David Norton

The King James Bible was the result of an extraordinary effort over nearly a century to make many good English translations and turn them into what the translators called 'one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against'. Meer

It is regarded as a truism that the King James Bible is one of the finest pieces of English prose. Yet few people are aware that the King James Bible was generally scorned or ignored as English writing for a century and a half after its publication. Meer

Early-eighteenth-century literary critics thought the King James Bible had 'all the disadvantages of an old prose translation'. But from the 1760s on criticism became increasingly favourable. Meer

Revised and condensed from David Norton's acclaimed A History of the Bible as Literature, this book, first published in 2000, tells the story of English literary attitudes to the Bible. Meer