Sources and further reading:;xNLx;;xNLx;Donald Brake, _A Visual History of the English Bible: The Tumultuous Tale of the World's Bestselling Book_ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008).;xNLx;;xNLx;F. F. Bruce, _The English Bible: A History of Translations_ (New York: Oxford University, 1961);xNLx;;xNLx;David Daniell. _The Bible in English: Its History and Influence_ (New Haven and London: Yale University, 2003).;xNLx;;xNLx;David W. Kling. _The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times_ (Oxford: Oxford University, 2004).;xNLx;;xNLx;Bruce M. Metzger, _The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions_ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001).;xNLx;;xNLx;Brooke Foss Westcott, _A General View of the History of the English Bible_ (London and Cambridge: Macmillan, 1868).
John Wycliffe (1320-84), with the help of others, translated the first complete version of the Bible in English in the late fourteenth century. He was the leader of the Lollard movement which sought to replace the authority of the Catholic Church leadership with the authority of the written word, the Bible. The Lollards primarily spoke English and so the translation of the Bible into English made it much more accessible. Originally Wycliffe’s translation of the Latin Vulgate was very literal (i.e., word-for-word) and so a second edition (Purvey’s revision) was made to be more readable. The second edition flourished, despite being banned by the Catholic Church. There are around 250 copies of the Wycliffe Bible in existence today.
Henry IV passes the De heretico comburendo law which prohibits the use of English translations of the Bible in England. This was refined in 1409 with the Constitutions of Oxford under Archbishop Thomas Arundel.
In the middle of the fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468) developed a moveable-type printing press and became the first to print a book in Europe. The importance of Gutenberg’s invention is paramount. Prior to Gutenberg, books were copied by scribes who would have to hand-write out the contents. After Gutenberg, books could be printed en masse and distributed more widely and more cost-effectively. In 1455, Gutenberg produced the first printed edition of the Bible; it was an elaborate Latin version known as the Mazarin Bible, but often called the Gutenberg Bible. This edition is often praised for its beauty and value.
Before the sixteenth century, the Bible used by the church in the West was in Latin. The first printed edition of the Greek New Testament was compiled by the Dutch scholar and humanist, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536). Erasmus used two main manuscripts dating from the 12th century (one on the Gospels, and the other on Acts and Epistles), which he compared with a few others. He did not have a complete text for the book of Revelation and so translated the last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate into Greek, which introduced new readings. It was a rushed job that contained hundreds of typographical errors. The second edition was published in 1519 and became the basis for Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German. The term Textus Receptus (“received text”) was later ascribed to it. This version and its various editions held prominent place for 400 years as it was the basis of the King James Version and other translations of the New Testament.
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittemberg, Germany. The 95 Theses were a protest against certain practices within the Catholic Church, most notably indulgences. This landmark event is often considered the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation which played a significant role in the development of new translations of the Bible into vernacular languages such as German and English.
Martin Luther was the iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation and his translation of the Bible into German was widely influential. Though there were numerous German translations of the Bible prior to Luther, his edition became the most significant within the German church and helped shape the German language during the Reformation and afterwards. Luther’s commitment to sola scriptura (the Reformation belief that Scripture is the highest authority) was central to his desire to make a translation of the Greek New Testament available in an accessible, common German language. Thus, his translation of the New Testament was the first to use Erasmus’s edition of the Greek New Testament, rather than the Latin text. Luther’s New Testament was completed in 1522 and his whole translation of the Bible was published in 1534.
William Tyndale (1494-1536), who had become an expert of the ancient languages of Greek and Hebrew, sought to make an English translation of the Bible that was based on the Greek and Hebrew texts. Like Luther before him, Tyndale contended that the people should have access to the scriptures in their own vernacular. In fact, Tyndale even stayed in Germany while working on his translation because he was not authorized by Cuthbert Tunstall, then bishop of London, to translate the Bible into English. In fact, when editions of his New Testament began pouring into England in 1526, the Catholic Church opposed them and Tunstall led efforts to confiscate and burn the copies. This backfired on Tunstall and the popularity of Tyndale’s translation grew rapidly. A revision of Tyndale’s New Testament was published in 1534, just two years before his incarceration and execution. Tyndale never finished a complete version of the Bible.
Although Tyndale never finished his translation of the English Bible, Myles Coverdale (1488-1569) shortly picked up where he left off. Coverdale was the first to translate and publish a printed edition of the whole Bible in English. Unlike Tyndale, however, Coverdale was not proficient in Greek and Hebrew and thus relied on Luther’s translation, Jerome’s Vulgate, Tyndale’s translation (where available), and other sources. The Coverdale Bible was printed in October of 1535 and it was received with mixed views, especially by those who were opposed to its Lutheran influences. This was the first Bible to separate the Apocrypha from the Old Testament. In 1537, a slight revision of Coverdale’s 1535 Bible was published by James Nicholson, which claims to have gained the license of King Henry VIII. Thus, for the first time there was an approved English translation of the Bible in England.
John Rogers (ca. 1500-1555), a friend of Tyndale published a translation of Bible in 1537 that was heavily dependent on the work of Tyndale. He used Tyndale’s New Testament, whatever Old Testament passages Tyndale had translated, and supplemented the rest of the Old Testament and Apocrypha with the translation of Coverdale. Rogers published the Bible using the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew” since Tyndale's name could not be used because the year prior, he had been executed as a heretic. Still, the Matthew Bible was the first complete Bible to be printed that made use of Tyndale's translations. The Matthew Bible received a license from King Henry VIII to be used in the churches in England, and thus it was able to be publicly produced. Eventually, John Rogers received the same fate as Tyndale; he was the first Protestant to be martyred under the pro-Catholic reign of Mary I of England.
By the end of the 1530s, there were two sanctioned versions of the Bible, Coverdale’s (1535/37) and Matthew’s (1537). There was a push, backed by both King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell (the King's leading adviser in matters of church and religion), to make a single version of the English Bible to be available in all the churches so that parishioners could read it. Not everyone was content with the Matthew Bible, especially the more conservative clergy who did not accept the overt Protestantism in marginal notes. Coverdale revised Matthew’s Bible, rather than his own 1535 edition, which meant that it was heavily influenced by Tyndale's translation. Despite printing delays in France, the Great Bible was finally printed, in England, in 1539. The title page of the Great Bible shows King Henry passing down the Bible to Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Cantebury) and Thomas Cromwell, who in turn pass it to clergy members amidst a larger group of laypeople. It was the first English Bible authorized by the king to be used in the churches.
Robert Estienne (aka Robertus Stephanus) (1503-1559) was both a printer and a specialist in ancient Greek. He printed various Greek editions of both classical and Christian authors, but his importance to the history of the English Bible is due to his four editions of the New Testament in Greek, which became the basis for a number of English translations of the New Testament. His edition of the Greek New Testament was very similar to Erasmus’s. Stephanus was also responsible for adding verse numbers to the New Testament, which first appeared in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament.
Led by the efforts of Reformed theologians and scholars, the Geneva Bible was initiated during the reign of Queen Mary, who was antagonistic toward the Protestant church. This translation is named the “Geneva Bible” because those who worked on it under the direction of William Whittingham were in Geneva on account of the queen. The list of those who worked on the project includes Myles Coverdale, John Calvin, John Knox, Theodore Beza, and William Whittingham. It was the first English Old Testament which was completely translated from Hebrew, and the first English New Testament to incorporate Stephanus’s verse numberings. The language of this translation was very readable, and its extensive notes, maps, tables, chapter summaries, titles, and woodcut images set it apart from the other editions of its time. The notes tended to reflect the Calvinistic views of those involved in the translation. It became a very popular translation and was the Bible that Shakespeare used as well as the Puritan pilgrims in the New World.
Once the Geneva Bible was published, two issues began to emerge for those in the Church of England. First, the Geneva Bible’s popularity was an issue because it promoted Calvinism (see Geneva Bible). Second, the only authorized version of the English Bible allowed in the churches was the Great Bible, which was severely lacking, especially in its use of Latin, rather than Hebrew, as the basis for much of the Old Testament. To remedy this, Archbishop Matthew Parker proposed a revision of the Great Bible by the bishops in 1561. The revision was only to stray from the Great Bible when the text did not accurately represent the original languages. Thus, the Bishops Bible was born in 1568. It later was used as a basis of the King James Version.
When Elizabeth I of England became Queen in the late 1550s and promoted Protestantism in England, many Catholics found it necessary to flee and became refugees in Flanders (North France). It is here that the first English Bibles authorized by the Catholic Church came into existence. The New Testament was completed in Reims, France, in 1582, and the Old Testament was completed in Douai, France, in 1610. The Douay-Rheims Bible was primarily based on the Latin Vulgate (the Louvain edition), rather than the original Greek and Hebrew texts. It also used other English editions (such as the Coverdale Bible and the Geneva Bible). Its influence was mostly seen within the Catholic Church, although some of its translations influenced the King James Bible.
The Bishops’ Bible was commissioned to offer an alternative to the popular Geneva Bible, but it failed to gain wide acceptance among the people of England because it was too large and expensive for private use. The Geneva Bible remained the popular choice, especially among Protestants. In 1604, King James commissioned a new translation. He was motivated by his disdain for the Geneva Bible. Regarding the Geneva Bible, James said, “I confess I have never seen a Bible well translated, and the worst is the Geneva.” At the center of the issue was an attempt by James to disarm Puritans from using the Geneva Bible. What set the King James Version apart from the rest of the translations that went before was its use of a highly-skilled committee of fifty-four translators from England’s finest institutions. The work began in 1607 and was a revision of previous translations, mainly the Bishops’ Bible, rather than being a completely new translation from the Greek and Hebrew. The work was completed in 1611 and was printed by the royal printer Robert Barker in London. The King James Version was not a total success out of the gates, as many people continued to use the Geneva Bible. Nevertheless, the popularity of the King James Version steadily rose and by the middle of the seventeenth century it displaced the Geneva Bible. Because the King James Version only had a modest amount of marginal notes (in contrast to the controversial notes of the Geneva Bible) more people found it agreeable, which, in addition to its emphasis on a strong literary character, helped it to remain the most influential and commonly used English Bible for more than 300 years. Since there were variant readings and typographical errors introduced by the various printers of the King James Bible over the years, standardized revisions were made in 1769 and 1873 that made slight improvements on the King James Bible without being considered a wholly new translation. Some still prefer to use the King James Bible today.
John Wesley, the father of Methodism, made a revision to the King James New Testament that updated the language of the text based on his reading in the Greek New Testament. The aim of his translation, with accompanying notes, was to make the Bible more accessible to a non-academic readership. His version had some 12,000 differences from the King James Version at the time.
Due to variations in the printed editions of the King James Version and the need to update the language in the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an effort made at both the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford to make a standard revision of the King James Bible. The Oxford edition of 1769 became the standard version of the King James. It updated the spelling and some of the wording of the King James Bible, but was still essentially the same translation.
With the changing face of the English language as well as the burgeoning field of biblical studies in the late nineteenth century, an updated version of the Bible seemed warranted. Thus, a revision of the King James Version was commissioned by the convocation of Canterbury in 1870. The revision was completed by more than fifty scholars throughout Britain, the most notable being Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort who championed using a new text of the Greek New Testament that was based on older and better manuscripts than the text underlying the original King James Bible. The English Revised Version was completed in 1885 and its American counterpart, the American Standard Version, was completed in 1901.
The American Standard Version was closely related to the English Revised Version. A selection of thirty American scholars under the direction of Philip Schaff had formulated translation suggestions to the British team of scholars. Not all of the suggestions were accepted, but they were included in an appendix to the English Revised Version. The American Standard Version was finally published in 1901.
The Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS) published the first English translation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) by a committee of Jewish scholars. The translation resembled the language of the King James Version and the Revised Version. It was a formal-equivalent translation, which means it more literally translated the Hebrew into English. The Hebrew text used for the translation was that of the Masoretic Text, the oldest complete Hebrew Bible dating back to the Middle Ages. According to the preface the translation aimed "to combine the spirit of Jewish tradition with the results of biblical scholarship, ancient, medieval, and modern. It gives to the Jewish world a translation of the Scriptures done by men imbued with the Jewish consciousness, while the non-Jewish world, it is hoped, will welcome a translation that presents many passages from the Jewish traditional point of view"
This mid-twentieth-century American revision of the ASV took further steps to modernize the language of the translation and to embrace textual criticism. In an interesting compromise, it maintains the use of archaic pronouns such as “thou/thy/thee,” but only for God. This allows the Psalter, for example, to maintain its “traditional” (i.e. KJV) flavor. The RSV also included the deuterocanonical Old Testament books accepted by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches (albeit set apart in their own section), making it a more ecumenical Bible. NT 1947; OT 1952; Deuterocanonical book 1957.
By the middle of the 20th century, new translations of the Bible emerged at a rapid rate.
The American Bible Society sought to provide a Bible for those who learned English as a second language, and so Robert G. Bratcher, a Christian missionary in Brazil, completed a common-language translation of the New Testament called Good News for Modern Man. The Old Testament was completed with the help of several scholars and was published along with a revision of the New Testament in 1976. This translation bears the title Good New Bible. Later, in 1979, the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books were published. The GNB has been a very popular edition of the Bible because of its aim to reach a broad audience with easy, colloquial language. As a dynamic-equivalent translation, it conveys the original language of the Bible in a thought-for-thought mode, rather than a word-for-word, or literal, mode. It is still in use by many people and a gender-inclusive revision was published in 1992.
The New American Bible had its origins in an earlier Catholic Bible known as the Confraternity Bible (1944). It is a formal-equivalent translation, which means it more literally represents the Hebrew and Greek. The Old and New Testaments were completed in 1970, although the New Testament was revised in 1986 and the Psalms in 1991. The revisions reflect an effort to be more gender inclusive.
The NIV, which appeared in 1978, was largely the result of dissatisfaction with the RSV in conservative Protestant circles. It continues to be the pew Bible of choice in many churches today. Its translation reflects a more thorough commitment than the RSV’s to modernizing the idiom of the text; for example, archaic pronouns are banished entirely. Although its preface emphasizes its translators’ commitment to biblical authority, it is somewhat less rigorously technical than the RSV. The word “international” in its title reflects the involvement of scholars from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, although Americans, some SBL members, formed the great majority of its committees.
Published by the Jewish Publication Society in 1985, this translation was produced by rabbis and scholars from the three main branches of American Judaism, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Like its predecessor the JPS version of 1917, it was based on the Masoretic Text. However, since the older Tanakh used antiquated language (like the King James Version or Revised Version), there was a need for an edition in Twentieth-century language, and thus work began of this edition completed in 1985. The 1985 Tanakh was a functional-equivalent translation which means it retains the meaning of the Hebrew, but uses modern English language language and idioms.
This 1985 Roman Catholic translation is based on the Hebrew and Greek but also reflects the influence of a French translation carried out by scholars at the École Biblique, a Dominican school and research center in Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem Bible and its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, are especially well known in English-speaking contexts outside the United States. Both the New Jerusalem Bible and the Jerusalem Bible (1966) are famous for eschewing the traditional rendering of the name of God as "LORD," opting instead for "Yahweh," which closely corresponds to the underlying Hebrew.
Nominally a response to still newer textual data from the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere that had come to light since the translation of the RSV, the 1990 NRSV in fact represented another striking revision. As the most critical and up-to-date popular
The English Standard Version is a revision of the 1971 Revised Standard Version and intentionally is written in the tradition of the Tyndale, KJV, ASV, and RSV editions. According to the preface, in that stream of Bible translations, "faithfulness to the text and vigorous pursuit of accuracy were combined with simplicity, beauty, and dignity of expression." It is an "essential literal" translation, which means it emphasizes a "word-for-word" correspondence. This, according to the preface, is less inclined to reflect the interpretation of the translators than a "thought-for-thought" correspondence. In terms of gender language, it uses generic terms for gender where the original language is not specific, for example "person" instead of "man." Yet it retains the masculine form in the translation when the original Greek or Hebrew use the masculine, for example "brothers" when the Greek word adelphoi is used (adelphoi is masculine in Greek, but the term can mean "brothers and sisters"). It is a popular translation especially among Christians in the Evangelical tradition.
The Common English Bible was a new translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), New Testament, and Apocrypha. The translation team focused on the readability of the text and so it is written with accessible language for a broad spectrum of English readers. The scholars who were involved in the translation represent various denominational backgrounds and locations.
The EOB or Eastern/Greek Orthodox Bible, is the first major English translation produced specifically for Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Greek text underlying the New Testament is the Patriarchal Text, a text authorized in 1904 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Old Testament is based upon the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, rather than on Hebrew manuscripts. The EOB New Testament is already available, and the EOB Old Testament is expected to appear soon. The underlying textual differences guarantee that the EOB will be unique among English Bibles.
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