The Bible — A History 1
Jerome’s Vulgate late-4th century
Both Protestants and Roman Catholics are heirs of terminology that Jerome
either coined or baptized with fresh significance—words such as salvation,
regeneration, justification, sanctification, propitiation, reconciliation,
inspiration, Scripture, sacrament, and many others. {494 BIT}
For nearly a thousand years, the Vulgate was used as the recognized text of
Scripture throughout western Europe. It also became the basis of preReformation vernacular Scriptures, such as Wycliffe’s English translation in
the fourteenth century, as well as the first printed Bibles in German (1466),
Italian (1471), Catalán (1478), Czech (1488), and French (1530). {587 BIT}
Wycliffe 1382; 1388
So far as we know, the first complete English Bible was due to the influence
and activity of John Wycliffe (c. 1330–84), an eminent Oxford theologian,
called the “morning star of the Reformation” {905 BIT}
The first version, produced about 1382, was extremely literal, corresponding
word for word to the Latin, even at the expense of natural English word
order. The second version, which appeared about 1388, was more free and
shows a feeling for native English idiom throughout. The translation was
made from the current Latin Vulgate text and so included the Old Testament
apocryphal/deuterocanonical books. {916 BIT}
Wyclif ‘translated from Latin into the language not of angels but of Angles
(Englishmen), so that he made the Bible common and open to the laity, and
to women who were able to read, which used to be reserved for literate and
intelligent clergy’. {259 BSKJV}
William Tyndale 1526
William Tyndale is rightly known as ‘the father of the English Bible’. {270
BSKJV}
‘defy the Pope and all his laws’ and proclaimed ringingly that, ‘if God spare
my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough, shall know
more of the Scripture than thou dost’ {273 BSKJV}
[In1524], having decided that it would be virtually impossible to do what he
had in mind anywhere in England, he left England for Hamburg, never to
return. {942 BIT}
{in 1526] a pocket-sized book, and was quickly smuggled into England,
where it was sold cheaply. {285 BSKJV}
a revision of his New Testament, which was published in 1534. It is this
revised version that had the greatest impact {322 BSKJV}
BIT} Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001. Kindle edition.
BSKJV} Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version ; 1611-2011. Oxford [u.a.]:
Oxford Univ. Press, 2011. Kindle edition.
The Bible — A History 2
[October 6, 1536] According to the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe,
Tyndale was tied to a stake, and, as a chain encircled his neck, cried ‘Lord,
open the king of England’s eyes’. He was then strangled with the chain and
his body was burnt. {326 BSKJV}
80 percent or more of the English Bible down through the Revised Version
has been estimated to be his in those portions of the Bible on which he had
worked with such skill and devotion. {968 BIT}
Miles Coverdale 1535
The publication of the first complete printed English Bible was the work of
Miles Coverdale (1488–1568), a native of York. {971 BIT}
Matthew’s Bible of John Rogers 1537
…in February 1555 he was burned alive at Smithfield, the first of the
Protestant martyrs. The French ambassador wrote that Rogers died with such
composure that it might have been a wedding. {997 BIT}
The Great Bible 1539
It was the first “authorized” English Bible, and in the 1540 and subsequent
editions, it carried on the title page the explicit words “This is the Byble
apoynted to the use of the churches.” It was undertaken by Coverdale at
Thomas Cromwell’s suggestion and was produced mainly by the revision of
the text of Matthew’s Bible. {1010 BIT}
The order adopted in the Great Bible is that given by Erasmus in his Greek
New Testament, and this order was followed by the principal English
versions after 1539. {1017 BIT}
In 1543 restrictions were put upon the reading of the Bible, and in 1546 a
general burning of Bibles commenced. {1020 BIT}
The Geneva Bible 1560
The Geneva version was equipped with copious notes in the margins, most
of which were explanations of difficult points in the text, such as historical
and geographical references. Some of the notes were doctrinal and some
hortatory. {1050 BIT}
One of the reasons that led King James, in 1604, to agree readily to a new
translation of the Scriptures was his dislike of the politics preached in the
margins of the Geneva Bible. {1057 BIT}
Bibles were thereafter reprinted without notes for centuries, until the
Scofield Bibles reintroduced a similar system in the early twentieth century.
{444 BSKJV}
BIT} Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001. Kindle edition.
BSKJV} Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version ; 1611-2011. Oxford [u.a.]:
Oxford Univ. Press, 2011. Kindle edition.
The Bible — A History 3
It was the first English Bible with numbered verses, which became the basis
of all versification in later English Bibles. {1060 BIT}
It was the Bible of Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Cromwell’s army, the Puritan
pilgrims to the New World, and even (!) of King James himself. {1067 BIT}
The Bishops’ Bible 1560
In spite of its defects, the Bishops’ Bible became the second “authorized”
English version, and eventually it displaced the Great Bible as the one
“appoynted to be read in the Churches.”[9] {1084 BIT}
The King James Bible 1611
Bishop Bancroft, a stern opponent of the Puritans, raised the objection that
“if every man’s humour were to be followed there would be no end of
translating.” {1132 BIT}
certain other translations should be used where they agreed better with the
text, namely, “Tindoll’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitchurch’s [= the Great
Bible, so named from the name of the printer], and Geneva”; {1139 BIT}
that no marginal notes were to be used except for necessary explanation of
Hebrew or Greek words. {1141 BIT}
it had never been officially authorized by ecclesiastical or legislative
sanction. In the long run, however, the popularity attained eventually by the
version “authorized” it in the national mind—but in a sense different from
the authorization of the Great Bible of 1539 and the Bishops’ Bible of 1568.
{1164 BIT}
be traduced by Popish persons at home or abroad,” who “desire still to keep
the people in ignorance and darkness; {1171 BIT}
later in the century the university presses of Cambridge and Oxford were to
exercise their right to print Bibles, but in 1611 Barker was the sole
authorized printer. {1187 BSKJV}
The stabilization of the text finally came in 1769, when Benjamin Blayney’s
Oxford folio was published. The KJV that one can buy now is essentially this
late-eighteenth-century text, not the text of 1611. {187 BSKJV}
Benjamin Blayney is little known today, but he might rightly be regarded as
the single most important individual in the history of the KJV, because the
twenty-first-century text of the Bible is essentially Blayney’s text. {1764
BSKJV}
BIT} Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2001. Kindle edition.
BSKJV} Campbell, Gordon. Bible: The Story of the King James Version ; 1611-2011. Oxford [u.a.]:
Oxford Univ. Press, 2011. Kindle edition.