King James I of England
The Hampton Court Conference proved to be disastrous to the Puritans. All but one of their requests was rejected. The one petition of the Puritans that James granted was that a new translation of the English Bible be undertaken to settle the differences between the Geneva and the Bishops' Bibles.
James established three rules to govern the work of translation. No marginal notes were permitted except to explain the meaning of the Greek words. Ecclesiastical words such as church and priest were to be used to translate their Greek counterparts. Tyndale had never used the word church in his editions of the Bible because the word at that time only applied to those who had taken vows to the religious establishment. Tyndale used the word congregation to translate the word in the original language, thus underscoring the biblical teaching that the church includes all who have personal faith in Christ, not just those who have taken holy orders. James' third rule was that the Bishops' Bible was to be the basis of the translation and it was to be corrected only to bring it into greater conformity to the meaning of the original languages.
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However, what finally decided the issue in favor of the King James Bible had little to do with the relative merits of the two translations. After the death of King James, his son Charles I ascended to the throne. Charles appointed William Laud, who had been Bishop of London, to the see of Canterbury. One of Laud's first orders was to forbid the printing of the Geneva Bible in England to assure uniformity of Bibles. At first, this did not cause any difficulty because it was easy to procure copies from overseas. However, Laud issued an edict forbidding the importation of the Geneva Bible because it would cause economic hardship to British printers. The last printing of the Geneva Bible was done in Amsterdam in 1644.
It is an irony of history that the popularity of the King James Bible was due to political and economic reasons as much as to the quality of the translation. However, there is one further irony that exists. Another name given to the King James Bible is the Authorized Version or "A.V." However, there is no record that any official authorization was ever given to the King James Version.
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