The King James Bible

In the early 17th century, the Geneva Bible was by far the most popular English Bible. It was the Geneva translation, not the King James, that was used by William Shakespeare and the early American Puritans. In 1604 Puritan John Rainolds suggested " . . . that there might bee a newe translation of the Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek." England's King James I granted his approval the following day and three years later, 47 leading scholars of the Church of England gathered in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey to plan the production of the Bible authorized by King James.
In 1611 The King James Bible was completed and published, using much of the original Hebrew and Greek. Despite making no mention of William Tyndale it preserved 90 per cent of his translation. Amongst the well-known lines taken from Tyndale’s translation work are “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) and “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).
For the next three hundred years it was the translation generally used by English-speaking people.