William Tyndale's last words before his execution for heresy and treason were "Lord, open the king of England's eyes." His mission? To have an English translation of the Bible.

King James did not much like the popular Geneva Bible, whose commentary commented a little too much, he thought, on kings and what kings were allowed to do. So he told a group of translators to undertake a new translation. Bible translation was a big job and at times a dangerous one. One of the first to try it, William Tyndale in 1523, had been executed for his efforts.

In 1530, a royal proclamation condemned not only Tyndale's work, but also all other translations into English, "the vulgar tongue." Latin and Greek were considered proper tongues. It seems that English, spoken by so many today, once had a pretty bad self-esteem problem.

By King James' time two things made translations more acceptable. First, the breach between the English church and the Catholic church had widened. England's Anglican Church now decided religious matters. Its sanctioning of a translation in 1540, known as The Great Bible, was a show of power and permanence — and a snub to Rome.

Pictured here is an illustrated genealogy from Genesis, taken from an original King James Version Bible.

Second, the rapid spread of the printing press made the Bible, sanctioned or not, widely available to people who could not read Latin or English. The Geneva Bible, published in 1560, was the work of Protestant refugees who had fled England during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. It was the first Bible to divide chapters into verses and to use Roman block print rather than Gothic script. These things, and its handy size, made it very readable. The common people were not only reading it, but learning to read in order to read it.

In 1582, the Catholic Church approved a translation into English from the Latin Vulgate. This version influenced the King James, although the Bible William Tyndale had died for was an even more important influence.

But the King James Bible was a creation all of its own. Called "the noblest monument of English prose" it was a literary masterpiece. It elevated the English language to a new level and influenced many important English and American writers afterward. Walt Whitman read it steadily, more for the rhythms than for the religion.

Univ. of Michigan, Papyrus Collection

The first printed edition of the New Testament in English was the translation by William Tyndale. The Tyndale translation, published in 1525, influenced the King James Version more than all the other versions combined.

Compare this one phrase (from Isaiah liii.3), as translated in three different versions of the Bible.

• "He is such a man as hath good experience of sorrows and infirmities." -The Bishop's Bible

• "A man full of sorrows and hath experience of infirmities." -The Geneva Bible

• "A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." -The King James Bible

I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Inspiration? Or maybe it's just that the English language had finally come of age, and this Bible was the work that introduced it to high society.

BACK | LINKS | NEXT