Phrases you already use
Dozens of everyday English idioms began, or were first fixed in memorable form, in the pages of the King James Bible. Most speakers use them with no idea of their source.
| Everyday phrase | Source |
|---|---|
| "A drop in the bucket" | Isaiah 40:15 |
| "The salt of the earth" | Matthew 5:13 |
| "A fly in the ointment" | Ecclesiastes 10:1 |
| "At their wit’s end" | Psalm 107:27 |
| "The powers that be" | Romans 13:1 |
| "A man after his own heart" | 1 Samuel 13:14 |
| "Fall from grace" | Galatians 5:4 |
| "Go the extra mile" | Matthew 5:41 |
| "By the skin of my teeth" | Job 19:20 |
| "Sign of the times" | Matthew 16:3 |
| "Nothing new under the sun" | Ecclesiastes 1:9 |
| "Eat, drink, and be merry" | Luke 12:19 |
Shaping English literature
John Bunyan, a Bedford tinker with almost no formal education, wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) in prose steeped so thoroughly in the KJV’s rhythms and vocabulary that the two are often studied side by side. John Milton’s Paradise Lost draws its scope, diction, and moral seriousness from the same well. Centuries later, the cadences of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and second inaugural, and of Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons and speeches, echo the parallelism and rhythm of the KJV’s prose — a style so influential that it shaped how English-speaking orators built a sentence, whether or not they were quoting Scripture at all.
Set to music
George Frideric Handel’s Messiah (1741), still performed every Christmas and Easter season worldwide, sets KJV text directly to music almost verse for verse — “For unto us a child is born,” “I know that my redeemer liveth,” and the Hallelujah chorus’s “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords” are drawn word for word from the KJV’s Isaiah, Job, and Revelation.
Still the best-selling book in history
More copies of the King James Bible have been printed than any other book in the English language. More than four centuries after its first printing, it remains in continuous publication, continuous public reading, and continuous use in worship — a public record of use that no modern translation, however excellent its scholarship, has yet had the centuries to match.
A note on the claim: a translation’s cultural and literary influence is not, by itself, proof that its underlying text is the most accurate. KJV-only believers point to this legacy as supporting evidence alongside the textual and theological case, not as a substitute for it. That fuller case is made on the Why KJV page.