Happy 400th Birthday KJV

[Brother Ben]

I don't know how I let this one slip by, but this is the 400th birthday of our beloved King James Version. Darlene and I were at Wal-Mart the other day and we found a 1611 First Edition, with the archaic font and spelling on sale there for $4.97. We bought one. It is so interesting. It has all kinds of extra stuff in there. As well as the Episltle Dedicatory to his majesty, King James, it also has the VERY intersting Letter From the Translators, explaining the process they used and the great lengths they went to to bring a literal translation into the English language.

Happy Birthday KJV!

[rachel]

Thank you, Brother Ben, for mentioning this important anniversary! I was going to say something, but it seems you beat me to it.

Some quick facts and background about the King James Bible:

- King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603.

- In January 1604, he called a meeting at Hampton Court to discuss some allegations made by the Puritans that the then-current English translations of the Bible were wrought with errors and mistranslated.

- A further recommendation for a new revision of the Bible was made by a Dr John Reynolds, who was then the formost scholar of both Greek and Hebrew, the original languages of the Bible.

- On July 22, 1604, King James wrote that he had appointed 54 learned men to translate the Bible. The scholars included Anglicans, Puritans, and laymen.

- Although King James said he had appointed 54 men, the actual list has only 47.

- The scholars were divided into 6 groups and each group was given a specific portion of the scripture to translate.

- Each scholar in the group translated a chapter separately at first, and when he'd translated it and amended it and thought it was quite good, the whole group met upp and compared their translations and chose what would be used.

- Once the group had decided on their 'final' translation, they sent it off to the other groups for their opinions and input.

- The first edition of the King James Bible was printed in 1611 by Robert Barker.

- In many modern editions of the King James Bible, the preface is left out.

- Before the King James Bible was published, English-speaking Christians often had to reach the Bible in Latin since the English translations were few and difficult to come by. Naturally, not many of the English-speaking Christians could speak good Latin!

- The King James Bible was the first translation in common vernacular, which could be understood by 'even the vulgar'.

- The original title page of the King James Bible read:
"The Holy Bible, Contayning the Old Testament and the New: Newly Translated out of the Original tongues; & with former Translations diligently compared and revised by his Majesties special Commandment. Appointed to be read in Churches."

- The King James Bible is one of few translations where particular Greek and Hebrew words are translated into the same English word throughout the Bible.

- In 1613, a second edition of the King James Bible was printed, with more than four hundred variations in it. The most notable one is a printing error of the pronoun in Ruth 3:15, which was corrected in later printings.

- In 1762, Dr Thomas Paris made extensive revisions to the King James Bible, and published it at Cambridge.

- In 1769 and after about 4 years of work, Dr Benjamin Blayney published another edition at Oxford. It had many changes and modernisation of spelling, punctuation, and expression. The changes in punctuation and expression were only due to printing errors, and the only changes between the 1611 edition and the 1769 edition were the spelling of words, and we still use the 1769 version as the standard KJV today.

- The King James Bible is the only book to be in continuous print for 400 years.

[Brother Ben]

Great facts, Sister Rachel. Thanks for sharing!

[robertcolumbia]

Thanks, Sister Rachel, but I am not certain that "The King James Bible was the first translation in common vernacular, which could be understood by 'even the vulgar'." is accurate. There were several English language translations that came before the KJV, including Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible.

For those that do not have both prefaces, they are available here:

www.kjvbibles.com/kjpreface.htm

[rachel]

For anyone who's interested, there's an article about the King James Bible in the December 2011 edition of the National Geographic. It's written from a secular, non-Christian pointed of view, though, but it's on the front page.

[emilyg]

Dec 24, 2011 21:51:55 GMT -5 rachel said:

For anyone who's interested, there's an article about the King James Bible in the December 2011 edition of the National Geographic. It's written from a secular, non-Christian pointed of view, though, but it's on the front page.

Oh cool! Hubby likes this magazine a lot, I'll mention this to him!