The King James Bible
Translators commissioned by King James I of England (1611)
“The most influential English book ever printed — a 1611 translation whose cadences shaped Milton, Bunyan, Lincoln, Melville, Faulkner, King, and Morrison, and whose phrases (scapegoat, fly in the ointment, powers that be, labour of love, salt of the earth) remain the invisible scaffolding of English prose.”
Characters in The King James Bible
by Translators commissioned by King James I of England · 1611 · 8 characters analyzed
Cast: King James I (James VI of Scotland), William Tyndale, Archbishop Richard Bancroft, Lancelot Andrewes, Miles Smith, Robert Barker, The Geneva Bible (1560), Erasmus's Greek New Testament (1516).
Character Analysis
Commissioned the translation at Hampton Court in 1604 primarily for political reasons — to suppress the anti-monarchical marginalia of the Geneva Bible and unify Protestant worship under royal authority. An intellectually serious monarch (author of Daemonologie, Basilikon Doron, and The True Law of Free Monarchies), James did not participate directly in the translation but approved Bancroft's fifteen rules and accepted the completed 1611 text. The 'King James' of the title gave the translation royal imprimatur; without it, the KJV would have been just another attempted revision.