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First printed 400 years ago, the King James Bible molded the English language, buttressed the "powers that be"—one of its famous phrases—and yet enshrined a gospel of individual freedom. No other book has given more to the English-speaking world.
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For a thousand years, music and ceremony have celebrated the Christian Gospel in Westminster Abbey in London. As the place where generations of English kings and queens have been married, crowned, and buried, this great medieval building embodied King James's cherished fusion of glory and regal authority—a visual and aural richness of which the new Bible was to be an integral part.
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The 15th-century church of Rodel on the Isle of Lewis, built for the warlike chiefs of the MacLeods, towers over the sea lochs of Scotland's Outer Hebrides. Nothing in early modern Britain, from its cities to its remotest corners, was more political than religion. The church in every parish—nearly always the most imposing building—was as much a symbol of worldly control as a shrine to God.
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A life-size statue of King James dominates the most lavish room of this treasure-encrusted palace at Hatfield, north of London. Crowned and holding a sword and a scepter—symbols of his power—James is nevertheless flatteringly relaxed in his pose. Hatfield House was completed by Robert Cecil, the monarch's loyal secretary, in 1611 as the King James Bible came off the presses.
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Photographer Jim Richardson digitally "stitched" this panoramic image together from more than 12 individual images.
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Fueled by the Bible-led ideals of the Reformation, 17th-century Puritans loathed nothing more than the grandeur of "pomp-fed prelates" and other religious trappings for which there was no scriptural basis. But the English church, with the King James Bible at its core, always loved ceremony as much as the word. Here in the giant Gothic cathedral of York Minster, High Church services continue to relish "the beauty of holiness."
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A Pastoral Life
The circuit-riding Baptist minister Rome Wager breaks a horse on ranch land he leases at the southern end of the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in northern New Mexico. -
A Pastoral Life
A multiple prizewinning saddle-bronc, bull-riding, and bareback pro, Wager now bases his life on preaching the King James Bible. -
Devoted to the Book
On Bobo Hill outside Kingston, Jamaica, Rastafarians chant psalms from the King James Bible as they do every morning, facing east into the early sun. -
Devoted to the Book
They are members of the Bobo Shanti "mansion": The term comes from John 14:2, "In my Father's house are many mansions." -
Devoted to the Book
Not Christian, but believing in the divinity of Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, Rastafarians follow a strict regimen modeled on Old Testament laws. -
It's a midweek Prayer Meeting in the Church of Scotland at Leurbost on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. No image, not even a cross, is allowed in the church. The word rules alone.
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The fallow deer in the park at Knole, Kent, have looked down at the world with long-nosed lordliness since the days of King James. The deer park is a rare survival from the roughly 700 in early 17th-century England. The grandeur of this aristocratic style seeped into every corner of King James's England—and into the language used by the translators of his Bible. It was an age in which social hierarchy was considered a reflection of the divine order of the universe.
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An actress in period dress glides across the imported Italian marble floor of the Marble Hall of Hatfield House, north of London. Built in 1611 as a retreat for King James, it was designed in traditional medieval style but with luxurious 17th-century touches for King James, who aimed to be a modern monarch: paintings in gilded frames on the ceiling, rich wooden trim, and portraits on the walls. Even a white horse from the royal family stable is depicted.
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Although James I never slept at Knole House in Kent, this bed in the ancestral home of the Sackvilles is called the King's Bed. Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, converted the former medieval bishop's palace into a Renaissance mansion and deer hunting park for the King's pleasure.
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William Tyndale's New Testament sits on a King James Bible from 1611. Why so small? The size made it easier to smuggle this edition into England, where church and state law forbade the translation because of its democratic tone. Tyndale was executed for heresy in 1536, but his prose lives on. Scholars estimate that more than 90 percent of the King James New Testament is directly influenced by his work.
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Some translators of the King James Bible did research at Merton College Library at Oxford University, a world-class research facility since 1589. King James translator Henry Savile was instrumental in upgrading the library and introduced to England the European method of shelving books with spines facing outward.
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Parishioners worshipped in Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate, York, for some 500 years before they heard the Scriptures in English.
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