Editing King James Version (section)

===Considerations for a new version===
The newly crowned King James convened the [[Hampton Court Conference]] in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the [[Puritan]] faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the ''Bishops'' and ''Great Bibles'':

{{blockquote|First, [[Epistle to the Galatians|Galatians]] iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word ''susoichei'' is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, [[psalm]] cv. 28 (from the [[Great Bible]]), 'They were not obedient;' the original being, 'They were not disobedient.' Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), 'Then stood up Phinees and prayed,' the [[Hebrew]] hath, 'executed judgment.'{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=433}}}}

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to use [[formal equivalence]] and limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The [[Bishop of London]] added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the ''Geneva Bible'').{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=439}} King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of [[Divine right of kings|divinely ordained royal supremacy]]:{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=434}} Exodus 1:19, where the ''Geneva Bible'' notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian [[Pharaoh]] showed by the [[Shiphrah and Puah|Hebrew midwives]], and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the ''Geneva Bible'' had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous 'mother', Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa's grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother [[Mary, Queen of Scots]]).{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=434}}

Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the [[ecclesiology]] of the Church of England.{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=439}} Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church.{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=439}} For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word "church" were to be retained and not to be translated as "congregation".{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=439}} The new translation would reflect the [[episcopal polity|episcopal]] structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about [[ordained]] clergy.{{sfn|Daniell|2003|p=439}}

The source material for the translation of the New Testament was the [[Textus Receptus]] version of the Greek compiled by [[Erasmus]]; for the Old Testament, the [[Masoretic]] text of the Hebrew was used; for some of the [[Biblical apocrypha#King James Version|apocrypha]], the [[Septuagint]] Greek text was used, or for apocrypha for which the Greek was unavailable, the [[Vulgate]] Latin.

James' instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and readers. The text of the [[Bishops' Bible]] would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops' Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the [[Tyndale Bible]], the [[Coverdale Bible]], [[Matthew's Bible]], the [[Great Bible]], and the [[Geneva Bible]]. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of [[Taverner's Bible]] and the New Testament of the [[Douay–Rheims Bible]].{{sfn|Bobrick|2001|p=328}} A recent estimate is that 84% of the New Testament in the KJV is word-for-word identical to the Tyndale Bible, and 76% of the Old Testament.<ref name="NielsonSkousen1998">{{cite journal |last1=Nielson |first1=Jon |last2=Skousen |first2=Royal |title=How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale's? An Estimation Based on Sampling |journal=Reformation |date=1998 |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=49-74 |doi=10.1179/ref_1998_3_1_004}}</ref>

It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been "translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special commandment." As the work proceeded, more detailed rules were adopted as to how variant and uncertain readings in the Hebrew and Greek source texts should be indicated, including the requirement that words supplied in English to 'complete the meaning' of the originals should be printed in a different type face.{{sfn|Norton|2005|p=10}}