for his unauthorized English translations, whose phrasing supplies roughly 83% of the KJV New Testament and 76% of the Old Testament books he lived to translate. James I himself (1566-1625; James VI of Scotland from 1567) commissioned the work but did not participate directly. James was a more intellectually engaged monarch than most — author of Daemonologie (1597) on witchcraft, The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598) on divine-right kingship, and Basilikon Doron (1599) on princely education. He saw the translation as instrument of national-religious unity and suppressed the Geneva Bible's seditious marginalia by producing a replacement without such notes. Richard Bancroft (c. 1544-1610), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1604 and organizing force behind the translation, imposed the fifteen rules that shaped the KJV's character and did not live to see the completed text — he died in November 1610, months before the 1611 printing.