Authorized Version

The English translation of the Bible published in 1611; though not formally ‘authorized’, it was generally adopted within a generation for public reading in church. The work was initiated at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604 called by King James Ⅰ and so is known also as the King James Version. It was partly based on the translation from the original languages made by William Tyndale [[➝ Tyndale, William]] (NT in 1526) and was completed in five years by six committees of fifty-four scholars in all, meeting in Oxford, Cambridge, and the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. Early reactions to the AV were hostile: it had ‘all the disadvantages of an old prose translation’ with ‘uncouth and obsolete expressions’. But it began to be widely accepted from about 1760, and has been of enormous influence on English literature. A revision by Benjamin Blayney of Oxford in 1769 established some alterations in the text. (See translations of the Bible into modern English and textus receptus.)