I am currently looking for information on how the KJV version bible was put together as well as history on King James himself who put the bible together. Could anyone assist me please? This would be greatly appreciated. Any books or websites would help.
Moriah Ruth
The King James Version is the third Authorized Version (AV) of my church, the Anglican Church. It came into being because of the petitions of a group then still affiliated with my church known as the Puritans.
The Puritans believed that the Anglican Church wasn't reformed enough. They rejected its episcopacy, sacramentalism, insistence on vesture of the clergy, and other beliefs and practices, notably kneeling at Communion.
When King James IV of Scotland inherited the throne of England after Elizabeth I's passing, being a direct descendant of Henry VII of England in two ways through Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor, the Puritans thought their prayers for a reform were answered. Scotland, unlike England, was Reformed and presbyterian; it was, after all, the home of John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian denomination. Upon his ascent to the throne of England, which united the kingdoms of Scotland and England and made him King James I of England in 1603 in March (the coronation was in July), they saw hope.
The Puritans acted quickly. In the same year, they issued the Millenary Peition, supposedly signed by 1,000 Anglican Puritan clergy (this has never been proven), that demanded that the church be reformed further: the cessation of the sign of the cross at Holy Baptism, the end of Confirmation, the end of emergency baptism by midwives, the end of the use of the ring during Holy Matrimony, the cessation of bowing at the Name of Jesus during the liturgy, the end of requiring the use of vestments, the removal of the words "priest" and "absolution" in the rubrics of the liturgy, as well as several other practices and beliefs they thought were wrong.
However, the new King of England had other ideas. The very next year, he offered his official and final decision on the subject at the Hampton Court Conference in January the next year. Very few of the Puritan requests were met to their satisfaction. The rise of Richard Bancroft, who was strongly opposed to the Puritans, to the Holy See of Canterbury (and therefore Primate of All England, the highest ecclesiastical office in the Church of England), named and consented by the king himself, only seemed to make his position even more clear. He also made it clear that all were bound by the Articles of Religion, which worried the Puritans for a larger reason: the Articles weren't absolutely Calvinist.
The Puritans may have thought that the Gunpowder Plot, the third plot against the king by a Roman Catholic or a Roman Catholic group, might have instigated a change in James I, but it didn't. The King was no idiot; he knew full well how well Anglicanism worked as a State Religion, with a single church
for all. Yes, the Popish Recusants Act of 1606 in May seemed to have pushed forward their agenda that things "Popish" needed reforming in the Church, but the King had other ideas. Like Queen Elizabeth I, all he cared was to see outward conformity. In fact, he quite tolerated "crypto-Roman Catholicism" even in his own court, and any outward-comforming-but-still-Roman Catholic who took the Oath of Allegience was given leniency. Of course, that didn't make the king a Roman Catholic, but he wanted to make sure the church remained a place where even they could outwardly conform to, and "reforming" it, as the Puritans wanted, would have derailed this.
The one thing, however, the Puritans thought they had solace in was in their petition that all Christian men and women could know God's word without intermediaries was granted...
in a way. How it was granted was in his proclamation of a new translation of the Bible to be the new official and authorized translation for ecclesiastical use in the Anglican Church, what would be called the "King James Bible." However, their solace would turn to tears:
- The King put Archbishop Richard Bancroft in charge as chief overseer of the new translation of the Bible. This would be telling, as the language used in many areas of Holy Scripture that might have agreed with the Puritans, instead agreed with the orthodox Anglican position.
- The King liked episcopacy, and accepted it for its actual historic nature of church polity. Not only was the word "bishop" used in the KJV, King James I worked to return the Scottish Kirk to its episcopacy, and to a point succeeded.
So the KJV is actually an Anglican translation with the intent of promoting Anglican polity, theology, and interpretation. It isn't Calvinistic, is largely sacramental, episcopal in polity, and enshrines the classic beliefs of Anglicanism in it, including the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, the salvific nature of Holy Baptism, and has a very high view of the authority of priests and bishops to pronounce Absolution.
Without this context, it is impossible to truly read the KJV as it would have been read by the English people of the time.
The Aftermath of this was telling: the Puritan resistance to the orthodox Anglican way of things made them drift apart. Eventually, it helped to lead to the English Civil Wars under James I's son, St. Charles I, who was like his father and emphasized even more strongly the Catholicity of the Anglican Church, particularly with his choice of Archbishop of Canterbury, St. William Laud. The Puritans schismed and had both Laud and King Charles Stuart executed for religious as well as secular reasons. Both men are considered Saints even today, and St. Charles Stuart I, King and Martyr, is the
only person post-Henry VIII to have been officially canonized in the Roman way of doing so in the Anglican Church.
