Just how popular is the King James Bible, still today?
Until very recently, the KJV was the world’s bestselling Bible in English. But sometime in the 1980s it was supplanted by the New International Version, which remains tops, today. Still, there are more than one billion English-speakers in the world today, and there are at least two KJV Bibles in existence for each one of them.
Interestingly—and mind-bogglingly—The Gideons International alone has printed and distributed more than 1.5 billion Scriptures—both New Testaments and complete Bibles—since 1908. They gave away nearly 76 million last year alone! For their first eighty years, the Gideons distributed the KJV exclusively, but they have tended to favor the New King James Translation over the last two decades and make both translations available to their 280,000 members, in more than 10,000 local groups spread across the globe. (When I asked the Gideons at their headquarters in Nashville for some firmer numbers I was told that they don’t keep them, nor do they attempt to publicize them.)
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