Imagine life without printed material. No newspapers, magazines, or inexpensive books. Imagine it, no printed material. Only handwritten copies. Few of us would be able to afford having a copy of any material, especially one the size of the Bible. No Bibles! In the Rivera Bible Collection we have 187 Bibles, 183 English Bibles, 115 complete Bibles (both OT and NT), and another 68 partial Bibles (just the NT or Psalms). Without the printing press there would be very few translations of the Bible in English.
Such was life before the printing press. Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press around 1440. It was more than the press put the process. There was the press itself, the right paper, and, the hardest part, ink of the right consistency. Once these were all invented, it started the amazing spread of printed works. Every major city quickly came to have their own printing presses. While the Latin Vulgate was the first work produced on Gutenberg’s press, his invention caused an explosion of books, pamphlets, and vast number of other printed materials. In a noticeably brief period, people would not have been able to imagine life without printed materials.
In our first post on the history of translation—From the Start —we looked at the translation work by Jewish scholars before Christ and later done during the first few centuries of the Church. Before Gutenberg and his genius machine, everything was done by hand in a slow and painstaking fashion. This is the period of time we are going to take a very brief look at, prior to the late 15th century, before the coming of the printing press.
We now jump back a few hundred years and head north to Britannia—what today we call the United Kingdom. In the 1st century BC, the name Britannia replaced the older name of Albion. It would be more correct to refer to the southern two-thirds as Britannia and the northern third as Caledonia (modern Scotland). This land when compared to the Mediterranean area was incredibly primitive. The culture, learning, and the life of Rome around the Mediterranean Sea was unknown to Britannia. Christianity itself was just coming to the isles as brave missionaries sought to reach them for Christ.
The language of Britannia went through quite a period of development. Prior to about 500 AD, there wasn’t even an English language. People spoke local languages with a growing mix of Germanic dialects as Germanic peoples of Northern Europe invaded and took root on the island. By about 500 AD a language known as Anglo-Saxon, or more commonly called Old English, had formed. Other languages such as the Celtic language were also widely used for centuries.
With the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD, came an influx of French influence to the language of the British Isles. This influence came to quickly cause a seismic change in the common language to the point it developed into an utterly different language known as Middle English. Old English was almost a foreign language to Middle English-speaking people. Middle English would be the prominent language until about the end of the 15th century.
From then to today, the English-speaking world has used Modern English, the English of the King James Version and of Shakespeare. I have heard many incorrectly call the King James Bible Old English, but Old English would be found in works such as Beowulf. Old English today could only be read or understood by a scholar. For us, Old English wouldn’t even seem connected to the English we speak today. A linguist would be able to see the connection but not a lay person.
The King James Version and Shakespeare were written in Early Modern English (c. 1500 – c. 1800). Consider the difference between those works and the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. While we may have trouble reading the KJV or Shakespeare, none of us have an issue reading our national documents because they are in the language we still speak today: Modern English.
How does all this relate to English translations of the Bible? We will start at the beginning of the work to get the Bible into the English language. Yet unfortunately, little is known of “English” biblical translation work from the period of Old English and earlier, little of the work remains in existence today. The main biblical text used in the British and Irish Churches would have been the Latin Vulgate, as in the rest of the Western Church. As the Church in Rome consolidated power and gained greater control of the Church, it also controlled the language the Church would use and required approval of any biblical translation work to be done. It was required translations be based on the Latin Vulgate until the middle twentieth century, as Latin was the standard language of the Roman Church. Added to this, the primitive nature of the English Isles and the widespread illiteracy of the day made for a very biblically illiterate English society.
From the earliest times the biblical stories, especially the Gospels, would have been passed down to the people orally rather than in written form. The early depictions of the Bible would have been the décor of early English Churches. Paintings, some the size of a whole wall, and carvings would remind them of the Bible stories they were told. Next came poems and songs which the people would more easily memorize. They would not just teach the stories of the Bible, but the theology of the Bible as well.
Yet even in these early days in the development of the English language, translation work was being done. The first known work of translation was done in the early 8th century by Aldhem, first bishop of Sherburne in Dorset (in Southwest England), who translated the Psalms from Latin.
Another great contributor to the English Church and greater culture was Bebe. Bebe was considered the most learned person throughout Western Europe. Bebe was known for his works of history and biblical exegesis which were written in Latin. He did translate parts of the NT into Old English in fact he was working on the Gospel of John when he passed away in 735. Like most of these early works, his Gospel translation has not survived.
Alfred the Great, King of England (871-901), was an unusually literate King. Oddly in those days, it was very uncommon for royalty to be educated. King Alfred translated—or had translated—many of Bebe’s works into Old English. At the end of his life, King Alfred translated the Ten Commandments and other sections of the Law as well as parts of the Psalms. Again, none of these are extant.
The question may arise as to how we know about these works if they did not survive? We learn of them and other works from writings of others whose works have survived to our day. These can be from histories, letters, and various other materials.
Glosses are words added to a text, usually between the lines or in the margin. Glosses were quite common for an extended period as adding notes to an existing text was much easier and cheaper than having a new one handwritten. This is the kind of thing we do in our own Bibles when we make notes in them. As with our own notes, glosses would add explanations to the text. This kind of translation was done all the way back to the first century when glosses of Aramaic were added to Hebrew Texts. Glosses were also an early form of translations as the Old English—later Middle English—would be added to the Latin Vulgate text.
As we move to the period after the Norman Conquest of England, we also move through a momentous change in the English language. As we stated before, the language changed so greatly so as to become a quite different language altogether. It became known as Middle English (1050 -1500). Changes were happening in every area of life from language to the political scene and the power struggles within the Church. French became the language of the English courts. The elite of society would have spoken more French than the English of the day. Those who could afford a handwritten copy of the Bible would acquire one in French. This ended up limiting the development of English translations. While this time in history is fascinating, it is far too involved to be covered within the scope of this article. The one name we need to know for our purposes is John Wycliffe.
John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384) was responsible for the first translation of the complete Bible into English. While it is doubtful he did the translation work himself, his followers and supporters worked on what came to be known as the Wycliffe Bible. The translations were not done from the original languages but from the Latin Vulgate. Yet, it still marked the first time the people of the British Isle had the Word of God—in its entirety—in their native language! There were actually two complete translations done. The first, a very literal translation of the Latin, was completed in the early 1380’s. It was done in such an extremely word-for-word approach as to be almost an interlinear and not helpful to the average person.
The second translation was completed after John’s death. It was much more user friendly and had a more native Old English feel. The English people accepted it readily, at least those who had the means to get one. The Church in Rome had a hugely different opinion of both Wycliffe and the Wycliffe Bible. In fact, years later John Wycliffe’s bones were dug up, burned, and thrown into a river as an act of desecration of his person. His translation was outlawed, but it outlived them all. Even centuries later, it was in use as the first printed copy of his work was done in 1850.
Keep in mind they didn’t have Gutenberg’s press yet, so only handwritten copies of Wycliffe Bibles were available, and these at a prohibitive cost. There is a story told of a farmer who traded a wagon load of hay for the use of one page for one night. Oh, that I would have that kind of passion for God’s word. Unfortunately, the passion was ignited by the lack of availability of God’s Word. If we learn nothing else from these early accounts, may it be that we would treasure our Bibles!
In future posts, we will see the printing press brought an explosion of learning to the culture of its day which is still felt today, nothing exemplifies the shock wave of change as the English Bible.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg
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