The Tyndale–King James line
The spine of the chart. One man's English in 1526, still standing word for word in Bibles published four centuries later — and the moment in 1881 when the Greek underneath it was swapped out.
| Bible | Year | Made from | The spirit of the change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tyndale | 1526–30 | Erasmus’s Greek, Hebrew | Put the Bible into the ploughboy’s English. The wording that survives everywhere downstream. |
| Tudor Bibles | 1535–68 | Tyndale + revision | Fill in what Tyndale never lived to finish, and produce something a parish could use. |
| King James Version | 1611 | Bishops’ Bible, re-checked against Hebrew and the Textus Receptus | A single authorised text to end the competing Bibles. Dignified, made for reading aloud. |
| Blayney’s Oxford edition | 1769 | KJV | Standardise the spelling, the italics and the marginal notes. No re-translation at all. |
| English Revised Version | 1881–85 | KJV, re-checked against the newly available manuscripts | Correct the KJV where the older manuscripts showed it wrong. The break with the Textus Receptus. |
| American Standard Version | 1901 | ERV | The American revisers’ own preferences, including “Jehovah” throughout the Old Testament. |
| New King James | 1982 | KJV | Modernise the English but keep the Byzantine text — for readers who want the KJV without the thees. |
Tyndale
Everything English on this chart that is not Catholic begins here. Tyndale worked from Erasmus’s Greek and from the Hebrew, and he was executed before he could finish the Old Testament.
What makes him the spine of the diagram is not the scholarship but the wording. Because every stage below him was a revision rather than a fresh translation, his English simply kept going: whole verses survive word for word into the King James eighty-five years later, and out the other side into the Revised Standard Version of 1952.
The Tudor Bibles
Coverdale 1535, the Great Bible 1539, the Geneva Bible 1560, the Bishops’ Bible 1568.
They are collapsed into one box on purpose. Each deserves its own line in a fuller chart — the Geneva Bible in particular was the Bible of Shakespeare and of the Pilgrims, and its marginal notes are why James wanted a replacement. Here they are the road from Tyndale to 1611, and drawing them separately would cost more in width than it returned in understanding.
King James Version
A single authorised text to end the competing Bibles: dignified, rhythmic, and built to be read aloud in a building without amplification.
Two things about it are routinely got wrong, and both are on the chart. The first is that the KJV sold today is not the 1611 — see Blayney below. The second is that its translators had the Rheims New Testament open in front of them, and took phrasing from it.
Blayney’s Oxford edition, 1769
⚠️ This, not 1611, is the “KJV” text sold today.
Blayney standardised the spelling, regularised the italics marking supplied words, and reworked the marginal notes. No re-translation at all — which is why the arrow is dotted.
It is the same trap as “Douay-Rheims” meaning Challoner, and as “NIV” meaning the 2011. Three times on this one chart, the famous name belongs to an edition nobody is actually holding.
English Revised Version, 1881–85
⚠️ The Greek base was swapped.
The brief was to correct the King James where the older manuscripts showed it wrong. The older manuscripts — Vaticanus, Sinaiticus — had not existed on any translator’s desk in 1611.
This is the hinge of the whole diagram. Everything above 1881 on this line rests on the Byzantine text; everything below rests on the Alexandrian. The English kept flowing down the page while the foundation underneath it was replaced. Most of the verse-level differences people argue about — the ending of Mark, the woman taken in adultery, the Johannine Comma — trace to this one decision and not to any question of translation.
American Standard Version, 1901
The American members of the revision committee had their own preferences, published separately once the agreed embargo expired. The most conspicuous was printing “Jehovah” throughout the Old Testament where the English committee had kept “the LORD.”
The ASV is the hinge of everything American below it: the RSV, the New American Standard, the Amplified, the World English Bible and the Living Bible all come out of this one box.
New King James, 1982
⚠️ Modernised the English but kept the Byzantine text.
The one deliberate holdout on the chart. It is the exact mirror image of 1881: the English Revised Version moved to the critical text while keeping the King James’s English; the New King James modernised the English while keeping the King James’s Greek.
Same tree, opposite decisions — which is the clearest illustration on the whole diagram that the English and the underlying text are two independent axes.