History of the English Bible
From the Dark Ages to Modern Times
From 1,400 B.C. to 1,400 A.D., the scriptures were preserved in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek
by the Jews and the early Christians. The 1,000 years of the Dark Ages and Middle Ages
covers when it was read only in Latin. The scripture in the English language begins with
John Wycliffe.
John Wycliffe
The first English language
Bible manuscripts were hand-written in the 1380's AD by John Wycliffe. He was an Oxford professor, scholar,
and a theologian. John Wycliffe, was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching
of the organized Church, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, which he believed were contrary to the Bible.
With the help of many faithful helpers, assistants and scribes, Wycliffe was responsible for producing
dozens of manuscript copies of the scriptures in the English language . These were translated out of the
Latin Vulgate, which was the only source available to Wycliffe.
John Hus
John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe's idea
that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose
the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution.
Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with Wycliffe's manuscript Bibles used as tinder for
the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, "in 100 years, God will raise up a man whose
calls for reform cannot be suppressed." Almost exactly 100 years later, in 1517, Martin Luther
nailed his famous 95 Theses onto the church door at Wittenberg. Martin Luther went on to be the
first man to print the Bible in the German language.
Johann Gutenberg
Johann Gutenberg invented the printing
press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Bible, printed
in Mainz, Germany. Gutenberg's Bibles were beautifully printed, because every page was later
decorated by hand in color. Recently, a list of the most important people in the last 1000 years was headed
by Gutenburg, because of his invention of the movable-type printing press. In effect, this meant
that Bibles, and other books, could be produced in large quantities in a relatively short period of time.
This is compared to using only manual means, and not to our modern methods (which were developed from his idea.)
Thomas Linacre
Thomas Linacre, an Oxford professor in the
1490's, learned Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate,
he wrote, "Either this is not the Gospel, or we are not Christians." This Latin text was so corrupted
by centuries of revision that it no longer even accurately portrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet both
the Anglican and the Roman Catholic Churches would kill anyone who read the scripture in any language
other than Latin, though it was not even the original language of the scriptures.
John Colet
In 1496, John Colet, another Oxford professor,
started reading the New Testament in Greek and translating it into English for his students at
Oxford, and later for the public at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. The people were so hungry
to hear the Word of God in a language they could understand, that within six months there were
20,000 people packed in the church and at least that many outside! Colet was a powerful man
with friends in high places, so he managed to avoid being executed.
Erasmus
In considering the experiences of Linacre
and Colet, the great scholar Erasmus was so moved to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, that
in 1516, with the help of printer John Froben, he published a Greek-Latin Parallel
New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh rendering of
the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from a
half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired. This milestone was
the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium and the
first ever to come off a printing press. The 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus focused
attention on how corrupt and inaccurate the Latin Vulgate had become, and how important it was
to go back and use the original Greek and Hebrew languages to maintain accuracy, and to
translate them faithfully into the languages of the common people whether that be English,
German or any other tongue.
William Tyndale
William Tyndale was the Captain of
the Army of Reformers, and was their spiritual leader. Tyndale holds the distinction of
being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language. Tyndale was a
true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any
one of them to be his native tongue. He is frequently referred to as the "Architect of the
English Language", (even more so than William Shakespeare) as so many of the phrases Tyndale
coined are still in our language today.
Tyndale wanted to use the same 1516 Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the
New Testament in English for the first time in history. Tyndale showed up on Luther's doorstep in
Germany in 1525, and by year's end had translated the New Testament into English. Tyndale had
been forced to flee England, because of the wide-spread rumor that his English New Testament
project was underway, causing inquisitors and bounty hunters to be constantly on Tyndale's trail
to arrest him and prevent his project. God foiled their plans, and in 1525-1526 the Tyndale New
Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language. Subsequent
printings of the Tyndale New Testament in the 1530's were often elaborately illustrated.
They were burned as soon as the Bishop could confiscate them, but copies trickled through and
actually ended up in the bedroom of King Henry VIII. The more the King and Bishop resisted its
distribution, the more fascinated the public became. The church claimed the English Bible contained
thousands of errors as they burned hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy. In fact,
they burned them because they could find no errors at all. One risked death by burning if
caught in mere possession of Tyndale's forbidden books.
Today, there are only two known copies left of Tyndale's 1525-26 First Edition. Any copies
printed prior to 1570 are extremely valuable. Tyndale's flight was an inspiration to freedom-loving
Englishmen who drew courage from the 11 years that he was hunted. Books and Bibles flowed
into England in bales of cotton and sacks of flour. Ironically, Tyndale's biggest customer was the
King's men, who would buy up every copy available to burn them and Tyndale used their
money to print even more! In the end, Tyndale was caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he
had befriended. Tyndale was incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the
stake in 1536. Tyndale's last words were, "Oh Lord, open the King of England's eyes". This
prayer would be answered just three years later in 1539, when King Henry VIII finally allowed,
and even funded, the printing of an English Bible known as the "Great Bible."
Martin Luther
Martin Luther had a head-start on Tyndale,
as Luther declared his intolerance for the Roman Church's corruption on Halloween in 1517,
by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Church door. Luther, who would be exiled
in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 that was designed to martyr him, would
translate the New Testament into German for the first time from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament
of Erasmus, and publish it in September of 1522. Luther also published a German Pentateuch in 1523,
and another edition of the German New Testament in 1529. In the 1530's he would go on to publish
the entire Bible in German.
Myles Coverdale and John Rogers
Myles Coverdale and John "Thomas Matthew"
Rogers had remained loyal disciples the last six years of Tyndale's life, and they carried the
English Bible project forward and even accelerated it. Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament,
and in 1535 he printed the first complete Bible in the English language, making use of Luther's German
text and the Latin as sources. Thus, the first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535,
and is known as the Coverdale Bible.
John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537. It was, however,
the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew and
Greek. He printed it under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew," (an assumed name that had
actually been used by Tyndale at one time) as a considerable part of this Bible was the
translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned by the English authorities.
It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535 edition) and
Coverdale's Bible and some of Roger's own translation of the text. It remains known most commonly
as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible. It went through a nearly identical second-edition printing in 1549.
Thomas Cranmer
In 1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the "Great Bible".
It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church,
chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Word of
God in plain English. It would seem that William Tyndale's last wish had been granted... just three
years after his martyrdom. Cranmer's Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible
due to its great size: a large pulpit folio measuring over 14 inches tall. Seven editions of this
version were printed between April of 1539 and December of 1541.
King Henry VIII
It was not that King Henry VIII
had a change of conscience regarding publishing the Bible in English. King Henry VIII had
in fact, requested that the Pope permit him to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. The Pope
refused, and King Henry responded by killing his wife, marrying his mistress, and thumbing his
nose at the Pope by renouncing Roman Catholicism, taking England out from under Rome's religious
control, and declaring himself as the reigning head of State to also be the new head of the
Church. This new branch of the Christian Church, neither Roman Catholic nor truly Protestant,
became known as the Anglican Church or the Church of England. Henry VIII acted essentially as
its "Pope". His first act was to further defy the wishes of Rome by funding the printing of the
scriptures in English the first legal English Bible just for spite.
Queen Mary
Through the 1540's and 50's, England and the world went through times when Religious
Freedom was tolerated and times when
it was NOT. After King Henry VIII, King Edward VI took the throne, but poor health did
not allow him to live very long. After his death, the reign of "Bloody Mary" was the
next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English. She puropsed to return England to the Roman Church.
In 1555, John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers and Thomas Cranmer were both burned at the stake. Mary
went on to burn reformers at the stake by the hundreds for the "crime" of being a Protestant.
Refugees fled from England with little hope of ever seeing their home or friends again.
Queen Elizabeth I
No British Royal, till her time, did what Elizabeth I was able to accomplish in fostering
Religious Freedom in the world. She narrowly escaped death at the hands of her half-sister, "Bloody
Mary," and began to reign when Mary was dead. Numerous plots were foiled by her protectors,
and Elizabeth went on to have a long reign on the throne of England. She carried
out her convictions in repect to her father, Henry VIII.
With the end of Queen Mary's bloody reign, the reformers could safely return to England. The
Anglican Church, now under Queen Elizabeth I, reluctantly tolerated the printing and distribution
of Geneva version Bibles in England. The marginal notes in the Geneva Bible were vehemently against the
institutional Church of the day. Another version, one with a less inflammatory tone was desired,
and the copies of the Great Bible were getting to be decades old. In 1568, a revision of the Great
Bible known as the Bishop's Bible was introduced. Despite 19 editions being printed between 1568
and 1606, this Bible, referred to as the "rough draft of the King James Version", never gained much
of a foothold of popularity. The Geneva Bible had been too much to compete with.
Rome's corrupt compromise
By the 1580's, the Roman Catholic Church saw that it had
lost the battle to suppress God's Holy Word being available in the English
language. In 1582, the Church of Rome surrendered their fight for "Latin only"
and decided that if the Bible was to be available in English, they would at
least have an official Roman Catholic English translation. And so, using the
corrupt and inaccurate Latin Vulgate as the only source text, they went on to
publish an English Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus
had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier. Because it was translated at the
Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims New
Testament. The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609
at the College in the city of Douay. The combined product is commonly referred
to as the "Doway/Rheims" Version. In 1589, Dr. William Fulke of Cambridge
published the "Fulke's Refutation", in which he printed in parallel columns the
Bishops Version along side the Rheims Version, attempting to show the error and
distortion of the Roman Church's corrupt compromise of an English version of the
Bible.
King James I
With the death of Queen Elizabeth I,
Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Protestant clergy approached
the new King in 1604 and announced their desire for a new translation to replace the Bishop's
Bible first printed in 1568. They knew that the Geneva Version had won the hearts of the
people because of its excellent scholarship, accuracy, and exhaustive commentary. However,
they did not want the controversial marginal notes (proclaiming the Pope an Anti-Christ, etc.)
Essentially, the leaders of the church desired a Bible for the people, with scriptural
references only for word clarification or cross-references.
This "translation to end all translations" (for a while at least) was the result of the
combined effort of about fifty scholars. They took into consideration: The Tyndale New
Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and
even the Rheims New Testament. The great revision of the Bishop's Bible had begun. From
1605 to 1606 the scholars engaged in private research. From 1607 to 1609 the work was
assembled. In 1610 the work went to press, and in 1611 the first of the huge (16 inch tall)
pulpit folios known today as "The 1611 King James Bible" came off the printing press. Starting
just one year after the huge 1611 pulpit-size King James Bibles were printed and chained to
every church pulpit in England; printing then began on the earliest normal-size copies of the
King James Bible. These were produced so individuals could have their own personal copy of the Bible.
John Bunyan
John Bunyan, while in prison for
the crime of preaching without a license, wrote one of Christian history's greatest books,
Pilgrim's Progress. Throughout the 1600's, as the Puritans and the Pilgrims fled the religious
persecution of England to cross the Atlantic and start a new free nation in America, they
took with them their precious Geneva Bible, and rejected the King's Bible. America was
founded upon the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible.
John Eliot and Robert Aitken
Although the first Bible printed in America
was done in the native Algonquin Indian Language by John Eliot in 1663; the first English
language Bible to be printed in America by Robert Aitken in 1782 was a King James Version.
Robert Aitken's 1782 Bible was also the only Bible ever authorized by the United States
Congress. He was commended by President George Washington for providing Americans with Bibles
during the embargo of imported English goods due to the Revolutionary War. In 1808, Robert's
daughter, Jane Aitken, would become the first woman to ever print a Bible, and to do so in
America, of course. In 1791, Isaac Collins vastly improved upon the quality and size of the
typesetting of American Bibles and produced the first "Family Bible" printed in America...
also a King James Version. Also in 1791, Isaiah Thomas published the first Illustrated Bible
printed in America... in the King James Version.
Noah Webster
While Noah Webster, just a few years after
producing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, would produce his own modern translation
of the English Bible in 1833; the public remained too loyal to the King James Version for Webster's
version to have much impact.
The Written Word of God
Having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English, would
have meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the scriptures. If
people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would
crumble. They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences (the forgiveness
of sins) or selling the release of loved ones from a church-manufactured "Purgatory." People
would begin to challenge the church's authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves.
The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the
public's eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church
held. Salvation through faith, not works or donations, would be understood. The need for priests
would vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of church-canonized Saints
and Mary would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures in English was the
biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church. Neither side would give up without a fight.
The Geneva Bible
In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer
refugees and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in
Geneva, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe (Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the only exhaustive reference
work on the persecution and martyrdom of Early Christians and Protestants from the first century
up to the mid-16th century), as well as Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham. There, with the
protection of the great theologian John Calvin (author of the most famous theological book ever
published, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion)and John Knox, the great Reformer of the
Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their
families while they continued in exile.
The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560.
It became known as the Geneva Bible. This Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the
chapters, so that referencing specific passages would be easier. Every chapter was also
accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references so thorough and complete that the Geneva
Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible". William Shakespeare quotes hundreds of
times in his plays from the Geneva translation of the Bible. The Geneva Bible became the Bible of
choice for over 100 years of English speaking Christians. Between 1560 and 1644 at least 144
editions of this Bible were published. Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that
its translators were influenced much more by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva
Bible itself retains over 90% of William Tyndale's original English translation. The Geneva in fact,
remained more popular than the King James Version until decades after its original release in 1611!
The Geneva holds the honor of being the first Bible taken to America, and the Bible of the Puritans
and Pilgrims. It is truly the "Bible of the Protestant Reformation." Strangely, the famous Geneva
Bible has been out-of-print since 1644, so the only way to obtain one is to either purchase an
original printing of the Geneva Bible, or a less costly facsimile reproduction of the original 1560
Geneva Bible.
The King James Bible
Professing Christians today are largely unaware of this history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible
(50 years older than, and textually 95% the same as the King James Version, was not influenced
by the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament that the King James translators admittedly took into
consideration.) Nevertheless, the King James Bible turned out to be an excellent and accurate
translation, and it became the most printed book in the history of the world, and the only book
with one billion copies in print. In fact, for over 250 years...until the appearance of the
English Revised Version of 1881-1885...the King James Version reigned without much of a rival.
The Anglican Church's King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant
Church's Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant
Christian churches today embrace the King James Bible exclusively as the "only" legitimate
English language translation yet it is not even a Protestant translation! It was printed to
compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by authorities who throughout most of history were
hostile to Protestants and killed them. While many Protestants are quick to assign the full
blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that even after England
broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500's, the Church of England (The Anglican Church)
continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600's.
Since the turn of the 19th century, all King James Bibles published in America are actually the 1769
Baskerville spelling and wording revision of the 1611. The original "1611" preface is included
by the publishers, and no mention of the fact that it is really the 1769 version is to found,
because that might hurt sales. The only way to obtain a true, unaltered, 1611 version is to
either purchase an original pre-1769 printing of the King James Bible, or a less costly
facsimile reproduction of the original 1611 King James Bible.
Up until the 1880's every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The
Apocryphal books, written hundreds of years before Christ, were part of virtually every printing
of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible,
and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880's! The original 1611 King James contained
the Apocrypha, and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha
with heavy fines and a year in jail. Since the 1880's, though, most Churches reject
these books, and they have been removed from Bibles.
The English Revised Version
It was not until the 1880's
that England's own planned replacement for their King James Bible, the English Revised Version
(E.R.V.) would become the first English language Bible to gain popular acceptance as a
post-King James Version modern-English Bible. The widespread popularity of this modern-English
translation brought with it another curious characteristic: the absence of the 14 Apocryphal books.
The American Standard Version
The Americans responded to England's E.R.V. Bible by publishing the nearly-identical American
Standard Version (A.S.V.) in 1901. It was also widely-accepted and embraced by churches
throughout America for many decades as the leading modern-English version of the Bible. In the
1971, it was again revised and called New American Standard Version Bible (N.A.S.V.)
The New International Version
In 1973, the New International Version (N.I.V.) was produced, which was offered as a "dynamic
equivalent" translation into modern English. The N.I.V. was designed not for "word-for-word"
accuracy, but rather, for "phrase-for-phrase" accuracy, and ease of reading even at a Junior
High-School reading level. It was meant to appeal to a broader (and in some instances less-educated)
cross-section of the general public.
The New King James Version
In 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers produced what they called the "New King James Version".
Their original intent was to keep the basic wording of the King James to appeal to King James
Version loyalists, while only changing the most obscure words and the Elizabethan "thee, thy,
thou" pronouns. This was an interesting marketing ploy, however, upon discovering that this was
not enough of a change for them to be able to legally copyright the result, they had to make more
significant revisions, which defeated their purpose in the first place. It was never taken seriously
by scholars, but it has enjoyed some degree of public acceptance, simply because of its clever
"New King James Version" marketing name.
In Conclusion
As Christians, we must be very careful to make intelligent and informed decisions about what
translations of the Bible we choose to read. On the liberal extreme, we have people who would
give us heretical new translations that attempt to change God's Word to make it politically
correct. One example of this, which has made headlines recently is the Today's New International
Version (T.N.I.V.) which seeks to remove all gender-specific references in the Bible whenever
possible! Not all English translations are good - and some are very bad.
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