No book means so much to religion as the Bible. In all its forms it has greatly served religion, and in its modern forms its meaning comes out more clearly and more tellingly than ever. It has more to teach the modern world about religion than even its strongest advocates have realized. Few of them have fully explored the wealth and depth of its contribution to modern religious attitudes. Of all the forms of the English Bible, the most distinguished and widely cherished is the King James Version. Its value for religion is very great, and it is on that account all the more important that its origin and place in the history of the Bible be understood, so that false ideas about it may not prevail, for in so far as they do prevail they are likely to impair and to distort its religious usefulness.

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About the Author

Edgar Johnson Goodspeed (1871–1962) was an American theologian and scholar of Greek and the New Testament. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago, whose collection of New Testament manuscripts he enriched by his searches. The University's collection is now named in his honor. He is widely remembered for his translations of the Bible: The New Testament: an American Translation (1923), and (with John Merlin Powis Smith) "The Bible, An American Translation" (1935), the "Goodspeed Bible". He is also remembered for his translation of the Apocrypha, and that translation was included in The Complete Bible, An American Translation (1939) Edgar J. Goodspeed was born in Quincy, Illinois. He graduated from Denison University (where he also received a doctorate in Divinity, 1928) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1898). Source: Wikipedia