The Globe and Mail sing, via long article about the Bible and its history, "Happy Birthday!"
From the piece...
It was published four centuries ago, the King James Version of the Bible, labelled the greatest manifestation of the English language – greater than Shakespeare, Milton and Bunyan – although its primary author was strangled on church orders and his body burned.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, the 19th-century British historian, called it “a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.”
It is the only literary masterpiece produced by a committee. It was printed at the moment in history when English was said to have reached “its brief perfection.” No other writing has penetrated idiomatic speech more deeply or for so long. By one linguist's estimate, three times as many of its words and phrases have entered common usage as have those of Shakespeare.
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