The Authorised Version of 1611 The year 2011 will mark the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Authorised Version of the English Bible in 1611. The TBS, God willing, are planning to hold a series of commemorative lectures.

The publication in 1611 of the Authorised Version marked an epoch, in the proper sense of that term, in the history of the English Bible. It was a point at which one period ended and another began. It marked the culmination of a long series of attempts to produce an accurate and reliable translation of the Scriptures in English. It began a period of supremacy, unassailed after the first thirty years of its existence, and unquestioned for two hundred years thereafter, for the translation which then saw the light. It gave to the English nation, and eventually to all the English-speaking peoples throughout the world, a most faithful and accurate version of the Scriptures, and expressed in prose so stately and splendid as to make it the greatest classic of the English tongue. For the English language, for English literature, for true Christianity, the publication of 1611 was in the fullest sense epoch-making.

The language of the Bible shaped the speech of England. The language of the Authorised Version became Bunyan's breath, so that in reading through Pilgrim's Progress, the reader becomes thoroughly acquainted with the Scriptures!

The language of the Authorized version has been called 'the noblest monument of English prose', the 'pure well of English undefiled'. It has the virtues of clarity, simplicity, and intelligibility that have characterised the mainline of English versions of the Bible since Tyndale. Its desire was that 'the Scriptures may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even by the very vulgar'. But in addition the Authorized Version has a remarkable sense of appropriateness, felicity, and effective expression. It had the instinct of genius for music and rhythm. It could discover the 'inevitable' word or phrase for a given context. Its style admirably reflected the dignity, majesty and sublimity of the original. The men who prepared the English Revised Version commended the stylistic excellence of the Authorized Version: 'we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm'. Isaacs has said: 'The Authorized Version is a miracle and a landmark. Its felicities are manifold, its music has entered into the very blood and marrow of English thought and speech…there is no corner of English life, no conversation…it has not adorned'.… The Authorized Version…was a revision prepared by gifted men in a golden age of English literature…when the English language had reached its vigorous maturity…the literary gifts which made the King James Version a truly distinguished work belonged to no one man or no one decade, but were those of an exceptional era united to produce a version of unique excellence.¹

The Authorised Version is the greatest of our national treasures. It has served as the standard English translation for almost four hundred years throughout the English-speaking world. It reads with clarity and authority. No other version has taken its place in this respect. The greatest evangelists and missionaries have used this version for their ministry, and God has blessed millions of people with the light and truth of the Gospel of Christ.

1. J. H. Skilton, ed., The Law and the Prophets: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Oswald T. Allis (Nutley, NJ, USA: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974), p. 107.