The first authorized English Bible was the Great Bible, published in 1539 under King Henry VIII. It was followed by the Geneva Bible, which first appeared from 1557 to 1560, and then by the Bishops' Bible, the first edition of which was published in 1568. The Bishops' Bible was so named not after the bishops responsible for the work, but due to the anger caused among their Church of England colleagues at the Calvinism which they felt had infected the word of God in the Geneva Bible.

The project was instigated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, who was responsible for much of the translation, with the assistance of several other bishops, whom he encouraged to sign their names to specific sections in the hope that the consequent accountability would make them more diligent in their translation. Somewhat shortsightedly, however, Parker did not employ an editor to oversee the work as a whole, and as a result the translation is inconsistent and varies greatly from book to book.

This may be why the second edition, which was issued in 1572, contains substantial revisions to the language, which ironically made the Bishops' Bible far more similar to the Geneva Bible that had stimulated its creation. Although it failed to replace the Geneva Bible as the domestic Bible read at home, it had the authority of a royal warrant and was the second version of scripture, after the Great Bible, to be read aloud in church services.

Although the first edition was exceptionally decorative and included 124 full-page illustrations, from the second edition onwards, most of the engravings were removed. The exceptions were the frontispieces and maps, which were generally retained, and in fact several new examples were added. The most important of these is a map of the Holy Land made for the 1572 edition by goldsmith, scientific instrument maker, and engraver, Humfray Cole.

It is based on Tilemann Stella's 1557 map of the Holy Land, and perhaps on the version of Stella's map published by Ortelius, which had first appeared two years earlier. In addition to translating the map into English, Cole has also added a number of small vignettes in northern Sinai to illustrate the events of the Israelites' years of wandering, such as the worship of the brazen calf (Exodus 32) and the discovery of an abundance of produce in the Holy Land (Numbers 13:23). In the upper left-hand corner of the map the extensive title is housed within an ornate cartouche, while in the lower right, the scale bar, which gives the relative distances in Leagues, Stades, German, and Italian (and thus English) miles, is surmounted by an elaborate but unidentified coat of arms.