The Puritans and the KJV

The Puritans and the KJV

The relationship is closer than many realize:

The KJV was, in part, a Puritan project:

The Hampton Court Conference (1604): The KJV was commissioned partly in response to Puritan objections to the Bishops' Bible and the Geneva Bible's marginal notes (some of which challenged royal authority).

John Reynolds, a Puritan leader and president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was the one who formally proposed a new translation to King James. Though James likely saw it as a way to sideline the Geneva Bible, Reynolds and Puritan scholars were deeply involved.

Many KJV translators were Puritan-leaning: Though the translation was supervised by the established church, scholars like John Bois, Miles Smith, and others had Puritan sympathies. The final translation reflected a mediating position—less aggressively anti-monarchical than Geneva, but more literal and scholarly than Bishops'.

Puritan use of the KJV:

The Puritans adopted the KJV quickly and used it extensively, though many continued to prefer the Geneva Bible for its study notes well into the 17th century.

The KJV became the Bible of the Puritan migration to New England. It shaped Puritan preaching, theology, and culture in both England and America.

Ironically, a Bible commissioned partly to suppress Puritan influence became the primary Bible of Puritanism.

Theological connection:

The Puritans believed in Sola Scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture. They did not, however, typically hold to a modern "KJV Only" position—the concept of textual inerrancy applied to a single 17th-century printed edition would have been foreign to them. They used Greek and Hebrew in scholarship and acknowledged textual variants.

The Puritans' intense focus on the authority and clarity of Scripture helped cement the KJV's place in English-speaking Protestantism, even though their own bibliology was more nuanced than some modern defenders of the KJV claim.