The King James Bible celebrates its 400th anniversary this month, and we are still steeped in the idioms and phrases of this wondrously rich, subtle and poetic translation.

HERE is a story, too good to be apocryphal, that an elderly American lady was advised to swap her King James Bible for a more modern version. Drawing herself up to her full, if insubstantial, height, she declared: “If the King James was good enough for St Paul, it’s good enough for me.”

St Paul, of course, predated it by more than 1500 years and wrote in koine (common) Greek rather than Elizabethan English. But that notion – and a similar one held by certain fundamentalists that the King James is God’s version, and that all other versions are perversions – shows the veneration this book attracts.

Translated by a committee of 54 scholars from a Hebrew and Greek original text that modern scholarship has shown to be far from the most faithful, the King James Bible has nevertheless had an unparalleled influence on the faith and language of English speakers the world over. Surely the most important book ever published in English, its influence expanded with the fortunes of the nation: the English took it and shared it wherever they went.

From 1611 until the baby-boomer generation, this is the book that above all, to quote church historian Diarmaid MacCullogh, “soaked into their souls”. And this month, it turned 400 years old.

It is not only religious enthusiasts who have been lifted by this wondrously rich, subtle, poetic, vivid and image-rich text – the translation of the 39 books of the Old Testament originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and of the 27 books in Greek of the New Testament, amounting to 66 works written over more than a millennium. Read more.

See: The Age.com.au