50 Fun Facts About King James Bible

The 1631 'Wicked Bible', a King James printing, left the word 'not' out of the commandment against what?

Adultery became an order rather than a sin, and the printers were hauled before the Star Chamber, fined £300 and stripped of their licence.

Which legendary creature is named in the King James Old Testament where modern translations say 'wild ox'?

Unicorn was the translators' choice because the older Greek and Latin Bibles used words meaning one-horned; the animal meant was probably the aurochs, a huge wild bull.

A long-running legend claims which playwright hid his name in the King James translation of Psalm 46?

William Shakespeare is the name the legend finds in the psalm's words 'shake' and 'spear', though scholars doubt it because committees agreed the wording.

Which NASA mission's crew read the King James opening of Genesis from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968?

Apollo 8 carried the first humans to orbit the Moon, and Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman took turns reading the first ten verses during a television broadcast.

In A Charlie Brown Christmas, which Peanuts character recites the King James account of the first Christmas from Luke?

Linus drops his security blanket mid-speech, and creator Charles Schulz insisted on keeping the Bible reading despite his producers' worries about religion on television.

Which Christian festival does the King James Bible name at Acts 12:4, where newer versions say 'Passover'?

Easter is the feast King Herod waits out in this verse before bringing the imprisoned Peter before the people; the commentator Albert Barnes called the word choice absurd.

The shortest verse in the King James Bible is two words long and describes Jesus doing what?

Weeping is all the verse records, on the way to the tomb of his friend Lazarus, a few lines before Jesus calls the dead man out of the grave.

Which word does the King James Bible use in 1 Corinthians 13 where most modern translations say 'love'?

Charity is named the greatest of three lasting virtues at the chapter's close, ranked above both faith and hope.

King James, who ordered the 1611 Bible, had already ruled which country since infancy before taking the English throne?

Scotland made him James VI at just thirteen months old, after his mother was forced to abdicate, so he had worn a crown for decades before England's passed to him in 1603.

In the King James Book of Job, Job says he has escaped with the skin of which body part?

Teeth give the verse its lasting idiom: Job, his bones clinging to his skin, says he has got away with almost nothing, and the phrase now means a narrow escape.

King James, sponsor of the 1611 Bible, inherited the English throne from which childless Tudor cousin?

Elizabeth I died in March 1603 with no heir of her own, and within a year her successor had called the church conference that launched the new translation.

Which president's 1861 inauguration Bible, a King James edition, was later used by Barack Obama to take the oath?

Abraham Lincoln never owned the book: it belonged to a Supreme Court clerk, went back to him after the ceremony, and reached the Library of Congress in 1928.

In the King James Isaiah 40:15, the nations are compared to a single drop of what household container?

Bucket is the word, and the full 1611 phrase is 'a drop of a bucket': the same verse goes on to weigh whole nations as the small dust on a set of scales.

In the King James Jeremiah 13:23, which animal cannot change its spots, just as wrongdoers cannot change their ways?

Leopard shares the verse with an Ethiopian who cannot change his skin, the prophet's twin pictures of people too accustomed to doing evil to start doing good.

Which dead insects spoil the apothecary's ointment in a King James verse that gave English a phrase for a small flaw?

Flies make the perfumer's ointment stink in the verse, just as a little folly taints a reputation for wisdom, and 'a fly in the ointment' now means any hidden drawback.

According to the King James wording of 1 Timothy 6:10, the love of what is the root of all evil?

Money itself is not condemned: the verse blames the love of it, and adds that those who coveted riches pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

The King James Psalm 23, known for its valley of the shadow of death, opens by calling the Lord a what?

Shepherd sets up the whole psalm, and the image returns in the dark valley, where a rod and a staff are what comfort the walker.

In the King James Proverbs 16:18, what 'goeth before destruction', while a haughty spirit comes before a fall?

Pride leads to destruction in the actual verse; the popular saying squeezes two lines into one and has it going before a fall instead.

The King James Book of Jonah never says 'whale': it says the prophet was swallowed by a great what?

Fish is the word in Jonah 1:17, where the prophet spends three days and three nights in its belly; the whale comes from the King James wording of Matthew 12:40.

Which verse, often written on signs by evangelists, says in King James wording that God 'gave his only begotten Son'?

John 3:16 became the most popular online search term for more than a day after quarterback Tim Tebow wore the reference on his eye black in a 2009 college title game.

In the King James phrase 'the quick and the dead', used of those Christ will judge, what does 'quick' mean?

Alive is the old sense, and it survives in quicksand, which moves, in quicksilver, and in being 'cut to the quick', down to the sensitive tissue.

Which word for someone who takes the blame comes from a Day of Atonement ritual in the King James Leviticus 16?

Scapegoat names the second of two goats in the ritual: one was sacrificed, while the other was sent off into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people.

At which royal palace beside the Thames did King James agree in January 1604 to a new translation of the Bible?

Hampton Court got the conference by accident: it had been planned for November 1603, until an outbreak of plague forced a delay and a change of venue.

Which English translation, made by Protestant exiles and loved by Puritans, did King James dislike for its notes?

Geneva Bible notes struck the king as partial, untrue and seditious, so his own translators were told to keep commentary out of the margins.

The King James translators worked in six companies based at Westminster, Oxford and which other English city?

Cambridge was home to two of the six companies, and its university went on to print its own editions of the text in 1629 and 1638.

What name is given to the section of books that the 1611 King James Bible printed between its two Testaments?

Apocrypha books numbered fourteen in 1611, lifting the first edition to 80 books in all; most King James Bibles printed today leave the section out.

By what other name, the usual one in Britain, is the King James Bible widely known?

Authorized Version is a title without paperwork: the Privy Council records for 1600 to 1613, which probably held the order, were destroyed by fire.

From which ancient language did the King James translators render most of the Old Testament, using the Masoretic Text?

Hebrew scholars handled the Old Testament, while the New Testament companies worked from printed Greek editions and the books in between came from Greek and Latin.

A 1613 King James printing became notorious for naming which disciple in place of Jesus at Matthew 26:36?

Judas, not Jesus, tells the others to sit while he goes away to pray in that edition, and one surviving copy has a slip of paper glued over the mistake.

A 1717 Oxford King James Bible misprinted 'vineyard' in a heading as which word, giving the edition its nickname?

Vinegar replaced the vineyard in the heading over Luke 20, and the printer John Baskett made so many other slips that a reviewer called the edition a Baskett full of errors.

In King James English 'thou' addresses one person; which pronoun is the subject form for addressing several?

Ye marks the plural, a distinction the translators kept on purpose to match the original languages, even though everyday speech had already drifted towards 'you'.

Which King James book, voiced by 'the Preacher', declares that there is no new thing under the sun?

Ecclesiastes opens with 'vanity of vanities; all is vanity', and its world-weary speaker introduces himself as the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

In the King James Lord's Prayer at Matthew 6:12, believers ask God to forgive their what, often said as 'trespasses'?

Debts is the wording in Matthew, and the familiar 'trespasses' may echo the verses straight after the prayer, where Jesus speaks of forgiving people their trespasses.

Which name appears in the King James Isaiah 14:12, where modern translations say 'morning star' or 'day star'?

Lucifer is the Latin name for the planet Venus at dawn, and the verse taunted a king of Babylon long before tradition turned it into a name for the devil.

Which form of God's name appears only seven times in the 1611 King James Bible, which usually prints 'the LORD'?

Jehovah appears at Exodus 6:3, where God tells Moses that the patriarchs knew him as God Almighty but never by this name.

Which translator, strangled and burned for heresy in 1536, wrote much of the wording the King James New Testament kept?

William Tyndale made the first printed English New Testament, and the 1611 translators leaned on it so heavily that estimates of his share of theirs run as high as 84 percent.

In the King James phrase 'through a glass, darkly' from 1 Corinthians 13, the 'glass' is which everyday object?

Mirror is what modern translations print, and the verse sets its dim reflection against the promise of one day seeing 'face to face'.

Which Renaissance scholar compiled the printed Greek New Testament that lies behind the King James Version?

Erasmus reached the bookshops first, in 1516: a rival Spanish polyglot had been printed two years earlier but was not released until 1522.

The first King James Bible of 1611 was printed in which large book format, made for church lecterns rather than homes?

Folio sheets are folded just once, giving the biggest pages, and the 1611 volume was meant for public use rather than private devotion.

Which Puritan scholar, president of an Oxford college, proposed the new translation to King James in 1604?

John Rainolds then joined the work himself, serving in the Oxford company that was assigned the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi.

Which churchman, whose brother Roger was also a translator, headed the King James team for Genesis to 2 Kings?

Lancelot Andrewes was the first name on the list of appointed translators, and he went on to hold three sees in turn: Chichester, Ely and Winchester.

Which Archbishop of Canterbury was 'chief overseer' of the King James Bible but died the year before it was published?

Richard Bancroft insisted on having the final say, making fourteen further changes of his own once the committees had agreed their text.

The two 1611 printings of the King James Bible are nicknamed 'He' and 'She' after a differing pronoun in which book?

Ruth 3:15 ends 'he went into the city' in the first printing and 'she went into the city' in the second, which is how the two are told apart.

Which Oxford scholar edited the 1769 edition that most King James Bibles in print still follow almost unchanged?

Benjamin Blayney standardised spelling and punctuation so thoroughly that his text differs from the 1611 original in around 24,000 places.

Which King's Printer issued the first King James Bible in 1611 but was ruined by its cost and died in prison?

Robert Barker owed the royal privilege of printing Bibles to his father Christopher, yet he sank so much into the new edition that he had to sub-lease it to two rivals.

The 1611 King James Bible was set in which heavy Gothic typeface, rather than the roman type used today?

Blackletter carried the main text, while small roman type picked out the words the translators had supplied, a job that italics took over in later editions.

Which American publisher released the New King James Version in 1982, a modern-English update of the 1611 text?

Thomas Nelson billed the result as scrupulously faithful to the original yet truly updated to enhance its clarity and readability.

What was the first officially sanctioned British update of the King James Bible, issued between 1881 and 1894?

Revised Version scholars made more than 30,000 changes in the New Testament alone, over 5,000 of them to follow Greek manuscripts they judged better.

Which 1568 Church of England translation were the King James translators told to follow as their primary guide?

Bishops' Bible copies were specially printed unbound, forty of them, so that each committee could record its agreed changes in the margins.

In the King James Genesis, who asks God whether he is his 'brother's keeper' after a killing in a field?

Cain had just killed his brother Abel, and God's reply is that Abel's blood cries out to him from the ground.