Influences on the Authorized Version (KJV)

I recently was able to borrow the book A General View of the History of the English Bible by Brooke Foss Westcott. The copy I have is nearly a century old, though it is a reprint. The first edition by Westcott was published in 1868, his second edition in 1872 (with a revision by William Aldis Wright in 1905) while my copy lists itself as 1927 by The Macmillan Company of New York.

It contains a section regarding influences on the Authorized Version, the bulk of which is long lists of verses demonstrating how the various earlier translations, which the AV translators consulted, influenced the translation of the AV. Interspersed throughout the details, however, are some helpful summaries, some of which I reproduce here in excerpts:

Thus [(following a discussion of the Spanish, French, and Italian translations consulted by the translators)] King James' revisers were will furnished with external helps for the interpretation of the Bible, and we have already seen that they were competent to deal independently with questions of Hebrew and Greek scholarship. Like the earlier translators they suffered most from the corrupt from in which the Greek text of the New Testament was presented to them. But as a whole their work was done most carefully and honestly. It is possible to point out inconsistencies of rendering and other traces of compromise, but even in the minutest details the translation is that of a Church and not of a party. It differs from the Rhemish Version in seeking to fix an intelligible sense on the words rendered: it differs from the Genevan Version in leaving the literal rendering uncoloured by any expository notes. And yet it is most worth of notice that these two Versions, representing as they do the opposite extremes of opinion, contributed most largely of all to the changes which the revisers introduced. (pages 256-257)

In the Historical, and even in the Poetical books, it is far less divergent from the Bishop' Bible. In the Apocrypha it is, as far as I can judge, nearer to the Bishop's Bible than to the Genevan, but marked by many original changes. (262)

The revision of the New Testament was a simpler work than that of the Old, and may be generally described as a careful examination of the Bishop's Version (1572) with the Greek text, and with Beza's, the Genevan and the Rhemish Versions. Examples of words derived from the Rhemish Version have been given already. (266):

The chief influence of the Rhemish Version was on the vocabulary of the revisers, that of Beza and the Genevan Version on the interpretation. But still our revisers exercise an independent judgment both in points of language and construction. Thus in the latter respect they often follow Beza, rightly and wrongly, when the Genevan Versions do not; and again they fail to follow him where these had rightly adopted his rendering. . . .On the other hand the Authorised Version retains (by no means unfrequently) the old rendering of the Great Bible when it had been rightly corrected from Beza in the Genevan revisions. (269)

This analysis, in which I have endeavoured to include all the variations introduced into the Authorised Version, will shew better than any description the watchful and far-reaching care with which the revisers fulfilled their work. No kind of emendation appears to have been neglected, and almost every change which they introduced was an improvement. They did not in every case carry out the principles by which they were generally directed; they left many things which might have been wisely modified, they paid no more attention than was commonly paid in their time to questions of reading; but when every deduction is made for inconsistency of practice and inadequacy of method, the conclusion yet remains absolutely indisputable that their work issued in a version of the Bible better--because more faithful to the original--than any which had been given in English before. (274)

I provide these excerpts to show that the Authorized Version was influenced by previous translations. Among these were the Geneva Bible, which was popular among the Calvinists of the Reformation, and the Bishops Bible, produced by the Church of England in response to the Geneva Bible. The "Rhemish version" refers to the New Testament of the Douay-Rheims work, which was meant to be a direct translation from the Latin Vulgate into English. (I have heard that the influence of this version is controversial, but I am not willing to make a private judgment.)

I do not think that this is any great historical secret, but rather imagine that this is not something typically considered by those who continue to rely regularly on the King James Version. I point this out for two reasons. One reason is to suggest that if one is truly to have a good understanding of King James Version, and why the translators render verses the way that they did, one should become acquainted with the various earlier translations consulted by and available to the translators.

The other reason is to emphasize that the Authorized Version was not a translation produced in an intellectual vacuum, but rather was indebted to a variety of earlier work. And so I think it is more consistent to view the AV as an "improvement" (as Westcott puts it) over previous English versions, and part of the ever continuing quest to produce better and more accurate translations in our native tongue, rather than the final and ultimate English translation, from which no modern translation is allowed to differ significantly.