Before those were the Wycliffe and Tyndale bibles.
Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating and distributing his English bible.
Wycliffe died a natural death but the Catholic church dug up his bones many years later and burned them as a heretic.
History of the English bible is fascinating.
You can see God's hand in all of it.
Yeah, thanks for that - I mentioned in a previous post that there was already 400 years of English Bible history. There were several other translations as well.
The first King James Version was chained to every Anglican lecturn and in certain libraries. It was exposed to all residents of England such as no copy of scripture ever was exposed to the citizens.
The Geneva was a very acceptable version to many evangelicals, but it was not readily distributed to the public.
Even to-day, I see more KJV's sitting on people's sideboards than any other version. They may never open them, but they sit there.
The KJV, whatever issue, has been a great Bible missionary down through the centuries.
I had heard that Jerome had spoken in "heavenly Tongues" and his interpretor had it "revealed" to hi:thumbs:m as the latin language, and was told to write it down!
The Geneva version was the most popular at the time when the KJV was introduced (and for more than a century more popular than the KJV).However,the completed Geneva translation came out in 1560. The Bishop's Bible came out in 1568. The Douay/Rheims came out in 1609 just before the KJV was released.