Happy 400th!

Today is the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible.

Due in part to the Reformation and other church movements, this translation was initiated in 1604 and completed in 1611. Here is an abbreviated timeline. The Roman-Catholic Church exerted its force on the Protestant Churches as they pushed for an English Bible. Finally, the Roman-Catholic Church succumbed to the will of people, and the Roman-Catholic Church created what is considered by many to be a corrupt English translation from the Latin-Vulgate Bible. This was done in the 15th century, and a few other versions occurred were generated too. With the end of Queen Mary's reign and then the death of Queen Elizabeth, Prince James VI of Scotland became King, and the Protestant Clergy approached him to set a new translation into motion. This translation examined multiple versions, including The Tyndale New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even the Rheims New Testament (which is the Roman-Catholic version formerly mentioned). Here we have the King James Bible.

Many Protestants today are unaware that the Geneva Bible preceded the King James Bible and was the prominent Bible in the Protestant Church prior to the KJV and for a while following the KJV. This is especially interesting because while the Geneva Bible is 95% the same as the KJV, it is void of contamination by the supposedly tainted Roman-Catholic translation.
Another interesting factoid is the original KJV contained the Apocrypha - 80 books instead of 66. According to my research, there is no widely accepted reason issued by the Protestant Church for the removal of the Apocrypha in the 1880s. Through this time period, a more literal, direct translation was generated - the NASV (New American Standard Version or NAS or NASB). While this is considered by many scholars to be the most popular, the NIV was generated in 1971 to flow with more ease in the English conversation language.

In commemoration of the 400th anniversary, YouVersion.com has arranged the reading of the entire Bible in 400 seconds. To read more, click here.