The King James Bible
As the end neared for the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603), within Parliament a draft is drawn up under an Act of Parliament for the sole purpose of a new version of the Bible: "An act for the reducing of diversities of bibles now extant in the English tongue to one settled vulgar translated from the original." The resulting (Authorized) King James Version is an English translation of the Bible from the original languages (Hebrew and Greek) begun in 1604 and first published in 1611 by the Church of England. No book has had greater influence on the English language or on the English character. For the next three hundred years the majority of English men and women heard it read aloud Sunday after Sunday and, until within living memory, a very large proportion of people read the Bible with steady, life-long devotion in their own homes. And this great quality was carried to America, where its influence has hardly been less. All antique family Bibles published before 1881 are exclusively in the Authorized or King James translation.