In the wake of Elizabeth’s death religious uncertainty was a very real debate across the land. Elizabeth strove to assert her own authority as a monarch and strike a balance between Protestantism and Catholicism and restore stability to the country. Her father Henry had been a strong Protestant, but his predecessor Mary Tudor had taken England in a very Catholic direction. Having come to the throne as a very young woman Elizabeth was confronted with major religion volatility. However at the same time, England was experiencing the Elizabethan settlement of religion. Having clashed at times with the opinionated reformists in the wake of Scotland’s reformation in the 1560s, James became the most strong and effective King Scotland had seen for many years. Whilst there was a peaceful acceptance of James as the new English King he inherited the deep and fearful religious struggles of Elizabeth’s reign. James then travelled from Edinburgh to London to become King James I, uniting the two crowns. The result was an updated Geneva bible, published in Scotland with English text and a Scottish preface.įollowing the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, James was notified of his right to the throne by the Privy Council and was sent Elizabeth’s ring as a symbolic gesture of his claim. In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St Columba’s Church in Burntisland, Fife to argue in favour of a new translation of the Bible into English having actually translated a number of psalms himself. Whilst he was strangled to death and burned as a heretic before he could complete his translation of the Old Testament, Tynsdale’s translations became the basis for many versions to follow including the Great Bible of 1539, the first authorised edition of the Bible in English the Geneva Bible of 1560, which was produced by the English religious reformers who had fled to Geneva when the catholic Mary Tudor took to the throne, and indeed the King James Bible itself.īy the time Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, England was split between supporters of the populist Geneva Bible, the Church of England’s Bishop’s Bible – a weighty, expensive and therefore less popular reworking of the Great Bible – and the Douay-Rheims New Testament of 1582, which was produced by exiled Roman Catholics as part of a Counter Reformation. Whilst Wycliffe’s Bible, as it came to be known, may have been the earliest version of the ‘English’ Bible, it is the translation of the Hebrew and Greek biblical texts by the 16th century scholar, translator and reformist William Tyndale which became the first printed version of the New Testament in 1525, following the advent of the printing press. He passed away on 31 December 1384 as a result of a stroke suffered several days before during mass in his local parish church. Further updates were added by Wycliffe’s assistant John Purvey and other supporters in 13, after Wycliffe’s death. Often quoted as a forefather to the Protestant Reformation, Wycliffe and his followers (know as the Lollards), translated the Vulgate (the fourth century Latin version of the Bible) into English during 1382-1384. John Wycliffe, the English lay preacher, philosopher and reformist actively supported a translation of the Bible in an attempt to provide more autonomy for the Church of England.
However, whilst it is the most widely recognised version of the Bible today, the King James version is by no means the first translation of the original biblical texts. The King James Bible has long been celebrated as one of the most significant texts of all time, not only for its accessible portrayal of the Christian religion, but also for its ability to spread the English language worldwide to become the dominant global language (in both a commercial and cultural sense) that it is today. “The most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language” – 400 Years of the King James Bible, The Times Literary Supplement 9 February 2011
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