Winston Churchill on the History of the KJV

At this time a splendid and lasting monument was created to the genius of the English-speaking peoples. All the Puritan demands had been rejected, but towards the end of the Hampton Court conference a Puritan divine, Dr John Reynolds, President of the Oxford College of Corpus Christi, had asked, seemingly on the spur of the moment, if a new version of the Bible could be produced. The idea appealed to James.

Till now the clergy and laity had relied on a number of different translations — Tyndal’s, Coverdale’s, the Geneva Bible, the “Bishop’s Bible” of Queen Elizabeth. Their texts varied. Some were disfigured by marginal notes and glosses upholding and advocating partisan interpretations of Scripture and extremist theories of ecclesiastical organisation. Each party and sect used the version which best suited its own views and doctrines. Here, thought James, was the chance to rid the Scriptures of propaganda and produce a uniform version which could be entrusted to all.

Within a few months committees or “companies” were set up, two each in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, comprising in all about fifty scholars and divines. They were selected for this work without regard to their theological or ecclesiastical bias. Directions were issued with speed. Each committee was assigned a portion of the text, and their draft was to be scrutinised by all the other committees and finally revised by a committee of twelve. Tendentious renderings were forbidden, and marginal notes or glosses were prohibited except for cross-references or to explain the meaning of Greek or Hebrew words which were difficult to translate.

About three years passed in preliminary research, and the main work did not get under way till 1607, but it was then accomplished with remarkable swiftness. In an age without an efficient postal service or mechanical methods of copying and duplicating texts, the committees, though separated by considerable distances, finished their task in 1609. Nine months sufficed for the scrutiny of the supervisory committee, and in 1611 the Authorised Version of the Bible was produced by the King’s Printer. 

It won an immediate and lasting triumph. Copies could be bought for as little as five shillings, and even with the inflated prices of to-day can still be purchased for this sum. It superseded all other versions. No new revision was deemed necessary for nearly three hundred years. In the crowded emigrant ships which sailed to the New World of America there was little room for baggage. If the adventurers took books with them they took the Bible, Shakespeare, and later The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible they mostly took was the Authorised Version of King James I.

About ninety million complete copies are thought to have been published in the English language alone. It has been translated into more than seven hundred and sixty tongues. The Authorised Version is still the most popular in England and the United States. This may be deemed James’s greatest achievement, for the impulse was largely his. The Scottish pedant built better than he knew. The scholars who produced this masterpiece are mostly unknown and unremembered. But they forged an enduring link, literary and religious, between the English-speaking peoples of the world. 

Source: Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 2, The New World, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1956, pp. 152-154 [read online]