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Q&A What English version of the bible should I quote from?

Short answer: If in doubt, use KJV. Not that it is the most authoritative, or the most easily understood; but it is well-known, and has the advantage of being in the public domain, as was noted in ...

posted 7y ago by System‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:21:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27628
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:21:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Short answer: If in doubt, use KJV. Not that it is the most authoritative, or the most easily understood; but it is well-known, and has the advantage of being in the public domain, as was noted in an earlier reply. I don't know about how things are in England these days, but in parts of the USA, the KJV has a certain cultural status, for reasons too debatable to be discussed here.

Longer answer: A translation of the Bible, or for that matter a translation of any work of literature, may be under copyright protection. This is true, even if the original work is from antiquity.

This is why various online sites, which allow you to download the entire text of various bibles for free, do not have every version.

However, a short quote from a particular, copyrighted version, could still be used under "fair use" terms, at least in the USA. If you are writing (say) a work of fiction, and wish to begin each chapter with an epigraph using a few lines from a particular version, I would NOT call that fair use.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-04-20T18:03:49Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 3