The first hand-written English language manuscripts of the Bible were produced in 1380's AD by Oxford theologian John Wycliff (Wycliffe). Curiously, he was also the inventor of bifocal eyeglasses. Wycliff spent many of his years arguing against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. Though he died a nonviolent death, the Pope was so infuriated by his teachings that 44 years after Wycliff had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
Gutenburg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and
the first book to ever be printed was the Bible. It was, however,
in Latin rather than English. With the onset of the Reformation
in the early 1500's, the first printings of the Bible in the English
language were produced...illegally and at great personal risk
of those involved.
William Tyndale was the Captain of the Army of reformers,and
was their spiritual leader. He worked most of his translating
years alone, but had help from time to time as God discerned he
needed it. Indirectly, he had the help of Erasmus in the
publication of his Greek/Latin New Testament printed in 1516.
Erasmus and the great printer, scholar, and reformer John Froben
published the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the Bible in a millennium.
Latin was the language for centuries of scholarship and it was
understood by virtually every European who could read or write.
Erasmus' Latin was not the Vulgate translation of Jerome, but
his own fresh rendering of the Greek New Testament text that he
had collated from six or seven partial New Testament manuscripts
into a complete Greek New Testament.
The Latin that Erasmus translated from the Greek revealed enormous
corruptions in the Vulgate's integrity amongst the rank and file
scholars, many of whom were already convinced that the established
church was doomed by virtue of its evil hierarchy. Pope Leo X's
declaration that "the fable of Christ was very profitable
to him" infuriated the people of God.
With Erasmus' work in 1516, the die was cast. Martin Luther
declared his intolerance with the Roman Curch's corruption on
Halloween in 1517, by nailing 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg
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 from Erasmus' Greek/Latin
New Testament and publish it in September of 1522. Simultaneously,
William Tyndale would become burdened to translate that same Erasmus
text into English. It could not, however, be done in England.
Tyndale showed up on Luther's doorstep in 1525, and by year's
end had translated the New Testament into English. Tyndale was
fluent in eight languages and is considered by many to be the
primary architect of today's English language. Already hunted
because of the rumor spread abroad that such a project was underway,
inquisitors and bounty hunters were on Tyndale's trail to abort
the effort. God foiled their plans, and in 1525/6 Tyndale printed
the first English New Testament. 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 at large became. The church declared it contained thousands
of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated
by the clergy, while 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.
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-cannonized Saints and
Mary would be called into question. The availablity of the scriptures
in English was the biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church.
Neither side would give up without a fight.
The Tyndale New Testament was the first ever printed in
the English language. Its first printing occurred in 1525/6, but
only one complete copy of the first printing exists. Any Edition
printed before 1570 is very rare and valuable, particularly pre-1540
editions and fragments. 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. 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. His last words were, "Lord, open the eyes of the
King of England".
Myles Coverdale and John Rogers were loyal disciples
the last six years of Tyndale's life, and they carried the 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. He printed it under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew",
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 a small amount of
Roger's own translation of the text. It remains known most commonly
as the Matthews Bible.
In 1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canturbury,
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 disrtibuted 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.
The ebb and flow of freedom continued through the 1540's...and
into the 1550's. The reign of Queen Mary (a.k.a. "Bloody
Mary") was the next obstacle to the printing of the Bible
in English. She was possessed in her quest to return England to
the Roman Church. In 1555, John Rogers ("Thomas Matthew")
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. This era was known as the Marian Exile,
and the refugees fled from England with little hope of ever seeing
their home or friends again.
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 (publisher of the famous Foxe's
Book of Martyrs, which is to this day 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 John Calvin and John Knox, 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. Due to a passage in Genesis desribing the clothing
that God fashioned for Adam and Eve upon expulsion from the Garden
of Eden as "Breeches" (an antiquated form of "Britches"),
some people referred to the Geneva Bible as the Breeches Bible.
The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add 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 thousands 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.
With the end of Queen Mary's bloody rein, the reformers could
safely return to England. The Aglican Church, under Queen Elizabeth
I, reluctantly tolerated the printing and distribution of Geneva
version Bibles in England. The marginal notes, which were vehemently
against the institutional Church of the day, did not rest well
with the rulers of the day, however. Another version, one with
a less inflamatory tone was desired. In 1568, the Bishop's
Bible was introduced. Despite 19 editions being printed between
1568 and 1606, the version never gained much of a foothold of
popularity among the people. The Geneva may have simply been too
much to compete with.
By the 1580's, the Roman Catholic Church saw that it had lost
the battle to supress the will of God: that His Holy Word be 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 Latin Vulgate as a 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 ( or Rhemes) New Testament. The Old Testament
was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 at the College in
the city of Doway (also spelled Douay and Douai). The combined
product is commonly refered to as the "Doway/Rheims"
Version.
In 1589, Dr. 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.
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 when multiple meanings were possible.
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 as "The King James
Bible" came off the printing press.
A typographical error in Ruth 3:15 rendered the pronoun "He"
instead of the correct "She" in that verse. This caused
some of the 1611 First Editions to be known by collectors as "He"
Bibles, and others as "She" Bibles.
It took many years for it to overtake the Geneva Bible in popularity
with the people, but eventually the King James Version became
the Bible of the English people. It became the most printed book
in the history of the world. In fact, for around 250 years...until
the appearance of the Revised Version of 1881...the King James
Version reigned without a rival.
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. 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.
In 1841, the English Hexapla New Testament was printed.
This wonderful
textual comparison tool shows in parallel columns: The 1380 Wycliff,
1534 Tyndale,
1539 Great, 1557 Geneva, 1582 Rheims, and 1611 King James versions
of the
entire New Testament...with the original Greek at the top of the
page.
(Hexaplas are available on our Book Vault Page).
Consider the following textual comparison of John 3:16 as they
appear in
many of these famous printings of the English Bible:
* 1st Ed. King James (1611): "For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life."
* Rheims (1582): "For so God loued the vvorld, that
he gaue his only-begotten sonne: that euery one that beleeueth
in him, perish not, but may haue life euerlasting"
* Geneva (1557): "For God so loueth the world, that
he hath geuen his only begotten Sonne: that none that beleue in
him, should peryshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
* Great Bible (1539): "For God so loued the worlde, that
he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in him,
shulde not perisshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
* Tyndale (1534): "For God so loveth the worlde, that
he hath geven his only sonne, that none that beleve in him, shuld
perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe."
* Wycliff (1380): "for god loued so the world; that
he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him
perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif,"
It is possible to go back to manuscripts earlier than Wycliff, but the language found can only be described as the "Anglo-Saxon" roots of English, and would not be easily recognizable as similar to the English spoken today.
For example, the Anglo-Saxon pre-English root language of the
year 995 AD yields a manuscript that quotes John 3:16 as:
"God lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan
sunu, dat nan ne forweorde de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif."
I hope that this short essay has served to enhance your appreciation
for the Bible of our language.