re: #100 ploome hineni

While that is true, the Rheims New Testament contained only the New Testament and the Old Testament was not published in English until after the KJV. The KJV was an effort to unify the English versions of the Bible at the time. The official state version was the Bishop’s Bible done by Elizabeth around 1570. That translation in turn was done in reaction to the Geneva translation which was done in Geneva earlier. The Geneva was produced in reaction to the Greate Bible of Henry VIII that was produced from 1538-1543. The Geneva translation remained the Bible that was in competition with the official Bible of the Church of England until the attempt to unify it was done by James 1. James especially wished to wipe out all the side notes in the Geneva versions. After 1616, the Geneva version was no longer published (at least officially) in England and all new purchases had to be of the KJV. This led to a large number of Bibles being produced in the low countries that were knock-offs of the 1599 Barker version for the Puritan trade. They are usually dead giveaways because the Puritans did not want the Apocrypha in their Bibles. The real 1599 contained it. The Geneva Bible continued to be produced in the low countries until around 1650. The KJV with the Geneva side notes was produced as late as 1820.

There are other versions that kick around. Erasmus did an English Paraphrase on the New Testament and then there is the Mathew’s Bible. Both date from around 1540s. There were reprints of Tynsdale’s work and of course the Coverdale NT of 1536. The first translation into “English” actually dates from prior to the year 1000, although we would not recognize the language. The first recognizable effort is Wycliffe. There was also a redaction of the NT into the Germanic languages done by some monk or other around 800 AD. The shepherds and sheep become thanes and horses.