Geneva Bible

Produced by English Protestant exiles in Geneva and first published in 1560, this version became the dominant English household Bible before the King James Version and a landmark study Bible. It presents the complete Bible, historically including the Apocrypha, translated from Hebrew and Greek, its base text being the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament and informed by contemporary Reformed scholarship. Its translation philosophy is scholarly and readable, accompanied by extensive annotation, and it is classed as a fresh revision or translation, drawing on Tyndale and the Great Bible as predecessor and base translation. Its most distinctive feature is the extensive marginal apparatus, which guided readers through the text but also made the edition theologically and politically controversial to authorities. Widely read in homes, pulpits, and schools, it shaped English religious language for generations and remained in use well after the appearance of the King James Version.