Introduction

The text of the KJB is commonly thought to be the fixed and stable work of one collection of translators. This is not the case. First, as the translators recognised, it is a revision of earlier work. In the Preface, they declare:

The KJB, first printed in 1611 by the King's Printer Robert Barker, is the culmination of a sequence of work begun by William Tyndale and continued by Miles Coverdale, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops' Bible and the Rheims New Testament (to name only the chief predecessors). Second, the development of the text did not stop with the publication of the translators' work in 1611. Changes — sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental, some for the better, some not — were made in subsequent printings by the King's Printer. From 1629 on, editorial work on the text began to be a major factor in creating the texts that we have today: the spelling was modernised, changes were made in the translation, and the punctuation was revised. Most of the changes were made by 1769, but work of this sort has never quite ceased.