The Bountiful Update is the name for Minecraft version 1.8, a major update that was released on September 2, 2014.
Fifty-two development snapshots were released, from 14w02a to 14w34d the most for any major update to date.
The time between releases of 1.7.2 and 1.8 is the second longest time span between major updates, at 312 days.
The official name for the update, the Bountiful Update, was announced on August 22, 2014 in a blog post on the Mojang website. Mojang released the first pre-release on August 22, 2014, the second pre-release on August 25th and the third pre-release on August 28th.