11. The translators did not use original source documents, but rather handwritten copies of them
The translators who produced the original edition of the King James Version had access to some, but by no means all, original source documents to be used as the basis of their new translation. Instead they relied on all previously completed English translations, including some which they had been specifically instructed to ignore, and on printed copies of the Bible in the original languages then available, as well as translations and commentaries written in Spanish, Italian, German, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, and Chaldee. The polyglot of languages led to numerous stories in the Bible undergoing alteration from the originals.
The main source text was the Bishop’s Bible, which was itself by admission of the Archbishop of Canterbury who commissioned it, Matthew Parker, an inadequately scholarly translation. The translators also relied on the Geneva Bible, which had been heavily influenced by Calvinism. The translators of the King James Version introduced a number of verses which were not contained in either of the previous English translations, nor in the reproductions of the source documents on which they relied, as evidenced by later discoveries of ancient manuscripts. Later translations which omit these verses because they appear to have been written by the King James Version translators, rather than by the ancient writers of the original manuscripts, led to dissension among Bible scholars and defenders of the King James Bible.