King James Bible – 400th Year of the King James Bible Graced by the Queen

King James Bible, the original version of the Bible, is celebrating its 400th year.

The 400th year anniversary celebration of the King James Bible (KJV) was attended by no less than England’s Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles at the Westminster Abbey, London, on Nov. 16. The first edition of the King James Bible was published in 1611.

2000 worshippers attended last Wednesday’s service where early editions of the King James Bible were presented at the altar.

Dr Williams told the congregation the translators would have been “baffled and embarrassed” by the idea of a perfect translation but had sought instead to convey the “almost unbearable weight of divine intelligence and love” into the English language.

According to the Wikipedia, the translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611, the year it was released. First printed by the King’s Printer Robert Barker, this was the third official translation into English; the first having been the Great Bible commissioned by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII, and the second was the Bishop’s Bible of 1568. In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans, a faction within the Church of England.

James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek and Latin. In the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible – for Epistle and Gospel readings – and as such was authorized by Act of Parliament. By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and Protestant churches. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars.

Earlier this year, Zondervan released The Holy Bible: 1611 King James Version 400th Anniversary Edition as a partial replica (the Apocrypha being excluded and it was scaled down from its original size) of the original Authorized Version as it was released in 1611, to mark the 400th anniversary of its 1611 completion. Digital images from the Bible Museum in Goodyear, Arizona were used to produce this work. Also in 2011, King James Bible Society released The King James Audio Visual Bible: 400th Anniversary Free Download Edition.

Also this year, Collins (part of HarperCollins UK) published the King James Bible: 400th Anniversary edition of the book that changed the world, a paperback edition of the KJV, and the Illustrated Bible: King James Version, illustrated with 400 years of Biblical art, which included plate sections featuring the greatest Biblical artwork of the last four centuries, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.