Editing King James Version (section)

====Sources====
The translators appear to have otherwise made no first-hand study of ancient manuscript sources, even those that—like the [[Codex Bezae]]—would have been readily available to them.{{sfn|Scrivener|1884|p=59}} In addition to all previous English versions (including, and contrary to their instructions,{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=440}} the ''[[Douay–Rheims Bible|Rheimish New Testament]]''{{sfn|Bois|Allen|Walker|1969|p=xxv}} which in their preface they criticized), they made wide and eclectic use of all printed editions in the original languages then available, including the ancient [[Peshitta|Syriac New Testament]] printed with an interlinear Latin gloss in the [[Plantin Polyglot|Antwerp Polyglot of 1573]].{{sfn|Bobrick|2001|p=246}} In the preface the translators acknowledge consulting translations and commentaries in Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.{{sfn|KJV Translators to the Reader|1611|}}

The translators took the Bishops' Bible as their source text, and where they departed from that in favour of another translation, this was most commonly the Geneva Bible. However, the degree to which readings from the Bishops' Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company, as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own. John Bois's notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of versions and [[patristic]] sources, including explicitly both [[Henry Savile (Bible translator)|Henry Savile]]'s 1610 edition of the works of [[John Chrysostom]] and the Rheims New Testament,{{sfn|Bois|Allen|Walker|1969|p=118}} which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes.