The 1560 Geneva Bible, the translation English Protestants read during the Reformation, could not be printed in England at all: Queen Mary's persecution of Protestants pushed the translators to Switzerland, where the book was set in type and smuggled back home. This film traces what happened next, as the Bishops Bible of 1568 became the official alternative and was later revised by royal command into the 1611 King James Bible. Historians and religion scholars explain, on camera, why the crown wanted its own translation to replace one it could not control, and how the more readable, heavily annotated Geneva Bible kept outselling the King James version for decades anyway, remaining the Bible most early American colonists actually carried with them. The film stays with the politics behind each translation choice, tracking how a single English monarchy managed to turn a religious text into a matter of state security. It closes with the slow process by which the King James Bible finally displaced its predecessor in the colonies.