English Bible Versions
A Tercentenary Memorial of the King James Version, from the New York Bible and Common Prayer Book Society

A detailed history of the translation of the Bible into English, with particular emphasis on the influential King James Version.

Henry Barker (Author)

9781108024549, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 October 2010

388 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.49 kg

This volume was published in 1911 for the New York Bible and Common Prayer Book Society to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible. The Rev. Henry Barker, described in the preface as 'a late presbyter of this church' but about whom little is known, gives a full historical account of the manuscript origins of the Bible, the development of the biblical canon and the early efforts, made by reformers such as Wyclif in the fourteenth century and Tyndale in the sixteenth, to translate the Bible into the vernacular and thus make its content more accessible to the laity. Barker provides a clear and factual account not only of the evolution of the Bible in English but also of the background of social and political change that fostered the various early translations.

Preface
Introductory foreword
1. What the Bible is
2. A short statement as to the sixty-six books of Holy Scripture
3. The fourteen books of the Apocrypha
4. Manuscripts and versions
5. The Septuagint
6. The oldest existing Bible
7. The Vulgate
8. Quotations from early Christian writers
9. Our Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament
10. England's early efforts
11. The first English Bible
12. Revision of the Greek Text of the New Testament
13. Early printed English Bibles
14. The Council of Trent and the Authorized Bible of the Roman Church
15. Later English Bibles of the sixteenth century
16. The popular English Bible of the Roman Church
17. The Authorized Version of 1611
18. The need of further revision
19. Further revision of the Greek text of the New Testament
20. The Revised Version of 1881–1885
21. Printers' errors
22. The English Bible-Printing monopoly. The King's Printer, etc.
23. The American Standard Edition of the Revised Version
24. The Marginal Readings Bible
25. Early American versions and prints
26. The different authorities available for the various versions
27. Concluding words
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG]