During the reign of Mary I, Catholicism was reinstated as the official state religion of England. A group of Protestant scholars, fleeing persecution, found refuge in Calvinist Switzerland, where they began work on an English translation of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew, borrowing heavily from the work of Tyndale. Their New Testament appeared in 1557, followed by the printing of the entire Bible in 1560. It would not be printed in England until 1575, well into the reign of Elizabeth I. The Geneva Bible, as this translation is called, included marginal commentary and annotations which expressed Calvinist ideas. The Geneva Bible was popular in Scotland and among Puritan sects in England; over 150 editions of this translation were printed during the next 80 years.

In response to the Geneva Bible, leaders of the Church of England authorized a new translation project, one that would reflect conventional religious practice and would omit the textual commentary. Matthew Parker, the archbishop of Canterbury, chaired a committee of scholars (many of whom were Anglican bishops) who produced a Bible in 1568. However, the translation, known as the Bishop’s Bible, never gained the popularity of the Geneva Bible.

Both the Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible were eventually superseded by the Authorized, or King James, version of the Bible, first published in 1611. The translation was first proposed in 1604, under the patronage of James I, who as king was also the head of the Church of England. In authorizing a new translation of the Bible, the king and other church leaders sought to minimize the controversies over interpretations of the Bible in the coexisting Geneva and Bishop’s versions. Some 47 different scholars, working in six committees, collaborated on translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts, following the renderings in the Bishop’s Bible. Stylistically, the translators retained much of the language which had originated with Tyndale’s translation nearly a century earlier.

Upon its first publication the King James Version was adopted for reading in services in the Church of England. However, the Geneva Bible remained popular, especially among Puritan congregations. Because of its association with the Puritan regime of the Commonwealth period (1649-60), the Geneva translation fell into disfavor after the restoration of the English monarchy. Thus the King James Version came to be the sole Bible issued for use in England and the English colonies. Even today, it remains the most widely-published book in the English language.