‘CERTAIN LEARNED MEN’

‘There were many chosen that were greater in other men's eyes than in their own, and that sought the truth rather than their own praise’: this is the KJB translators' modest description of themselves. Though Bishop (soon to be Archbishop) Richard Bancroft circulated a letter from the King, sealed 22 July 1604, that states ‘we have appointed certain learned men, to the number of four and fifty’, the surviving lists give forty-seven names, divided into six companies, two each at Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge. Whatever the exact number, the translators describe it as ‘not too many, lest one should trouble another; and yet many, lest many things haply might escape them’. There are indications in the extant lists of translators that some of the companies divided their work in two; while this is not certain, I show the divisions in the following list. The brief notes give (where known) each translator's position at the time the work began, followed by significant positions held at other times, significant works and special skills or claims to fame outside of what is taken for granted with all of them, expertise in the biblical languages.