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Apocrypha

Translations of the books of the biblical apocrypha were necessary for the King James version, as readings from these books were included in the daily Old Testament lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer. Protestant Bibles in the 16th century included the books of the apocrypha—generally, following the Luther Bible, in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments to indicate they were not considered part of the Old Testament text—and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles.

The apocrypha of the King James Version has the same 14 books as had been found in the apocrypha of the Bishops' Bible; however, following the practice of the Geneva Bible, the first two books of the apocrypha were renamed 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, as compared to the names in the Thirty-nine Articles, with the corresponding Old Testament books being renamed Ezra and Nehemiah. Starting in 1630, volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the apocrypha section excluded. In 1644, the Long Parliament forbade the reading of the apocrypha in churches; and in 1666, the first editions of the King James Bible without the apocrypha were bound.

The standardization of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print-runs at very low unit prices. For commercial and charitable publishers, editions of the Authorized Version without the apocrypha reduced the cost, while having increased market appeal to non-Anglican Protestant readers.

With the rise of the Bible societies, most editions have omitted the whole section of apocryphal books. The British and Foreign Bible Society withdrew subsidies for Bible printing and dissemination in 1826, under the following resolution:

That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal;

The American Bible Society adopted a similar policy. Both societies eventually reversed these policies in light of 20th-century ecumenical efforts on translations, the ABS doing so in 1964 and the BFBS in 1966.