The Bible - King James Version
It begins in the dark before the first day, when the earth was without form and void, and moves through the origins, laws, and history of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here are the covenants of Genesis and Exodus, the statutes of Leviticus, the wars of Joshua, and the reigns of the Israelite kings. The text collects the sufferings of Job, the poetry of the Psalms and Proverbs, and the visions of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, before crossing into the New Testament with the Gospel of Matthew.
Commissioned in 1604 by King James I, the work rendered the ancient scriptures into the vernacular of early seventeenth-century England. It became the authorized text of the Church of England and established idioms, syntax, and rhythms that shaped four centuries of English literature.
The King James Version (1611).
