What is not certain

The parts of the chart that are a drawing decision rather than a claim, the figures that were withdrawn, and the questions the sources used do not settle.

A chart like this is only worth reading if it says where it is standing on firm ground and where it is not.

Drawing decisions, not claims

The three junctions are a drawing decision. Splitting the single original-languages junction into 1800s / 1900–1969 / 1970-onward was done to keep arrows short once the chart tripled in size. Nothing about the translations changed. The three say exactly the same thing.

The Tudor Bibles are collapsed into one box on purpose. Coverdale, the Great Bible, Geneva and the Bishops’ Bible each deserve their own line in a fuller chart; here they are the road from Tyndale to 1611.

Biblia Hebraica is deliberately not drawn. It would need one long arrow to almost every Bible on the chart, and the Masoretic Text box already stands for it.

Two arrows describe ancestry rather than character. The New Living Translation and The Message both point the “wrong” way — one is a real translation hanging off a paraphrase, the other a paraphrase hanging off a junction. See the exceptions.

Figures withdrawn

The Jerusalem Bible’s “6,823 times” has been withdrawn. Earlier versions of this chart gave that figure for Yahweh in the Jerusalem Bible. It is a count of YHWH in the Masoretic Text, repeated without any count of the Jerusalem Bible behind it; the Reference Bible’s Appendix 1A gives the BHK/BHS count as 6,828. No published count of the 1966 text was found, so the chart now says nearly 7,000 and no more.

The NET Bible’s note count varies by edition. “Over 60,000” is the figure the project itself uses; the exact number differs between the first and second editions and is not pinned down here.

The World English Bible has no single publication date. It is a continuously updated public-domain project; “1997 onward” is the start of the work, not a release.

Questions the sources do not settle

Rotherham’s dates. The chart gives his New Testament as 1872 and the complete Emphasized Bible as 1902, which is the publishing history. Some editions are labelled 1897 — the third edition of the New Testament, and the one where he switched his Greek base from Tregelles to Westcott and Hort. Both are right; they are different things.

Byington’s Greek base is not recorded. That The Bible in Living English was made from the original languages is certain; which printed Greek text he worked from is not stated in the sources used.

The Jerusalem Bible’s debt to the French is genuinely disputed. The publishers say the English wording was taken from the Hebrew and Greek with the French Bible de Jérusalem as the model; others hold that some books were rendered from the French and then compared with the originals. Both claims are on the record, and the diagram shows it as a translation from the originals with the French as its model.

Knox’s place in the lectionary is deliberately not claimed. His Bible was widely used in England and Wales in the 1950s and 60s and readings from it were heard at Mass, but exactly what was authorised, where, and for how long is not settled by the sources used — so the box says “the English Catholic Bible of the 1950s” and stops there.

Smith–Goodspeed’s handling of the divine name is not stated. It is left off the ✦ table rather than guessed at.

When the Watch Tower Society first acquired the Emphatic Diaglott is not settled here. The 1984 Introduction dates its own reprint to 1942; earlier dates circulate for the acquisition of the plates and for the first Society printing, and none of them is confirmed by the sources used, so only the 1942 figure is stated.

The 2008 directive’s backstory is not claimed. The letter says it was issued “by directive of the Holy Father.” The account involving the Chief Rabbi of Rome circulates and is plausible, but it is not in the letter. See the divine name.

The Jerusalem lectionary’s reading of Deuteronomy 4:39 is checked on that one reading, not across the whole three-volume set.

And in general

Dates are first-publication dates, and several of these Bibles exist in more than one edition. Where a Bible is best known by a later edition than the one it is dated by, the chart says so with a ⚠️ — which happens three times, for the King James, the Douay-Rheims and the NIV.