Oldest draft of King James Bible discovered

A US scholar claims to have discovered the earliest known draft of the King James Bible in an obscure archive at the University of Cambridge.
The book, believed to be the most widely read English work, was found by Jeffrey Miller, an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, inside a 400-year-old notebook.
The manuscript was hidden among the papers of Samuel Ward, one of the men commissioned by King James I to translate a new version of the Christian text into English in the early 17th century.
Miller realised that the notebook contained text from the very book that Ward had been commissioned to help translate, 'Live Science' reported.

Miller recalled thinking, "Oh my gosh, he's talking about a book that he had been asked to help translate," he said.
"Then I realised rather he was creating the King James Bible in that moment," Miller said.

Miller said the notebook is not just the earliest draft ever found, but it is also the only surviving draft written in the hand of one of the original translators.
"Ward's draft alone bears all the signs of having been a first draft, just as it alone can be definitively said to be in the hand of one of the King James translators themselves," Miller wrote in the Times Literary Supplement.

Ward began his translation when he was just 32 years old, making him the youngest of the 54 or so men commissioned to translate the King James Bible.
Miller was familiar with Ward's handwriting from his intense study of the translator's texts.