Although Tyndale met a martyr's death, the impact of his work was felt, and it gradually became safer to produce an English Bible in England. In 1535, just ten years after Tyndale's New Testament appeared, the first complete printed Bible appeared in English, the work of Miles Coverdale, who used much of Tyndale's translation, but completed the Old Testament, which Tyndale had only partially done. Most of the portions of the Bible used in the present Episcopal Book of Common Prayer are based on Coverdale's version.
New translations appeared thick and fast in the ensuing years. The Great Bible ( 1539) had royal approval, and got its name because of its size. Copies of it were chained in the churches. Later a group of Puritans fled to Geneva, Switzerland, to be free from persecution during the reign of "Bloody Mary" (so called because of her persecution of Protestants), and while they were there, they produced the Geneva Bible ( 1560), which was the first Bible to contain numbered verses. This Bible was very unpopular among the English bishops because the translators put Calvinistic interpretations in the margins. The bishops countered with the Bishops' Bible ( 1568), but it was never popular except among the bishops.
The most famous of the English translations was the Authorized Version, usually called the King James Version ( 1611). Forty-seven scholars were appointed by King James I of England to do a new translation based on the original languages of Scripture and making use of all the available Eng. lish translations thus far made. And although many transla. tions have been made into English since then, no one of them has seriously challenged the popularity of the King James Ver. sion, until recently.
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