On February 10, 1604, the king ordained that the whole Bible be translated, as much as possible from the Hebrew and Greek, and that this version was the one to be used in all churches during services. He further desired that no marginal notes be made, as he found those in the Geneva version "partiall, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and trayterous conceits." Within six months, King James had approved the list of translators and was urging the work forward. Six committees of translators were formed, consisting of a total of 54 men. Two committees each met at Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster. To the Oxford groups were entrusted the Gospels, Acts, and Apocalypse, plus the Prophets ("Great" and "Lesser") and Lamentations. Cambridge got the historical books of the Old Testament from Chronicles through Ecclesiastes, plus the Apocrypha. Westminster got the Pentateuch, the historical books of the Old Testament from Joshua through Second Kings, plus the Epistles. The translators acted under an express set of rules; chief among these was the injunction to follow the Bishops' version as much as possible. Other rules concerned names (those in "vulgar usage" were to be retained), ecclesiastical terms (the old were to be retained, e.g. "church" not to be translated "congregation") and words of multiple meanings (the Ancient Fathers's understanding was to prevail). Chapter divisions were to remain intact as far as possible, and marginal notes were to be confined to explanations of Hebrew and Greek terms or to link one passage to another. Each committee had to send their finished version to the others for review; final differences would be resolved at a General Meeting of the chief representatives of each committee. The list of rules asked all Bishops to get input from such clergy as were "skilful in the Tongues" and forward their observations to the committees. It also listed the versions that could be used when they agreed with the "original tongues" better than the Bishops' version: Tyndale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, "Whitchurch's" (Whitchurch was the printer closely associated with the "Great" Bible) and the Geneva. Some time in 1607 the whole proceeding was set in motion. Nearly four years were spent in the efforts; in 1610, six men from each committee were sent to London to make the final determinations and commit the work to the presses. The final revision took nine months; their "baby" was finally delivered to the Company of Stationers (the printers' guild). It was first printed in a "Black Letter" folio in 1611. The King James Version welds the best of the previous versions into a unified whole: the vigorous and crusty expressions of Tyndale, the musical phrases of Coverdale, the accurate and thoughtful translations of the Genevas with numerous new passages that reflect the repetitive nature of the Hebrew originals (e.g. "to die the death"). In a sense, the King James Version did not so much re-invent the Bible as reinforce the English versions which were already familiar and beloved throughout the land. The translators were scrupulous, and used every major Greek, Latin, and Hebrew text they could find, including the diglot produced by Coverdale in 1535 and polyglots such as Plantin's of 1572 (an interlinear Hebrew-Latin portion was a useful "crib" for the translators).
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