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Holocaust was originally used in English for a "burnt offering," a "sacrifice completely consumed by fire" (Mark 12:33, "more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices" in the King James Version of the Bible, was translated by William Tyndale in 1526 as "a greater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices"). John Milton is the first English writer recorded as using it in the wider sense "complete destruction by fire," in the late 17th century, and succeeding centuries its modern application to "nuclear destruction" and "mass murder" - Bishop Ken, for instance, wrote in 1711 "Should general Flame this World consume ... An Holocaust for Fontal Sin," and Leitch Ritchie in 1833 refers to Louis VII making "a holocaust of thirteen hundred persons in a church." The specific application to the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis during World War II was introduced by historians during the 1950s, probably as an equivalent to Hebrew ḥurban and shoah "catastrophe" (used in the same sense).
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