"They received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." ~ Acts 17:11

"The Long and Winding Road"

Introduction

In increasing numbers English speaking people are turning to the Lockman Foundation's New American Standard Bible for their knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, of the divine aspects of Israel's history, of the inspired ideals of the Christian life as revealed to the apostles, and any certain concept of their future, of their own souls and life of glory, and of the earth and of the nations upon it. Bible students have consistently found this translation to be sufficiently up-to-date, to be comprehensible, and at the same time sufficiently literal to carry the underlying sense of the text. Because of the clarity and accuracy with which it communicates the message of God, it is one of the translations most highly valued and widely used by Bible students and Bible study groups.

It is generally agreed that Christianity came to Britain in the second century of our era, possibly soon after the close of the Apostolic age. But who brought the Christian faith first to that island, and how extensive its acceptance at that time, we will probably never know. "Among the many hundreds of religious monuments, civil and military, strewn about Britain from the second to the early fourth century, all are purely pagan." There were some early British martyrs and Britain was represented at the earlier church councils, but, says the late Professor Charles Oman, "There seems every reason to believe that the main bulk of the population in this remote province of the West remained pagan until a much later date than was the case elsewhere. . . . It is very strange that a religion which was first publicly tolerated, and later encouraged by the government for nearly a hundred years before the fatal year A.D. 410 should have left so few records in stone behind it." What Bibles or parts of Bibles were in Britain in those mysteriously blacked-out decades, we do not know. Though the oldest book written by a Briton belongs in this period, a commentary on the Epistles of Paul by the heretic Pelagius, yet inasmuch as he left Britain when young, never to return, and wrote the book in Rome, we need not tarry further with this particular literary product.

Index

The Book of Armagh

While for the nearly two hundred years after the departure of the Roman garrison in Britain, A.D. 410, we know almost nothing of the experiences of the Christian church in England, the story is quite different for the church in Ireland, to which mountainous country the Christian faith first came in the fourth century. Within three generations, monasteries sprang up throughout the entire land, so that by A.D. 600 "the study of sound literature held the foremost place and was pursued with a thoroughness and intensity unknown elsewhere in Europe at that date." It was during this period that The Book of Armagh was written, partly in Irish and partly in Latin, containing a non-Vulgate text of the New Testament, the only complete copy of the New Testament that has come down to us produced by the Irish church.

The Latin Bible

It is with the coming of St. Augustine in 597 that any factual history of Christianity in England must begin. We do not know if St. Augustine actually had a Bible with him, though we are sure that there were hundreds of passages of Scripture, especially the Psalter, stored in his mind. Among the gifts of Pope Gregory to the early church at Canterbury, soon thereafter, were a Gregorian Bible, in two volumes, two copies of the Gospels, two Psalters, an exposition of the Epistles and Gospels for several Sundays, all adorned with silver or jewels! Here is the beginning of the history of the Scriptures in Britain. What kind of Bible would Pope Gregory send to Augustine? It would have to be a Latin Bible, not a Hebrew Old Testament, or a Greek New Testament, and this deserves brief consideration. By the third century of our era, most people in the Western provinces of the Roman Empire knew very little Greek (even in Rome), and if they were to have a Bible, it must be a Latin version, the language that was spoken throughout most of the Mediterranean world. When and how Latin Bibles were replaced by English Bibles, which could be read by the laity, is what we now want to consider.

The First English Bibles

Undoubtedly, the first translation of parts of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon were not with pen and ink, on vellum or parchment, but in song and recitation. These Christian songs began with Caedmon, whose discovery of a gift of song is so beautifully set forth by Bede. Bede says that Caedmon "sang first of the creation of the world and the beginning of mankind, and all the story of Genesis, that is the first book of Moses, and again of the Exodus of the people of Israel from the land of Egypt and of the entrance into the promised land, and of many other tales of holy writ . . . and of Christ's incarnation, and of His passion, and of His ascent into Heaven; and of the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the teachings of the apostles; and of the day of future judgment and of the terror of punishment full of torment, and of the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom he wrote many a lay; and also he wrought many others concerning divine benefits and judgments." Caedmon died about A.D. 680. The second great name in this tradition is Cynewulf, who died one century later, A.D. 783. About this time was composed the famous Christian epic known as The Christ, showing a remarkable knowledge of the life of the Savior. The most beautiful gem of all literary compositions of this period is the exquisite The Dream of the Road, the most moving interpretation of the Crucifixion of Christ in the first one thousand years of English literature.

The greatest British scholar in the first half of the eighth century was the Venerable Bede. No one equaled him for the next five hundred years in Britain in a knowledge of the Scriptures. His own confession is significant. "I gave all my attention to the study of the Scriptures. . . . From the time that I received the degree of Priest's Orders unto the fifty-ninth year of my age (A.D. 731)." Bede's writings were in Latin but he did undertake the translation of the Gospels into Anglo-Saxon and on the very day of his death was dictating his translation of John's Gospel. None of these translations have come down to us. St. Aldhelm (d. 709) also translated the Psalms but these do not exist today.

England's noble King Alfred (849-899) at the beginning of his famous code of laws for his British subjects, used as a preface his own Anglo-Saxon translation of the Ten Commandments. The earliest written translation of the Gospels into Anglo-Saxon that now exists dates about the tenth century.

The Lindisfarne Gospels

Probably the first attempt to bridge this linguistic gap in literary composition that still exists, are the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels in Latin, originally written about A.D. 700 in an uncial Irish script, containing an interlinear translation written in Anglo-Saxon, added about A.D. 950. About A.D. 1000, appeared the celebrated Aelfric, of whom it has been rightly said, "He is among the first to stand out individually in the records of his contemporaries as one that labored to make the Scriptures available to English scholars in their native tongue." He produced sermons in the West Saxon tongue, wrote commentaries on certain books of the Bible, and composed a condensed version of the first seven books of the Old Testament.

Language changes, however, were rapid then, and by 1300 the Anglo-Saxon language of King Alfred and Aelfric had become almost obsolete, and yet, as a distinguished authority has reminded us, "From the day of Alfred to the time of Chaucer, the language of the English people had a continuous history although it underwent many vicissitudes and suffered great changes.

It is this persistence of an English tone and spirit gradually regaining its ascendancy after having been overlaid for three centuries by the culture of the Normans that gives these Anglo-Saxon manuscripts their chief significance for us. . . . We discern in these ancient versions some permanent core of basic speech that holds over from age to age and constitutes our English idiom, the most English part of our English tongue."

For two hundred years after the Norman conquest (A.D. 1066) French remained the language of ordinary intercourse among the upper classes of conquered Britain, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, "its maintenance became increasingly artificial. In the fourteenth century, English won its way back into universal use and in the fifteenth century, French all but disappeared."

The Ormulum Gospels And Acts

At the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared a poetical version of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, accompanied by a commentary known as the Ormulum, the work of an Augustinian monk, Orm. Toward the middle of this century, the stories of Genesis and Exodus were translated into rhyming English verse.

The Psalter In The Early Middle English

Two prose translations of the Psalter in Early Middle English have survived. One, composed by the famous Richard Rolle, attained great popularity. As an indication of Bible study during the fourteenth century, there are 170 Biblical manuscripts of this period still surviving.

The Wycliffe Version

We now come to what may be called the first great effort to place the entire Bible in the hands of the common people in their own language. This is The Wycliffe Version, though it is not certain that Wycliffe himself composed any part of it. John Wycliffe did (1330-1384) stir up a desire on the part of many to make available the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people. The first translation was made about 1400 and a second translation, which exercised so much influence, was a revision by John Purvey. Here the idiom is closer to the current language of the day than the earlier version. This is the only Bible in English which existed in Britain until Tyndale more than a century later. The Wyclfffe Bible is the first complete Bible to appear in England.

The Gutenberg Bible

Between Wycliffe in 1384 and the Tyndale Version 140 years later, some stupendous events changed the whole intellectual and religious atmosphere of Europe. In 1453 Constantinople fell, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Many Greek scholars migrated to the West with their precious manuscripts. In 1456 there appeared the first book printed with movable type, the Gutenberg Bible, which was to usher in a whole new era for Western man. Universal literacy and universal education were now possible, though not yet realities. Before that century ended, America had been discovered by Christopher Columbus. In 1516 Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament ever to appear in print, which exercised an enormous influence on subsequent biblical translations. In 1517 Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg. The Reformation may be said to have begun in Switzerland in 1519, and Calvin began his famous work in Geneva in 1541. This is the period of the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547).

Note: The entire Gutenberg Bible is now available online thanks to the efforts of the Harry Ransom Humantities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas.

The Tyndale Bible

Tyndale, born in 1494 and educated at Oxford, became possessed with a desire to produce a new edition of the Bible, in the English of his day, translated out of the original Greek and Hebrew. Tyndale was able to handle seven languages with ease. Failing to secure any encouragement from the Bishop of London, Tyndale crossed the channel to Hamburg (1524), and then to Wittenberg, where he met Luther. It was in Cologne that the first printed English New Testament was issued in 1525. Tyndale, betrayed by a friend, was deceivingly persuaded to come to England, where he was imprisoned and martyred on October 6, 1536, with those famous words upon his lips, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."

Regarding the Old Testament, it is believed that Tyndale translated the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah. The translation of Isaiah is to be attributed to George bye. Tyndale continued to work at revising his New Testament, new editions appearing in 1533, 1534, and 1535. Large portions of The King James Version and subsequent versions are taken from the Tyndale Bible.

So harsh and constant was the denunciation of this version by ecclesiastical authorities, that of the first edition there remains only a fragment now in the British Museum, and of the second edition, only two copies are known today. Of the New Testament, printed at Worms, only two copies have survived to the present time.

The Myles Coverdale Bible

Just before Tyndale died, there appeared the first complete Bible to be printed In the English tongue, the work of Myles Coverdale (1485-1568), based on the Latin Vulgate, Tyndale, and the German Bible of Martin Luther. "Next to Tyndale, the man to whom lovers of the English Bible owe the greatest debt is Coverdale." He was the first to separate the Apocrypha from the Old Testament and place It as an appendix. His was the first Bible to introduce chapter summaries as distinct from brief chapter headings found in the Vulgate. So important was Coverdale's version that his translation of the Psalms, revised by himself for The Great Bible of 1539, is the only one that still appears in the Book of Common Prayer.

As an illustration of the opposition of the Church to a Bible appearing in the vernacular tongue, one might consider the proclamation of the King condemning Tyndale's book in the following severe language: "And furthermore, for as much as it is come to the hearing of out said sovereign lord the king, that report is made by divers and many of his subjects, that as it were to all men not only expedient, but also necessary, to have in the English tongue both the New Testament and the Old: and that his highness, his noble men and prelates were bounden to suffer them so to have it; His highness hath therefore semblably there upon consulted with the said primates and virtuous, discrete, and well learned personages in divinity foresaid, and by them all it is thought, that it is not necessary, the said scripture to be in the English tongue, and in the hands of the common people; but that the distribution of the said scripture, and their permitting or denying thereof, dependeth only upon the discretion of the superiors, as they shall think it convenient. And that having respect to the malignity of this present time, with the inclination of the people to erroneous opinions, the translation of the New Testament and the Old into the vulgar tongue of English, should rather be the occasion of continuance or increase of errors among the said people, than any benefit or commodity toward the weal of their souls. And that it shall now be more convenient that the same people have the holy scripture expounded to them, by. preachers in their sermons, according as it hath been of old time accustomed before this time."

The Cranmer Bible

In 1537 appeared a folio which in the title affirmed that the translation into English was by Thomas Matthew. The translator's name is now recognized as John Rogers, an associate of Tyndale. This translation was "set forth with the King's most gracious license." Later editions (1540 and 1541) contained a preface by Archbishop Cranmer, and are known as The Cranmer Bible. Rogers did not know Hebrew and was dependent upon earlier translations. It is said that of the Rogers Bible, two-thirds was from Tyndale and one-third from Coverdale. On the title page of the later versions appears for the first time the words, "This is the Bible appointed to the use of churches."

The Great Bible

Coverdale had a major part in a new revision of the Matthew Bible which was called The Great Bible. The pages measured 9x15 inches and the text was 8 1/2 x l3 inches. It was commanded it 1538 that a copy of the English Bible be set up in every parish church, and this Bible was generally secured for carrying out this order. But because of another more accurate version soon to appear, The Great Bible was not reprinted after 1569. Rogers himself suffered martyrdom in 1555. "It is Rogers' Bible which became the foundation of all later English authorized versions, and it is through Rogers' republication that Tyndale's 1535 version of the New Testament had its great influence upon subsequent versions." (L. A.. Weigle).

In 1546 King Henry VIII issued an order, "that no man or woman of what estate, condition, or degree was to receive, have, take, or keep Tyndale's or Coverdale's New Testament." And yet The Great Bible, for the most part made up of the translations of Tyndale and Coverdale, was given royal approval and commanded to be placed in every church.

The Geneva Bible

The most accurate version up to the Authorized Version of 1611 is The Geneva Bible. During the reign of Queen Mary (1553-1558), no Bible was printed in England, but a group of scholars in Geneva produced an English version called The Geneva Bible in 1560 with a second edition in 1652. The New Testament was edited by William Whittingham, who was married to Calvin's sister. Calvin wrote an introductory epistle. For the first time marginal notations called attention to variations in the Greek manuscripts. This was the first English version to use numbered verses as separate paragraphs. This was the Bible used by Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Oliver Cromwell, and so fervently used by the Puritans. Designated as "The People's Book," it held a preeminent place among English versions for seventy-five years. This was the Bible brought over on the Mayflower. From 1560 to 1644, one hundred forty editions of The Geneva Bible appeared. The first Bible to be printed in Scotland was a Scottish edition of The Geneva Bible, in 1579. The verse divisions of Robert Estienne, originally employed in his Greek New Testament in 1551, were used. This was the first Bible to be printed in Roman type instead of the old Black Letter.

The Geneva Bible, printed over 200 times between 1560 and 1644, was the most widely read and influential English Bible of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This superb translation was the product of the best Protestant scholars of the day and became the Bible of choice for many of the greatest writers, thinkers, and historical figures of that time. Men such as Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and John Milton used the Geneva Bible, and it was reflected in their writings. During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell issued a pamphlet containing excerpts from the Geneva Bible to his troops. William Bradford cited the Geneva Bible in his book Of Plymouth Plantation.

The Geneva Bible is unique among all other Bibles. It was the first Bible to use chapters and numbered verses and became the most popular version of its time because of the extensive marginal notes. These notes, written by Reformation leaders such as John Calvin, John Knox, Miles Coverdale, William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, and others, were included to explain and interpret the scriptures for the common people.

For nearly half a century these notes helped the people of England, Scotland, and Ireland understand the Bible and true liberty. King James despised the Geneva Bible because he considered the notes on key political texts to be seditious and a threat to his authority. Unlike the King James Version, the Geneva Bible was not authorized by the government. It was truly a Bible by the people and for the people. You can see why this remarkable version with its profound marginal notes played a key role in the formation of the American Republic.

Sadly, 407 years after its original publication, this wonderful version of the Bible has been nearly forgotten. The only complete version available today is a large, cumbersome, and difficult-to-read facsimile edition. A facsimile edition contains pictures of the original pages. The small print and the older English letters and spellings make it nearly impossible to read or study. If the 1599 Geneva Bible is to survive the passing of time and be remembered for generations to come, it must be resurrected and redistributed.

"The publication and promulgation of the 1599 Geneva Bible will help restore America's rich Christian heritage and reclaim the culture for Christ." -- Dr. D. James Kennedy, Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

The Bishops' Bible

The popularity of The Geneva Bible persuaded the Anglican authorities, after the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne in 1558, that they should produce a Bible which could bear the authority of the Church of England. This task as proposed by Archbishop Parker, who appointed a committee to begin work on this. They were to use The Great Bible as their basis and were to check with the Greek and Hebrew text. The scholarship of these Bishops was not equal to that of the group that had produced The Geneva Bible. The finished work was called The Bishops' Bible. Nineteen editions were printed from 1568-1606. It was endorsed by Convocation in 1571. In the 1572 edition Parker published in parallel columns the Psalter of The Great Bible and the Psalter of The Bishops' Bible. There are fewer differences between The Bishops' Bible and The King James Version than any other preceding translation.

The Rheims Bible And The Douay Bible

The last two Bibles to be considered, before The King James Version, are those known as The Rheims Bible and The Douay Bible, both Roman Catholic.

The New Testament was published as early as 1582 by the English College, then located at Rheims, and was thus known as The Rheims New Testament. The Old Testament, for the most part the work of Gregory Martin, a translation of the Latin Vulgate, was published in 1609, when the English College had returned to Douay and hence the name The Douay Bible. The poorest part of this version is acknowledged to the Psalter, which has been rightly characterized as "a translation of a translation of a translation." There is, of course, a heavy emphasis in this version on ecclesiastical terms. Repentance is here translated penance. Here we have such unfamiliar words as exinanited, donances, and commersation. Instead of shewbread, this version reads "proposition of loaves." Deacon is translated minister, and elder is translated priest. Ephesians 3:9 is made to read, "the dispensation of the sacrament." The New Testament part of this Bible was extensively used by the King James revisers, but the Old Testament was published too late for any such influence.

The King James Version

It is now time to turn to a consideration of the time honored King James Version, sometimes called the Authorized Version (hereafter we shall refer to it with the initials KJV). In the summer of 1603, when King James was on his way to London to receive the English crown, he was presented with a petition of grievances by the clergy of Puritan convictions, which led the King to call a conference "for hearing and for the determining of things pretended to be amiss in the church." This conference was convened for three days, January 14-16, 1604, and known as the Hampton Court Conference. During this conference Dr. John Reynolds, the leader of the Puritan party and the President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, made the motion that a new translation of the Bible be undertaken. Though the majority present were against the motion, it appealed to the King, and he ordered that such a translation be undertaken. Fifty-four of the greatest biblical scholars in Great Britain were brought together for this great task, divided into six groups, three to work on a translation of the Old Testament and three on the New Testament. Two groups for the Old and New Testaments were to meet at Oxford, two at Cambridge, and two at Westminster. A recent writer has so well summarized the varied learning of this group that we like to take the liberty of quoting him:

"The Oxford group was headed by Dr. John Hardinge, Regius Professor of Hebrew; and included Dr. John Reynolds, the originator of the project, 'his memory and reading were near to a miracle'; Dr. Miles Smith, who 'had Hebrew at his fingers' ends'; Dr. Richard Brett, 'skilled and versed to a criticism in the Latin, Greek, Chaldee, Arabic and Ethiopic tongues'; Sir Henry Saville, editor of the works of Chrysostom; and Dr. John Harmer, Professor of Greek, 'a most noted Latinist, Grecian and divine.' The Cambridge committee was at first presided over by Edward Lively, Regius Professor of Hebrew, who died in 1605 before the work was really begun, and included Dr. Lawrence Chaderton, 'familiar with the Greek and Hebrew tongues, and the numerous writings of the Rabbis'; Thomas Harrison, 'noted for his exquisite skill in Hebrew and Greek idioms'; Dr. Robert Spalding, successor to Lively as Professor of Hebrew; Andrew Downes, 'one composed of Greek and industry,' and John Bois, 'a precious Greek and Hebrew scholar.' The Westminster group was headed by Lancelot Andrews, Dean of Westminster, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, of Ely, and finally of Winchester, 'who might have been interpreter general at Babel . . . the world wanted learning to know how learned be was;' and included the Hebraist Hadrian Saravia; and William Bedwell, the greatest living Arabic scholar." (H. Wheeler Robinson).

There being a lapse of two or three years between the naming of these committees and the beginning of their labors, the work was begun in 1607 and completed in 1610. The Bible appeared the following year.

Fifteen rules were to bind this large number of revisers. The first reads as follows: "The ordinary Bible read in the Church, commonly called the Bishops' Bible, to be followed, and as little altered as the Truth of the original will permit." The fourteenth rule was more comprehensive, reading as follows: "These translations to be used when they agree better with the Text than the Bishops Rule, Tyndale's, Matt hews, Cover dales, Whitchurch's, Geneva." In the Preface to the Reader which appeared in this version, the translators stated that they did not hesitate: "to consult the Translators or Commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Gedi or Estienne no nor the Spanish, French, Italian, or Dutch."

The new version bore the following title: "The Holy Bible, Containing the Old Testament and the New; Newly Translated out of the Origin all tongues, with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesties speciall commandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majestie. Anno Dom. 1611." The New Testament title was slightly different: "The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Newly translated out of the Originall Greeke; and with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesties speciall Commandement. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majestie. Anno Dom. 1611. cum Privilegio." While this version is called The Authorized Version, no act of Parliament was ever passed approving it. King James vigorously promoted such an undertaking but there was no subsequent official act. The first printing of this Bible was a folio 16 x 10 1/2 inches. Three editions quickly followed one another, carrying a considerable number of misprints and variations in spelling. We must ask at this point how much of the KJV was dependent upon earlier versions? It has been said that four percent of the vocabulary goes back to the days of Wycliffe, eighteen percent came from Tyndale, thirteen percent from Coverdale, nineteen percent from the Geneva Bible, four percent from the Bishops' Bible, and three percent from all other preceding versions. Thirty-nine percent of the vocabulary of the KJV is unique. Almost nine-tenths of the New Testament portion of this version can be found word for word in the Tyndale version of 1525. All controversial notes were excluded, but there were over four thousand marginal notes, giving the literal meaning of Hebrew words, and 765 in the New Testament, indicating variant or alternative renderings. The chapter summaries and page headings were new, and some of these chapter headings are an indication of current theology and then prevalent principles of Biblical interpretation. The Old Testament rested upon the same Masoretic Hebrew text as all subsequent versions, but inasmuch as no ancient manuscripts of the Greek New Testament arrived in England until 1628, those responsible for this greatest of all versions did not have the advantage of the best Greek text.

During subsequent decades the spelling of the KJV has been modernized, misprints have been corrected, the larger chapter summaries have been abbreviated, and the references in the margin have been examined. Chronological dates were introduced into the margin of the KJV in 1701, based on the chronology of Archbishop Ussher. As early as 1613, the text showed over 300 differences from the original of 1611! Thirty thousand new marginal references were added in versions appearing in the 1760's.

Soon the KJV crowded out all preceding translations except for students interested in specific variations and the development of the English language. For the first time, England was reading one Bible at home and hearing the same Bible read in church. "It thus became bound up with the life of the nation. Since it stilled all controversy over the best rendering, it gradually came to be accepted as so far absolute that in the minds of myriads there was no distinction between this version and the original texts, and they may almost be said to have believed in the literal inspiration of the very words which composed it." (Albert S. Cook).

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