Anna Carolina Paues and Herbert Hensley Henson

“ It had long been the opinion of all competent scholars that a thorough revision was necessary. A proposal in favour of this course was made in Convocation in 1856, but it was not until fourteen years later that the committee was appointed to undertake the work. The revisers’ first task was to reconstruct the Greek text, as the necessary foundation of their work. In this difficult duty they were no doubt influenced by Westcott and Hort’s edition of the New Testament. ”

“ It is “that the same may be sold and read of every person . . . until such time that we, the bishops, shall set forth a better translation, which I think will not be till a day after doomsday.” This letter was written on the 4th of August 1537, and the impatient words at the end refer to an authorized version which had been projected several years before, and which was, in fact, at that very time in preparation, though not proceeding quickly enough to satisfy Cranmer. ”

“ But the detached and piecemeal way in which the revision had been carried out naturally caused certain inequalities in the execution of the work. The different parts of the Bible vary considerably in merit, the alterations in the New Testament, for instance, showing freshness and vigour, whereas most of the changes introduced in the Old Testament have been condemned as “arbitrary and at variance with the exact sense of the Hebrew text” (Westcott, op. cit. p. 237) . ”

“ The 13th century, from the point of view of Biblical renderings into the vernacular, is an absolute blank. French—or rather the Anglo-Norman dialect of the period—reigned supreme amongst the upper classes, in schools, in parliament, in the courts of law and in the palace ofAnglo-Norman Period. the king. English lurked in farms and hovels, amongst villeins and serfs, in the outlying country-districts, in the distant monasteries, amongst the lower clergy, amongst the humble and lowly and ignorant. ”

“ The only trustworthy authority on the Anglo-Saxon Bible is A. S. Cook’s “Introduction on Old English Translations of the Bible,” in Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose-writers.
For the 14th and 15th centuries: See A. C. Paues, The Bible in the Fourteenth Century.
For the early printed Bibles: H. Cotton, List of Editions of the Bible (1852) , Rhemes and Doway (1855) ; F. Fry, The Bible by Coverdale (1867) ; Description of the Great Bible, 1539 (1865) ; Bibliographical Descriptions of the Editions of the New Testament (1878) ”

“ Dr Rutherford stated the case briefly and pointedly in the preface to his translation of the Epistle to the Romans (London, 1900) . He maintains that “the Greek of the New Testament may never be understood as classical Greek is understood,” and accuses the revisers of distorting the meaning “by translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance had recognized that the context demanded.”
The use of the new Version has become general. ”

“ When any place of special obscurity is doubted of, letters to be directed by authority to send to any learned man in the land for his judgment of such a place. (12) Letters to be sent from every bishop to the rest of his clergy, admonishing them of his translation in hand, and to move and charge as many as being skilful in the tongues and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular observations to the company either at Westminster, Cambridge or Oxford. ”

“ Familiarity has mitigated the harshness of the revisers’ renderings; scholarship, on the whole, has confirmed their readings. The Version has been publicly read in parish churches both in London and in the country. In Canterbury cathedral and Westminster Abbey it has definitely displaced the older Version. Bishops have acquiesced and congregations approved. It is no longer possible to maintain the plausible and damaging contention that the Revised Bible is ill suited for public use. ”

“ This translation might probably be the work of Wycliffe himself; at least the similarity of style between the Gospels and the other parts favours the supposition.” The Wycliffite authorship of the Commentaries on the Gospels, on which the learned editors base their argument, is, however, unsupported by any evidence beyond the fact that the writer of the Prologue to Matthew urges in strong language “the propriety of translating Scripture for the use of the laity.” ”

“ The transcriber was in all probability a certain Murdoch Nisbet, who also showed his reforming tendencies by adding to it a rendering of Luther’s Prologue to the New Testament. [16]
2. The Printed Bible.—It is singular that while France, Spain, Italy, Bohemia and Holland possessed the Bible in the vernacular before the accession of Henry VIII., and in Germany the Scriptures were printed in 1466 and seventeen times reprinted before Luther began his great work, yet no English printer attempted to put the familiar English Bible into type. ”

“ Concerning the printing of this authorized Bible more details are known. Cromwell had planned the work on a large scale, too large evidently for the resources of the English presses, for it was determined that the printing should be entrusted to Francis Regnault, a famous Paris printer. At the request of Henry VIII., a licence was granted to Regnault for this purpose by Francis I., while Coverdale and Grafton were sent over in 1538 to superintend the work as it passed through the press. ”

“ His rendering is clear and idiomatic, and though he frequently abridges, the omissions never obscure the meaning or hinder the easy flow of the narrative.
Dietrich, Ælfric’s most competent biographer (Niedner’s, Zeitschrift für historische Theologie, 1855–1856) , looks upon the Pentateuch, Joshua and Judges as a continuation of his Lives of Saints, including as they do in a series of narratives the Old Testament saints. Genesis is but slightly abridged, but Job, Kings, Judges, Esther and Judith as well as the Maccabees are mere homilies epitomized from the corresponding Old Testament books. ”

“ He translated the whole of St Matthew, and wrote the gloss of St Mark i.–ii. 15, and St John xviii. 1-3. The remaining part, a mere transcript, is Owun’s work. The dialect of the translation of St Matthew is Mercian. [4]
A further testimony to the activity which prevailed in the field of Biblical lore is the fact that at the close of the century—probably about the year 1000—the Gospels were rendered anew for the first time in the south of England. Of this version—the so-called West-Saxon GospelsWest-Saxon Gospels.—not less than seven manuscripts have come down to us. ”

“ The Convocation of Canterbury refreshed the royal memory on the subject by petitioning the king on the 19th of December 1534 “that His Majesty would vouchsafe to decree, that the Scriptures should be translated into the vulgar tongue . . . and . . . delivered to the people according to their learning” (ibid. 770) . ”

“ It contains a complete version of the book of Psalms, followed by the usual eleven canticles and the Athanasian Creed. The Latin original is a glossed version of the Vulgate, and in the English translation the words of the gloss are often substituted for the strong and picturesque expressions of the Biblical text; in other respects the rendering is faithful and idiomatic. ”

“ The first to take advantage of these altered conditions was William Tyndale (q.v.) , “to whom,” as Dr Westcott says, [17] “it has been allowed more than to any other man to give its characteristic shape to the English Bible.” Of Tyndale’s early life but little is known. Be it enough William Tyndale.for our purpose to say that he thoroughly saturated his mind with the “new learning,” first at Oxford, where in 1515 he was admitted to the degree of M.A., and then in Cambridge, where the fame of Erasmus still lingered. ”

“ It is a splendid folio Bible of the largest volume, and was distinguished from its predecessors by the name of The Great Bible. The title-page represents Henry VIII. giving the “Word of God” to Cromwell and Cranmer, who, in their order, distribute it to laymen and clerics, and describes the volume as “truly translated after the veryte of the Hebreue and Greke texts by þe dylygent studye of dyverse excellent learned men, expert in the forsayde tongues. Prynted by Rychard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch.” ”

“ The 9th century is characterized by interlinear glosses on the Book of Psalms, and towards its close by a few attempts at independent translation. Of these “glossed Psalters” twelve MSS. are known to exist, and they may be ranged into two groups according to the Latin text 9th and 10th century glosses.they represent. ”

“ The second, or Later Version, being a thorough revision of the first, is ascribed to the year 1388 by Sir Frederic Madden and the Rev. Joshua Forshall in their edition of these two versions. [12]
It is a matter of uncertainty what part, if any, Wycliffe himself took in the work. The editors of the Wycliffite versions say in the Preface, pp. xv. ff.—“The New Testament was naturally the first object. The text of the Gospels was extracted from the Commentary upon them by Wycliffe, and to these were added the Epistles, the Acts and the Apocalypse, all now translated anew. ”

“ No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words which cannot, without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text. (7) Such quotations of places to be marginally set down as shall serve for the fit reference of one Scripture to another. (8) Every particular man of each company to take the same chapter or chapters ”

“ The English apocalypse, to judge from the number of MSS. remaining, must have enjoyed great and lasting popularity. Several revisions of the text exist, the later of which present such striking agreement with the later Wycliffite version that we shall not be far wrong if we assume that they were made use of to a considerable extent by the revisers of this version. ”

“ From Matthew’s Bible—itself a combination of the labours of Tyndale and Coverdale—all later revisions have been successively formed” (op. cit. p. 71) .
Meanwhile the successful sale of Matthew’s Bible, the private venture of the two printers Grafton and Whitchurch, was threatened by a rival edition published in 1539 in folio and quarto by “John Byddell for Thomas Barthlet” with Richard Taverner as editor. This was, in fact, what Taverner.would now be called “piracy,” being Grafton’s Matthew Bible revised by Taverner, a learned member of the Inner Temple and famous Greek scholar. ”

“ It will have been observed that the translations of Holy Scripture which had been printed during these years (1525–1539) were all made by private men and printed without any public authority. Some of them had indeed been set forth by the king’s licence, but the object of this is The Great Bible, 1539.shown by the above-quoted letter of Archbishop Cranmer to Cromwell, touching Matthew’s Bible. ”

“ For the sake of comparison the following extracts from St Matthew are given, according to the edition of 1539.
(Matthew iii. 1-4.) In those dayes came Iohn the Baptyst, preaching in the wyldernes of Iewry, saying, Repent of the life that is past, for the kyngdome of heauen is at hande, For thys is he, of whom the prophet Esay spake, which sayeth, the voyce of a cryer in the wyldernes, prepare ye the waye of the lorde: make hys pathes strayght. Thys Iohn had hys garment of camels heer And a gyrdell of a skynne aboute hys loynes. ”

“ To the late 9th or early 10th century a work may be assigned which is in so far an advance upon preceding efforts as to be a real translation, not a mere gloss corresponding word for word with the Latin original. This is the famous Paris Psalter, [2] a rendering of the first fifty Psalms (Vulg. i.–l. 10) , contained in the unique MS. lat. ”

“ Matthew vi. 9. Eornustlice gebiddað eow ðus; Fæder úre þu þe. eart on heofonum; si þin nama gehalgod (10) to-becume þin ríce; gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. (11) úrne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg, (12) ⁊ forgyf us úre gyltas swa swa wé forgyfað úrum gyltendum. (13) ⁊ ne gelaéd þu us on costnunge ac alys us of yfele soþlice.
Towards the close of the century the Old Testament found a translator in Ælfric (q.v.) , the most eminent scholar in the close of the 10th and the opening decades of the 11th century. ”