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Without the King James Version of the Bible, one writer speculated, "There would be no Paradise Lost … no Pilgrim's Progress … no Negro spirituals, no Address at Gettysburg." Another imagined what would happen if the KJV were to suddenly disappear: "People would not know what the great [English and American] writers were talking about."

But the King James Version hasn't disappeared. Even though today there are more accurate and contemporary translations of the Bible, the KJV holds sovereign place in the English-speaking world: it continues to be printed and circulated more widely than any other version.

How did this remarkable work originate? Did King James sit down and write it, as some have imagined? In fact, it was the work of fifty-some scholars following more than two hundred turbulent years of translating the Bible into English.

English translations of portions of the Bible go back about as far as the English language itself. King Alfred the Great (d. 901) began a translation of the Psalms, and in the tenth century, the Gospels were translated into various regional dialects.

The first attempt to translate the complete Bible into English, though, is associated with fourteenth-century theologian John Wycliffe.

Toward the end of his life, Wycliffe became critical of the established church (see "The Fiery Man behind the First English Bible,"), and as a result, in 1381 he was removed from his post at Oxford University. He withdrew to the church in Lutterworth, where he was surrounded by disciples who began to translate the Bible into English, certainly under his inspiration and probably at his bidding. There is no evidence Wycliffe took part in the actual work of translation.

The church did not approve of the translation, but not primarily because it was in English. There were already English translations of parts of the Bible, and copies of the Wycliffe translation were legally owned by nobles and clergy.

The main problem was that it was the Wycliffe Bible: it was distributed by his followers (the "heretical" Lollards) and used to attack the teachings and practices of the church. In addition, the church was concerned about the effect of Bible reading upon the uneducated laity. The Bible was best left to the eyes of educated clergy, since salvation was mediated through the teachings of the church and the clergy-led sacraments.

Copies of Wycliffe's books and his Bible translation were burned, as were some of his followers. The pressure was so great, moreover, that some, like translators Nicholas of Hereford and John Purvey, recanted.

The desire for the Bible in English is shown by the many manuscripts of the Wycliffe Bible that survive—nearly 200—despite attempts by the church to destroy it and to harass people who read it.

But the Wycliffe Bible was far from perfect; it had been translated not from the original Hebrew and Greek but from the Latin translation known as the Vulgate. In 1516, with the publication of Erasmus's Greek New Testament, the time was ripe for an English translation from the original biblical languages.

Into this situation came William Tyndale. Tyndale had studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, and he had experienced firsthand the ignorance of some local clergy. To one cleric, he reportedly declared, "If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost."

Tyndale hoped to receive official patronage for this task, and in 1523, he approached Bishop Tunstall of London, a scholar and a friend of Erasmus. But with the new threat of Protestantism, the church hierarchy was not disposed to allow a vernacular translation of the Bible. Tunstall let Tyndale understand, as Tyndale later put it, "not only that there was no room in my lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England."

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