The 1500’s. The sixteen century. I know our first thought is “that was 500 years ago! It’s ancient history, why should we care?” Good question! From William Tyndale’s New Testament translation of 1526 to the 1611 creation of the greatest English translation of the Bible of all time—the King James Version—was nearly a century with some of the greatest translation work ever done. You have to consider the times. The western world was in upheaval. The Reformation was in full force. Changes to political systems and powers were moving the very fabric of society. The Americas’ discovery just a few decades earlier was leading to even more exploration. The very size of the world as they knew it was changing. England was no exception to these changes. King Henry the VIII was throwing off the control of English religious life by the Roman Church (his motive was unfortunately we not all that godly). Right in the middle of all these changes, even helping to stimulate the changes, the bible was being translated into the language of the people. Not just new translations but translations which were affordable due to the advances in technology—the printing press.
We are somewhat used to the production of Bibles today. Seems a new one comes out every few months with one or more new translations or revisions each year. This has been the case since about 1952 when the Revised Standard Version was produced and has increased to our day. But after the translation of the KJV translation work (1611), major new translations just about ended. The next major translations were not until the 1885 Revised Version and the 1901 American Standard Version. Don’t misunderstand this to mean there were no new translations but just none that gathered any real following.
The 1500’s were more like today with the plethora of Bible translations than any other period in history. Yet it was also very different. Instead of many new and fresh works of translation, each translation was seeking to improve on the previous. This work of revision hits its apex in the translation of the KJV. (To be clear, I am not a King James Only supporter. I believe the KJV has passed its point of being truly useful as a primary Bible. But I still hold that the KJV is the G.O.A.T—Greatest Of All Time—of translations and will devote a complete article just to it in the future.) To this point, in the “The Translators to the Reader” the KJV translators wrote, “Truly, good Christian Reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one.”
Oh, if I had the resources and skill to write a book, it would be about this period of time. But alas, we don’t have time for that right now. So, I will quickly cover some of the major translations of this period. As a reminder, William Tyndale’s New Testament—the first printed NT translated from the Greek—was published in 1526 with a major revision in 1534 shortly before his execution.
1534 is also important for our study as it was at this time King Henry VIII officially broke from the Roman Catholic Church forming the Church of England appointing himself as its head. The impact of this political and religious change cannot be over stated, especially for Bible translation as we will see.
Coverdale Bible (1535): Miles Coverdale (1488-1569) is the man to whom we as English Bible readers owe a huge debt. He spent his life getting the Bible into English and making it accessible to the common person. He is responsible for two of the major translations of this period and had a hand in a third. Miles had spent some time as Tyndale’s assistant and proof-reader.
The Coverdale Bible was the first complete Bible printed in English. Yet large portions were translated out of German and Latin, not the original languages as he was not proficient in the biblical languages. Also because of persecution in England, it was printed on the continent. While Coverdale’s work was not authorized or licensed by the king, Queen Anne Boleyn was a great supporter of his work. With the Queen’s favor and Coverdale’s glowing dedication to the king and queen, the Coverdale Bible was accepted openly. The second edition in 1537 was even given a royal license along with the Matthew’s Bible. Yet this approval only lasted until Ann Boleyn’s execution when the Coverdale Bible fell out of royal favor. This second edition was also the first whole English Bible to be printed in England.
It is worth noting that Miles’ New Testament and Pentateuch were basically the work of Tyndale who would be martyred the next year for his translation work. Coverdale did improve on Tyndale’s work in some areas, as he also was very skilled linguist. It was from this translation that we are indebted for phrases such “Thou enoyntest my heade with oyle”; “the valley of the shadowe of death” among others. As you can see, the Coverdale Bible was written in Early Modern English like other early translations. It would be another 250 – 300 years before a true Modern English of today would emerge.
The books of the Old Testament followed the order of the Latin Vulgate rather than the Hebrew; and, for the first time, the books of the Apocrypha were put in a separate section from the OT. This format of putting the Apocrypha in a separate appendix has been followed by almost all English Protestant Bibles to this day (when they are included at all). In the New Testament, Coverdale followed the order of Luther and Tyndale by putting the two letters of Peter and John’s three letters before Hebrews then James, Jude, and Revelation.
Matthew’s Bible (1537): Thomas Matthew was a pseudonym for John Rogers, a friend and supporter of William Tyndale. Rogers obtained some of Tyndale’s unpublished translations of several OT books. He followed the same order for the books of the Bible as Coverdale and also put the Apocrypha in a separate appendix.
The almost humorous point of Rogers’ work is so much was actually William Tyndale’s, yet Matthew’s Bible was the first to be granted a royal license (along with the second edition of the Coverdale Bible). It would be interesting to see how King Henry VIII would have reacted if he had found out he had put his seal of approval on what was really Tyndale’s work. Rogers had even put the initials “W.T.” at the end of Malachi as a tribute to William Tyndale. The King never caught the connection to Tyndale.
Rogers was burnt at the stake in February 1555 under the new Catholic queen, Mary Tudor. He was the first of many Protestant martyrs.
The impact of these first two translations was overwhelming. The English people were starving for the word of God and now had it in their own language. Yet things did get a bit out of hand. During worship service people would gather around a literate fellow member to listen to him read from the church’s copy of the Bible. The problem was they were doing it during the preacher’s sermon. It seems they found the reading of Scripture more interesting and edifying than the homily. It got so bad King Henry VIII issues a proclamation in April of 1539 forbidding the reading of the English Bible aloud during services.
The Great Bible (1539): the “Great” in the name was not due to superior quality but because it was great big. It was the largest English Bible to be published. Pages measured 15 to 16 inches by 10 inches. As a comparison, we have some large family or pulpit Bibles in the Rivera Bible Collection. The largest one’s pages measures 11 by 8 inches. The Great Bible truly was a great big Bible!
The Great Bible was also the first “authorized” English Bible. It was the work of Miles Coverdale mostly as a revision of the Matthew Bible. Thomas Cromwell had suggested this project to Coverdale. Many today complain about constant revisions to their Bibles. Well these people would not like the Great Bible. In 1540 Coverdale completed a major revision of this translation. It was quite an improvement over the first edition. By the end of 1541, SIX more revisions were completed. For the NT, Coverdale followed the order of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, the order that we use today.
With the changing political climate in England, the Great Bible had a diverse reception. It was ordered to be placed in churches, then ordered removed from churches and then back again. In 1543 reading of the Bible was limited to the Great Bible. By 1546 a general burning of other translations began. Upon Henry the VIII’s death, Protestants were free under Edward the VI to produce other translations.
The Geneva Bible (1560, 1599): This is the third translation that Miles Coverdale had a hand in producing. The freedom enjoyed under Edward ended with the ascension of the Roman Catholic Mary Tudor to the throne (1553-58). During her reign it was impossible to publish any Bible translations in England. Again English biblical scholars fled to the continent, mostly Switzerland. The center of the expatriates was Geneva. Geneva was the headquarters of the Reformed Protestantism.
The Geneva New Testament was published in 1557. While translators were not named, William Whittingham, a brother-in-law of John Calvin, is believed to have done the majority of the work. The OT was published in 1560 with a revision of the NT. The later part of Genesis 3:7 was translated as “they sewed fig tre leaves together, and made them selves breeches.” The Geneva Bible thus gained the nick name of the “Breeches” Bible.
The Geneva Bible also came with a copious number of marginal notes, similar to a study Bible. These notes were related to explanations of difficult passages, historical and geographical references. As would be expected from Geneva, these notes had a Calvinistic bent. They reflected not only Calvin’s theological view but also his political and social stands. One impetus of King James for a new translation was his disdain of the politics in the Geneva Bible notes.
The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible with numbered verses. All subsequent translations used this numbering system. It also introduced the practice of italicizing English words not represented in the original language text. While new to English translations, italicizing had been used in Latin translations. Unlike the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible was produced in a much smaller size making it much cheaper which contributed to its popularity. It also included maps, tables, and chapter summaries. Hebrew names were given a more phonetic spelling with accents.
All these features, along with a superior type set for readability, gave the Geneva Bible immediate and widespread acceptance. It remained the main English Translation for about 80 years. The 1611 KJV did not surpass the Geneva Bible until about 1650. I think about my ancestors who came to America as early as 1631. Five of my great grandfathers were founders of Hartford Connecticut. These early American family members would have come here with the Geneva Bible! This gives this Bible a special place in my heart. (No, I don’t have any of their Bibles, I wish I did. I don’t even know if they still exist.)
The Bishops’ Bible (1568): While the people liked the Geneva Bible, the English Church and the state did not. So, in 1564 Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, initiated efforts to produce a revision of the Great Bible with the hope it would supplant the Geneva Bible. As the translators were bishops or men seeking to become bishops, the work became known as the Bishops’ Bible. The goal was to only make changes as required by the Hebrew or Greek. A unique feature of this work was to place the initial of the revisor at the end of the section(s) he worked on. The idea was to hold them accountable for their work. It also contains supplemental items such as maps, tables, a chronology, list of genealogies, pictures, decorative woodcuts, and marginal notes. Some of the notes were even brought over from the Geneva Bible, of course not the more Calvinistic or the political comments.
Lack of editorial supervision gave the individual translators a great deal of freedom in their work but also produced a very uneven quality to the whole. The Bishops’ Bible was the second “authorized” English version. It would come to replace the Great Bible as the translation appointed to be read in churches. For clarity, understand that “authorized” is not a special blessing from God but an act of approval by the king or the hierarchy of the Anglican Church, no more, no less than that.
Hope you are as amazed as I am by the work of God in bringing us the Bible in English. Without these early works, we would not have the Bible we have today. This is only a limited selection of the precursors to the KJV. There were others such as the Heims-Douay Bible (1582-1610)—an English Catholic translation which also had a significate influence on the KJV. I wish the spirit of revision had continued. I believe if the KJV had been revised every 25 to 50 years we would not have the crazy number of translations we have today. Revisions should have been made due to the changes in the English language, as more ancient texts are discovered and the increase in our understanding of the original languages. There is much good in the plethora of Bibles but also the con that the English-speaking Church lacks the unity of translation we once had. We as the body of Christ are losing our ability to speak with a common biblical language.
As we approach the 500th anniversary of many of these translations, I’m hoping reproductions of these works will be made, hopefully at a reasonable price. I have replicas of Tyndale’s New Testament—both the 1526 and 1534— the 1537 Matthew’s Bible, and the 1560 Geneva Bible. I was able to obtain a replica of the 1611 KJV on its 400th anniversary. I do hope that a replica of the Great Bible will not be actual size, I don’t know where I would fit that monster! I hope this article whets your appetite to learn more about this period. Check out our “Suggested Reading” section.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg