The King James Bible was published in 1611, 400 years ago.
It’s really impossible to contend that there is any single work that has had a bigger effect on English-speaking culture during that time.
For most of that 400 years, this was THE book that educated and uneducated people were supposed to read and master. This is THE book that ended up being memorized. Even more so than Shakespeare, this is the book that gave us quotations that were used as our common cultural base. There are other translations that are more accurate, but none that have the combination of being both literary and familiar.
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