From the UK Guardian:



The King James Bible reconsidered (20+ paragraphs)


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/19/bible-king-james-version-david-edgar

"...Nearly 60 years before the introduction of moveable type to Europe, and 130 years before Martin Luther, England's John Wycliffe oversaw the translation of two manuscript English Bibles from the Latin Vulgate, a project that landed him in court, and led to laws making translating or even reading the Bible in the vernacular a capital offence (laws under which Wycliffe's own body was dug up and burnt). His underground Lollard followers kept alive the idea of a direct relationship between God and the individual Christian, through his word."

Also mentioned is a rather remarkable instance of "biblical retribution":


"...Nearly 60 years before the introduction of moveable type to Europe, and 130 years before Martin Luther, England's John Wycliffe oversaw the translation of two manuscript English Bibles from the Latin Vulgate, a project that landed him in court, and led to laws making translating or even reading the Bible in the vernacular a capital offence (laws under which Wycliffe's own body was dug up and burnt)."

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How the King James Bible shaped the English language (8 paragraphs)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/21/king-james-bible-english-language

In fact, the KJB became, in Adam Nicolson's resonant phrase, "a kind of national shrine, built only of words". Internationally, the expanding English-speaking world became inspired by the majesty of its most sonorous passages, the austere beauty of its prose and the endlessly quoted phrases and periods that have become braided into the texture of contemporary reference. The writers who have paid explicit tribute to the influence of the KJB include TS Eliot, Seamus Heaney, VS Naipaul, Raymond Chandler and PD James. Chandler actually said of the Bible that it was "a lesson in how not to write for the movies".

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Hmm - no mention of the Joseph Smith translation?

An oversight, I'm sure.