The English Bible

The History of the English Bible

Various parts of Scripture were first translated into English in the 7^th to 10^th century.

Aldhelm (640-709) translated the Psalter (Psalms) into Old English shortly after 700 AD.
Egbert of Northumbria (ca. 700), served as the Archbishop of York and was the first person to translate the synoptic Gospels into English in approximately 705 AD.
The Venerable Bede (674-735) was one of the greatest scholars in Europe and he translated the Gospel of John working on it until literally his last breath.
Alfred the Great (849-901) was the King of England and an excellent scholar. He translated the Ten Commandments, and various sections of Scripture such as Exodus 21-23 and Acts 15:23-29.

It was only in the 14^th century that the first English translation of the entire Bible came into being.

John Wycliffe (1320-84) completed his translation of the New Testament in 1380 and his translation of the Old Testament was done shortly after his death (1388). Wycliffe based his translation on the Latin Vulgate. Wycliffe’s secretary, John Purvey (1354-1428) produced later editions of Wycliffe’s English translations.
William Tyndale (1492-1536) was the author of the first printed edition of any part of the Bible in English. Tyndale was a first-rate scholar and thus was able to base his translation on the original Hebrew and Greek. His New Testament was printed in 1526. Later in 1934, he printed Genesis and a "corrected" version of his New Testament translation. Tyndale translated other portions of the OT in the next years of his life until he was accused of heresy and executed in August of 1536. "Tyndale’s version of the New Testament provided the basis for all the successive revisions between his day and ours." (Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986, pp. 550.)

Tyndale’s assistant, Miles Coverdale was responsible for the first published translation of the complete Bible in English. This version was first published in 1535. The Great Bible, published in 1593, was the revision of Coverdale’s first complete English translation. Despite quite a bit of opposition for various reasons, this Bible became the basis for the Book of Common Prayers and the Administration of the Sacraments.
Martin Luther printed the Bible in German in 1536.

With persecution in England, many of the scholars fled to Geneva which offered refuge and safety for their work. Consequently, The Geneva Bible was published in 1557 (and revised in 1560). The Geneva Bible was a significant improvement on previous English translations for various reasons,

"First, in the Old Testament it followed the Hebrew more closely than its predecessors had done. Secondly, though it followed customary practice of the day in providing notes in the text, its notes were comparatively free of the controversial violence that was the fashion of the age. Thirdly, the use of the smaller (quarto) page...made it an easier book to handle, while plain Roman type made it more legible than Bibles printed in Gothic letter... Fourthly – and perhaps the most striking feature of all – the plan of division into verses...was used for the first time for the whole English Bible."

(from Geddes MacGregor, The Bible in the Making, Philadelphia: Lippencott, 1959, p. 133).

The Geneva Bible was also the first to italicize additional words that were added to the text in order for the English to make sense.

The Bishop’s Bible, so named because it was the work of a number of bishops, was a revision of the Great Bible completed in 1568. But, since it came out a year after the Geneva Bible, it never reached the popularity of the Geneva Bible.

With all these Protestant versions of the Bible available in English, it is no surprise that the Roman Catholic church felt the need to commission an official translation. The Rheimes-Douay version of the Bible was published by the Roman Catholic Church around the start of the 1600’s in two parts. The New Testament was completed in 1589 and the Old Testament in 1609-10. Unfortunately, the Douay Bible was not a particularly good translation because it was really a translation of the Latin Vulgate into English. Of course, this translation included the OT Apocrypha books.
The more common translation of the Bible used by Catholics today is the New American Bible. It was published in 1970 and is based upon the Hebrew and Greek texts.

The most widely recognized English translation is the King James Version (also known as the Authorized Version). King James, somewhat distraught at the Bishop’s Bible being used in church and the Geneva Bible being used in homes, desired for one translation to be used by all people. So, he commissioned some of the best scholars to convene and come up with the best English translation. Their work was based on the Greek text of Erasmus (1516 & 1522). The King James Version was published in 1611. Next class, we will spend more time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the KJV. For now, we just want to place it in its historical context.
Although there were some unofficial revisions of the KJV in the next two hundred seventy years, the official revision of the 1611 KJV took came out in the 1880’s. The Revised Version (RV) of the New Testament, printed in 1881, sold over three million copies within a year of its publication. In 1885 the Revised Version of the OT was published.

If you would like to view some pages from the original Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva, Bishops, or King James Bibles, go to: http://www.christianshareware.net/BibleTranslations/