During most of Mary Baker Eddy’s lifetime, the King James, or Authorized Version of the Bible, first published in 1611, reigned supreme as the accepted translation used by English-speaking Protestants and their churches. And it’s clear, from the many positive comments Eddy makes about the King James Version in her writings, that it informed her Christian devotion and practice from childhood onward, and that she deeply loved it. In fact, she asked that it be used as the primary source for Bible quotations in her published books. In her exegesis of the Scriptures in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, for example, Eddy quotes exclusively from the King James Version. She was particular about its consistent use in that book for the sake of uniformity.
When she was revising Science and Health in 1885, she was assisted by Rev. James Henry Wiggin, a former Unitarian minister turned copy editor/indexer. In a letter written during his first year assisting her, Eddy asked him to use the King James Version so that all Scriptural quotations in Science and Health would conform to the same standard. As she emphasized: “My notes on Genesis were upon the [King James] version. It changes the uniformity to go off on another one” (L02166, Mary Baker Eddy to James Henry Wiggin, n.d., The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library).
Eddy’s love for the King James Version, however, did not keep her from reading, buying, and giving consideration to a number of the new translations appearing in the latter portion of the 19th century. The historical record shows that she did not hesitate to make use of these translations occasionally when she felt their words conveyed meaning better than did the King James. An example is when she used the wording from a marginal note in the Revised Version for the Cross and Crown emblem. The Revised Version was perhaps the premier new translation to appear in Eddy’s lifetime. Based on the King James, it was an update that replaced archaic wording with contemporary usage, corrected mistakes made by the King James translators, and made use of advancing scholarly research into ancient manuscripts of the Bible.
