This book includes three parts: (1) The World of Bible Translation Before the King James Version, (2) The Making of the King James Bible, and (3) The World of Bible Translation After the King James Version. As the subtitle of it shows, it is an anthology of 12 articles about “reflections and legacy of the King James Bible.” From this book we can get the detailed knowledge of the historical background and translation purpose of KJV as well as a variety of influences on later generations. To say nothing of English literature and philosophy, KJV had heavily influenced English speaking Jews and African Americans.
According to the authors of this book, King James I of England initiated the translation project of KJV when he led “the Hampton Court Conference” in 1604 for unity and stability in his church and state. He wanted a new Bible translation: an accurate, popular, nonsectarian, speedy, national, and authoritative translation. The translators consisted of about 50 scholars from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. They took Hebrew and Greek Bibles as their basic texts for their translation. They also frequently referred to the earlier translations such as Bishops’ Bible, Coverdale Bible, Great Bible, Geneva Bible, Matthew Bible, Rheims-Douay Bible, Wycliffite Bible, Tyndale Bible, or the like. KJV’s translation team tried to make their translation in current English as literal as they can. But “elegance was achieved by accident, rather than design”(McGrath).
This book, however, does not contains an article of textual analysis about KJV and its relations to later translations such as RV, ASV, and RSV etc. For this argument, the following books are recommended to read: Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of King James Version 1611-2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); David Norton, A History of the English Bible as Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
How about KJV’s influence on East Asian Bibles? It is deeper than we think. Chinese Bridgeman and Culbertson’s Version (1874), Japanese Meiji Translation (1888) and Korean Old Version (1911) had leaned deeply on KJV for their textual decision and selection of their diction and expressions. Let us take a few examples by Korean Bibles. New Korean Revised Version (1998)’s “mist”(Gen. 2:6) seems to come from KJV because LXX, Peshitta and Vulgate take the Hebrew “ed” as “river” or “fountain”, or the like. “Still waters”, which Korean Old Version (1911) and Korean Catholic Bible (2005) contain in Psalm 23:2, must be KJV’s term for MT’s “water in places of repose”(me menuhot). In addition, New Korean Revised Version also seems to follow KJV in 1 John 2:23 for the textual decision.