BBC History - The Life & Times Of The Stuarts 2016_

(Kiana) #1
Worms in 1526. Tyndale left some Old
Testament translations in manuscript and


  • though he was burned as a heretic in the
    Low Countries in 1536 – much of his
    translation of the New Testament passed
    almost unchanged into the 1611 version.
    By the time of Tyndale’s death, the
    idea of an English Bible was becoming
    mainstream. In 1535, Miles Coverdale, a
    Cambridge monk, published a complete
    Bible tactfully dedicated to Henry VIII.
    Coverdale knew German, so he could put
    Luther’s translations into English; the rest
    he translated from the Latin Vulgate.
    Coverdale did not know enough Hebrew to
    tackle the Old Testament afresh, but his
    translation of the German Psalms became
    an English liturgical classic.
    In 1537, with Henry VIII’s opposition
    to Bible translations softening, a revised
    version using the texts of both Tyndale and
    Coverdale emerged. This was Matthew’s
    Bible and the first to carry royal
    authorisation. ‘Matthew’ was almost
    certainly the radical Protestant John
    Rogers, who promoted his version but
    who paid a high price for his work, since
    he was burned under Mary Tudor.
    Then, in 1539, came the Great Bible,
    printed in Paris under the patronage of
    Henry’s leading minister Thomas
    Cromwell, in response to the royal
    injunctions of 1538. These ordered a
    lectern-size Bible to be set up in all
    churches – so ‘great’ referred merely to
    its size. The title-page is superb, almost
    certainly from a woodcut by Hans
    Holbein, showing God blessing Henry
    VIII and handing down copies of the Bible
    to Archbishop Cranmer and Thomas
    Cromwell. Here is the royal supremacy in
    action: there is no sign of the pope.
    All these 1530s editions rely heavily on
    the work of Tyndale and Coverdale.
    However, in 1539 the Oxford scholar
    Richard Taverner produced a revision of
    Matthew’s Bible with improved versions
    from the original New Testament Greek.
    Taverner knew no Hebrew, so he based his
    translation of the Old Testament on the
    Latin Vulgate.
    Here we see a pattern being established:
    where translators did not have all the
    linguistic skills necessary, they improvised,
    using what was already available. Printing
    had vastly increased the number of
    inexpensive copies that could be sold, so
    scholars and publishers alike saw a
    commercial opportunity, not just a
    religious one. However, commissioning a
    translation of the whole text of the Bible
    with a uniform prose style would need
    considerable resources. Meanwhile, the


best that publishers could offer was an
amalgam of different pieces of translation.

Royal intervention
Such developments were brought to a
juddering halt on the execution of Thomas
Cromwell in 1540. The conservative
faction at court were returned to power,
along with the Latin Vulgate. In 1546, the
use of Tyndale and Coverdale’s New
Testament translations was forbidden by
royal proclamation. Following a brief
respite during the reign of the fiercely
Protestant Edward VI, English Bibles were
suppressed once again under the Catholic
Queen Mary. Yet by now, printing had
made it virtually impossible for any
government to control the translations that
people had already bought for home use.
In 1557, while in exile at Geneva, the

Oxford classicist and Calvinist William
Whittingham published a revised New
Testament for English Protestants there.
For the first time, the text was divided into
numbered verses for easy reference and
printed in Roman type. When everybody
else rushed back to England on Mary’s
death in 1558, Whittingham stayed behind
to supervise a complete translation and, in
1560, he produced the Geneva Bible,
dedicated to Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I.
In this, it is possible to see the influence of
Calvin and other reformers, as well as that
of French translators like LeFèvre
d’Étaples. The Geneva Bible was popularly
known as the Breeches Bible, from its
rendering of Genesis where Adam and Eve,
realising they were naked, made themselves
‘breeches’. It remained influential under
Elizabeth and many passages were re-used

The title page of The Byble in Englyshe, known as the Great Bible, shows Henry VIII
handing down copies of the book to Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer

James I / King James Bible

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