All 27 books of the New Testament were written over roughly 55 years. The book of James was most likely written first and Revelation last.

Jewish scholars produced the authoritative Hebrew text of the Old Testament, known as the Masoretic Text, between the 7th and 10th centuries. It served as the basis for the Old Testament translations of the King James Version (1611), the American Standard Version (1901), and most modern Bible translations.

The much less adorned Wessex Gospels (also known as the West-Saxon Gospels), are a translation of the four Gospels into the West Saxon dialect of Old English. Without accompanying Latin, they are the oldest surviving example of stand-alone Old English.

Dutch scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) published the first Greek New Testament, Novem Instrumentum omne, later known as the Textus Receptus, mainly from 12th and 13th century manuscripts. The Textus Receptus became the foundation for most Protestant Bible translations including Tyndale’s English Bible (1526), Luther’s German New Testament (1522), and the King James Version (1611)

This updated version of the Masoretic Text, edited by Hebrew scholar Yaakov ben Hayyim, became the source text used by the translators of the King James Version (1611) and New King James Version (1982).

Under the authorization of King Henry VIII, Myles Coverdale (1488-1569) translated the first complete Bible into modern English, known as the Great Bible. The Great Bible remained the official translation authorized by the Church of England until the Bishops’ Bible. However, parts of it were produced from the Latin Vulgate, not the original biblical languages, making it an inferior translation.

Produced in 1568 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Bishops’ Bible became the second Bible authorized by the Crown. It was revised in 1572 and again in 1602, this later version being the base text used for the King James Bible.

During the Catholic “counter-Reformation,” the Roman Catholic Church produced its own English Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible (named after a college in England and a city in France). Translated directly from the Latin Vulgate, this Bible version was released in stages: the New Testament completed in 1582, and the Old Testament plus Apocrypha published in 1609-1610. It underwent various editions as late as the first decade of the 19th century.

After several minor editions of the King James Version were published over the decades, this 4th edition published by Benjamin Blayney in 1769 corrected printing errors and updated spelling. It is the edition current printings are based upon.

With criticism of the King James Version mounting, the Church of England authorized a new translation in 1870 and the English Revised Version was published in portions between 1881 and 1885. An American version was subsequently published in 1901, aptly named the American Standard Version.

The publication of Westcott and Hort’s The New Testament in the Original Greek, which relied on Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, marked a shift in biblical scholarship away from the main Greek manuscript, the Textus Receptus, used to produce the King James Version.

First published in 1898, the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament is now in its 28th edition (2012) and is the Greek text that all modern Bible translations are based upon, as most scholars prefer to use more recently discovered manuscripts.