The King James Bible translation was above all a collaboration. The four dozen translators, who included many of the nation’s leading scholars, worked and met in committees for years at Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey. Along the way, they carefully compared their work with several previous English translations as well.

The massive final manuscript they produced strained the resources of the king’s printer, Robert Barker. In the end, the potentially cumbersome, many-handed translation process and laborious printing task produced the best-known printed Bible in the English language.

David Loggan. Cantabrigia illustrata. Cambridge, 1675. Folger Shakespeare Library.

David Loggan. Cantabrigia illustrata. Cambridge, 1675. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Oxford translator Sir Henry Savile. Copyright The Weiss Gallery, London.

Oxford translator Sir Henry Savile.
© The Weiss Gallery, London.

Jerusalem Chamber, looking north, as it appears today. Westminster Abbey. Copyright Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey. © Dean and Chapter of Westminster.


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