Thus far every new edition and issue had been an improvement on what had gone before, and all tended to the production of a still more perfect and permanent translation.

It should be mentioned that Luther, in Germany, after ten years of labor, from 1522 to 1532, had produced, unaided, his wonderful German version.

This had helped the cause of translations everywhere.
KING JAMES'S BIBLE .-- At length, in 1603, just after the accession of James I., a conference was held at Hampton Court, which, among other tasks, undertook to consider what objections could be made to the Bishops' Bible.
The result was that the king ordered a new version which should supersede all others.

The number of eminent and learned divines appointed to make the translation was fifty-four; seven of these were prevented by disability of one kind or another.

The remaining forty-seven were divided into six classes, and the labor was thus apportioned: ten, who sat at Westminster, translated from Genesis through Kings; eight, at Cambridge, undertook the other historical books and the Hagiographa, including the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ruth, Esther, and a few other books; seven at Oxford, the four greater Prophets, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the twelve minor Prophets; eight, also at Oxford, the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of St.John; seven more at Westminster, the Epistles of St.Paul, and the remaining canonical books; and five more at Cambridge, the Apocryphal books.