2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the King James Bible. The BBC–and others–here in the UK are doing some special events to mark this. Even if you don’t care anything about religion, there is more to this than you might think. One of the things I found out when I read the book on the left–In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture
–was how the translation helped shape English just as it was really beginning to take shape. Many of the words and phrases we use were English translations of Hebrew idioms and phrases.