Harry Ransom Center Finding Aid

Primary Resources for Manifold Greatness

The King James Bible is a landmark text in a specifically English history of language, national identity, and culture. Its story, however, can also be placed among other efforts to translate the Bible into other European vernacular languages before and during the Reformation. The King James Bible also provides a context for the subsequent expansion and dissemination of biblical translation throughout the world.

The three sections of this finding aid are accessible through the links at right. The first and second sections offer researchers the opportunity to study the King James Bible and earlier English Bibles important to its history, many of which are described elsewhere in this website.

The third section of primary resources relates to the broader geographic and temporal context of the King James Bible in world history. Sources in this section illuminate vernacular Bible translation in the rest of Europe during this period. They include French, Italian, and Spanish Bibles, suppressed at various times during the Reformation; a German Bible published in Zurich in 1530, which adapted Martin Luther’s translation for use in Switzerland; the first Welsh translation of the New Testament published in 1567, which would play a critical role in the survival of the Welsh language; and the first single-volume Bible in Irish. They also trace seventeenth-century missionary efforts beyond Europe and America, when translating the Bible for missionary work was still a new and particularly Protestant endeavor, and the activities and influence of nineteenth-century mission and Bible societies as they began to flourish throughout the globe.

As material artifacts, these sources embody a wealth of information about their makers and owners. The finding aid contains both Bibles printed in England and those printed locally in the mission field, offering opportunities to compare the ways in which books’ physical dissimilarities indicate deeper differences in function and significance. Bindings, marks of ownership, and other annotations further reveal their cultural histories.

This finding aid does not include the Harry Ransom Center’s collection of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin manuscript and printed Bibles, its holdings of early modern works about religion, or its twentieth-century biblical materials. To view holdings in these areas, please see the Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts Finding Aid at the Harry Ransom Center website and the University of Texas Libraries Catalog.