[[Image:800px-Crop Book of Isaiah 2006-06-06.jpg|thumb|200px|right]]
The '''King James Version''' (or Authorized Version) of the [[Bible]] was the culmination of 7 years of work (1604-1611) by about 50 English scholars and around 20 [[Bishops]], authorized by King [[James I of England]]. The result was a poetic masterpiece that has profoundly influenced the [[English|English-speaking]] world ever since. It was not the first English translation ([[William Tyndale]] had previously [[translation|translated]] the Bible into English, and much of the Authorized Version was taken from Tyndale's version). Many hold that that it is not or the most accurate, believing that (modern translations benefit from better sources, and that some ). Some mistakes in the translation of the King James Bible exist in very important passages.<ref>citation needed</ref> But the King James Version of the Bible was the most majestic and it has inspired English literature from [[Herman Melville]] to [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]] to the [[Martin Luther King, Jr.|Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.]]
For example, many cite Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech without acknowledging its source in the translation of ''[[Book of Isaiah|Isaiah]] 40:4'':
The King James Version frequently and repetitively uses "and" to begin a sentence. For example, seven straight verses -- Luke 4:11-17 -- begin with the word "and"; ten straight verses -- Luke 4:58-67 -- also begin with the word "and", and perhaps more than half of the verses in the entire Gospel of Luke use that now-disfavored beginning. The King James Version also frequently uses "behold", which is poetic but seems archaic today. One of its most common words is "spake" (archaic form of "spoke"), which it uses 644 times.
Some believe that the The King James Version contains some arguably feminist language, such as "prophetess" (Luke 2:36)<ref> though it refers to a rebellious Jezebel women in Rev. 2:20 as such</ref> and gender neutral language for "man" (see, e.g., Luke 3:4; Luke 3:16; Mark 9:17)<ref>where gender specific language is absent.</ref> Also, the KJV uses "children of God" perhaps as a gender neutral version of "Godly men,"but note how neutralizing the gender has the effect of inserting a connotation of submission that might be more characteristic of Islam than Christianity. Modern versions picked up on this, and use "children of God" far more pervasively than the KJV did. In Luke 4:34, the KJV refers to "Holy One of God" rather than "Holy Son of God"."
The King James Version translators did not have access to earlier ancient manuscripts that were discovered in the 1800s. As a result, the King James Version includes passages that are not in the earliest ancient extant manuscripts, which themselves are not complete. An ongoing controversy exists between the two basic collections of manuscripts. <ref>[http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Robinson2001.html Maurice A. Robinson, ''New Testament Textual Criticism: The Case for Byzantine Priority'']</ref>
The translators were predominantly literary types, such as poets, without much input from scientific types who might have recommended some wording having more physical connotations, or linguistic scholars who could point out the details of scientific terminology. For example, '' 'owph'' is translated as "fowl" rather than the linguistically and scientifically correct "winged creature."