The editors of this volume successfully took on a daunting task: that of assembling a foundational essay collection to be featured during the 2011 celebrations of the King James Bible (KJB), while at the same time producing an essential reference book to inform and inspire future studies of the reception history of the Bible (in this case, the Protestant English Bible). The promptness of its release allowed the book to serve as a helpful springboard for discussion at Ohio State University's 400th anniversary conference hosted by co-editors Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones, as well as at conferences held by many other institutions. As for longevity of influence, this is one of the most useful KJB books coming out of 2010–11, thanks to the contributions of notable scholars across a wide range of disciplines and the editors’ insistence on the importance of the larger, ‘multifaceted, and multiform’ story of the KJB. The thematic focus of the volume understandably reflects the literary and linguistic interests of its editors and contributors, but even so, the book would have benefited from more evenly balanced attention to the three influence areas listed in the subtitle, where the word ‘religious’ remains curiously absent.

Geared toward the non-specialist, with a helpful chronology and bibliography, the volume gives an adequate background on the making and reception of the KJB. Hamlin and Jones engage in the requisite myth-busting which undergraduates and other newcomers to the field tend to need: contrary to popular misunderstandings, the KJB was not instantaneously nor inevitably vaulted to fame and glory. One tired argument remains: ‘The obvious proof of the quality of Tyndale's translations, both in their accuracy to the Hebrew and Greek originals and in the strength of their prose style, is the retention of so much of his language in subsequent translations’ (p. 3). The literary lens of section 1 on language excludes other explanations for the KJB's 80 per cent verbatim adherence to the text of Tyndale's New Testament, including the central role of the vernacular Bible in English Protestantism as well as patterns of standardisation in text-centred religious communities and cultures. Religious leaders supporting the status quo naturally tend to prefer traditional phrasings, to which authoritative theological teachings have become attached over time. Tyndale, indeed ‘got a lot of it right’, but to sideline these other explanations is to tacitly scorn the Roman Catholic approach to scripture in the Tridentine era, where antithetical to Tyndale's approach, translations were made from the Latin Vulgate, in consultation with (but not directly from) the Greek and Hebrew ‘originals’. Did Catholics get it ‘wrong’ in their Bible translations? The KJB's scholarly context within the broader European Reformation receives attention by Gergely Juhász and others later in the volume, in section 2 on history. It would indeed be interesting, in the future studies to which the essay collection certainly points, to consider ‘AVolatry’ in light of the KJB's subsequent function as a ‘Vulgate of Protestants’ and as part of a broader historical pattern of attachment to traditional religious texts and translations.

Stephen Prickett's phrase ‘the King James steamroller’ sets up the volume's discussions of the literary impact of the KJB, connecting to a long-standing, post-Enlightenment tradition of reading the English Bible ‘as literature’, which was then (and now, for many) a welcome change from reading it as a sacred text of scripture. The volume contains much insightful analysis on the use of language from English Bible translations (and the KJB in particular) in authors from Shakespeare to Milton to Blake, as well as in more recent, previously marginalised writers. Essays by Katherine Bassard, R. S. Sugirtharajah and Heather Walton add welcome new dimensions to the KJB's complex and global story, examining how its language has been deployed, ‘in the name of sexism, racism, imperialist colonization, anti-Semitism and other forms of religious bigotry, and homophobia’. It is, however, regrettable that only three out of thirteen authors in the volume were women, an imbalance perpetuated at the OSU anniversary conference in May 2011. This was by no means intentional, and matters could be worse (another anniversary volume of KJB essays contains all male authors), yet it is clear that more careful attention to diversity and balance must be paid in future anniversary studies and conferences.

The editors’ wishes that the volume will ‘spark new kinds of conversations’, and ‘invite more voices to join in the telling of this story’ (pp. 1–2) are well-founded and will take shape as we experience upcoming Bible anniversary years, celebrating publication milestones of Erasmus’ Greek–Latin New Testament (1516), Luther's German New Testament (1522) and Tyndale's New Testament (1526). The volume's contributors demonstrate interest in, and further scholarly need for, discussions on the global, living legacy of the Protestant English Bible (including cultures of preaching, private study and biblical memorisation), as well as the historical and theological contexts of the KJB as a sacred text whose reception reflects long-standing patterns of resistance and acceptance in the Judaeo-Christian Bible's history.