Cambridge University Library launched an exhibition of world-renowned Biblical treasures yesterday to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

The display will include some rare manuscripts from the Library’s 7 million-strong collection, including the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, the first ever printed Bible, two 4th Century leaves of the St John’s Gospel in Coptic, and Henry VIII’s Great Bible. It aims to draw together some of the source materials the original translators used for this version.

A very valuable copy of the 1631 ‘Wicked Bible’ will also be exhibited, which contains the phrase ‘thou shalt commit adultery’ when the printers accidentally omitted the word ‘not’ from this Commandment. Nearly all of the copies of this version were destroyed after the mistake was noticed and the publishers were fined £300, roughly equivalent to £33,800 today.

The King James Version is widely regarded as the most influential book ever written in English, and was translated by 54 scholars in 6 committees, based at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford and Westminster. Lancelot Andrewes, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, at the time of translation, headed the entire project.

It was commissioned by the newly crowned King James I of England to try to eliminate the perceived problems of a Puritan influence in earlier translations.

Author and journalist Adam Nicolson, speaking on Monday at a reception for the launch of the exhibition, described this text as “the great national text, a national shrine, the one umbrella under which the whole country could gather”.

He added: “For all sorts of reasons it has, at least until this year, faded from view. The 20th century largely abandoned it, just as most people stopped going to church and so stopped hearing its marvellous music.

“That is why it is worth having an exhibition like this: it is a reminder of roots, of one of the great compositions of our culture. To abandon it would be simply to impoverish ourselves…The King James Bible is the most marvellous polishing job in the history of English. And nothing I have ever seen brings that home more clearly than this exhibition."

The exhibition, entitled ‘Great and Manifold Blessings: The Making of the King James Bible’, will run for 5 months and will be free to the public.