Early reception of the King James Bible

The claims of the slow acceptance of the KJV have been exaggerated, and some scholars are now debunking this myth.

Kenneth Fincham pointed out “the sheer number of editions indicates strong demand to own a copy” and speaks of “its broad acceptance by 1640” (“The King James Bible: Crown, Church and People,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume 71, Issue 1, 2020.)

Mordechai Feingold pointed out that “as in the case of any new contribution to knowledge, a phase of acculturation was required” but that “scholars and the reading public more widely began engaging seriously and approvingly with the KJV from the start” (“Birth and Early Reception of a Masterpiece: Some Lose Ends and Common Misconceptions,” Chapter 1 in Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord: Erudition and the Making of the King James Version of the Bible, Brill, 2018).

Writing of John Bunyan and John Milton using the language of the King James Bible, Hamlin and Jones say that “One mark of the KJB’s dominance over other translations at this point is its use by writers like these, who had little sympathy with King James and his Church. Thus, even for non-conformists, radicals, and dissenters, the KJB had become the English Bible.” (The King James Bible After Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences, edited by Hannibal Hamlin, Norman W. Jones, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Hamlin and Jones also point out “Although one might think that the Puritan Commonwealth would have been committed to the Bible most associated with English Puritans (the Geneva), even Oliver Cromwell now favored the KJB (printed by John Field, first Printer to Parliament and then ‘one of His Hignes [i.e. Cromwell’s] Printers’)...” Even before the end of the Commonwealth, no one was printing anything but the KJB, and its domination of the English Bible market was assured for the next 250 years.”

But let’s go back even earlier. Notice in 1618, only seven years after the publication of the new translation, the Reformed Synod of Dordt held at Dordecht, Holland (now Netherlands) speaking of the 1611 translation said “honorifica accuratissimæ translationis Anglicanæ” (that is, “the honor of mentioning the most accurate English translation”). This is a group that, according to modern animadversions, should have preferred the Geneva translation over the KJV. Only seven years – and this bible is recognized outside of England and English, by people who had no pressure to think otherwise, as the most accurate English translation.

The supposed slow reception of the translation commissioned by King James is, in my opinion, an exaggeration or myth used to attack the King James Bible (or, at least in the dreams of some of the naysayers, attack King James-Onlyists). It should be revised according to the historical facts that contradict their theme.