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The following article originated as an excerpt from "The Study of the King James Bible by Cleland Boyd McAfee (1866-1944), first published 1912. McAfee's whole text is available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/index/by-author/mc0.html . The present text is now being edited for compatibility with Wikipedia's standards and other articles, and will come to differ from McAfee's original; some notes about difficulties with McAfee's text will be found at the end of the article.
No book was ever translated so often as the Bible.
The first movement to make the Scripture
speak the current tongue appeared nearly three
centuries before Christ. Most of the Old Testament
then existed in Hebrew. But the Jews had
scattered widely. Many had gathered in Egypt
where Alexander the Great had founded the city
that bears his name. At one time a third of the
population of the city was Jewish. Many of
the people were passionately loyal to their old
religion and its Sacred Book. But the current
tongue there and through most of the civilized
world was Greek, and not Hebrew. As always,
there were some who felt that the Book and its
original language were inseparable. Others revealed
the disposition of which we spoke a moment
ago, and set out to make the Book speak
the current tongue. For one hundred and fifty
years the work went on, and what we call the
Septuagint was completed.
We owe still more to translation. While there
is accumulating evidence that there was spoken
in Palestine at that time a colloquial Greek, with
which most people would be familiar, it is yet
probable that our Lord spoke neither Greek
nor Hebrew currently, but Aramaic. He knew
the Hebrew Scriptures, of course, as any well-
trained lad did; but most of His words have come
down to us in translation. His name, for example,
to His Hebrew mother, was not Jesus, but
Yeshua; and Jesus is the translation of the Hebrew
Yeshua into Greek. We have His words as they
were translated by His disciples into the Greek,
in which the New Testament was originally written.
By the time the writing of the New Testament
was completed, say one hundred years after
Christ, while Greek was still current speech, the
Roman Empire was so dominant that the common
people were talking Latin almost as much
as Greek, and gradually, because political power
was behind it, the Latin gained on the Greek,
and became virtually the speech of the common
people. The movement to make the Bible talk
the language of the time appeared again. It is
impossible to say now when the first translations
into Latin were made. Certainly there were
some within two centuries after Christ, and by
250 C.E. a whole Bible in Latin was in circulation
in the Roman Empire. The translation
of the New Testament was from the Greek, of
course, but so was that of the Old Testament,
and the Latin versions of the Old Testament
were, therefore, translations of a translation. These translations generally came to be known as the Vetus Latina
There were so many of these versions, and
they were so unequal in value, that there was
natural demand for a Latin translation that
should be authoritative. So came into being
what we call the Vulgate, whose very name indicates
the desire to get the Bible into the vulgar
or common tongue. Jerome began by revising
the earlier Latin translations, but ended by going
back of all translations to the original Greek,
and back of the Septuagint to the original Hebrew
wherever he could do so. Fourteen years he
labored, settling himself in Bethlehem, in Palestine,
to do his work the better. Barely four
hundred years (404 C.E.) after the birth of
Christ his Latin version appeared. It met a
storm of protest for its effort to go back of
the Septuagint, so dominant had the translation
become. Jerome fought for it, and his version
won the day, and became the authoritative Latin
translation of the Bible.
For seven or eight centuries it held its sway as the current version nearest to the tongue of the people. Latin had become the accepted tongue of the church. There was little general culture, there was little general acquaintance with the Bible except among the educated.
During all that time there was no real room for a further translation. Medieval England was quite unripe for a Bible in the mother tongue; while the illiterate majority were in no condition to feel the want of such a book, the educated minority would be averse to so great and revolutionary a change.
When a man cannot read any writing it really does not matter to him whether books are in current speech or not, and the majority of the people for those seven or eight centuries could read nothing at all. Those who could read anything were apt to be able to read the Latin.
These centuries added to the conviction of many that the Bible ought not to become too common, that it should not be read by everybody, that it required a certain amount of learning to make it safe reading. They came to feel that it is as important to have an authoritative interpretation of the Bible as to have the Bible itself. When the movement began to make it speak the new English tongue, it provoked the most violent opposition. Latin had been good enough for a millennium; why cheapen the Bible by a translation? There had grown up a feeling that Jerome himself had been inspired. He had been canonized, and half the references to him in that time speak of him as the inspired translator.
Criticism of his version was counted as impious and profane as criticisms of the original text could possibly have been. It is one of the ironies of history that the version for which Jerome had to fight, and which was counted a piece of impiety itself, actually became the ground on which men stood when they fought against another version, counting anything else but this very version an impious intrusion!
How early the movement for an English Bible began, it is impossible now to say. Yet the fact is that until the last quarter of the fourteenth century there was no prose version of the Bible in the English language. Indeed, there was only coming to be an English language. It was gradually emerging, taking definite shape and form, so that it could be distinguished from the earlier Norman French, Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon, in which so much of it is rooted.
As soon as the language grew definite enough, it was inevitable that two things should come to pass. First, that some men would attempt to make a colloquial version of the Bible; and, secondly, that others would oppose it.
We are more concerned with the men who made the versions; but we must think a moment of the others. One of his contemporaries, Knighton, may speak for all in his saying of Wiclif, that he had, to be sure, translated the Gospel into the Anglic tongue, but that it had thereby been made vulgar by him, and more open to the reading of laymen and women than it usually is to the knowledge of lettered and intelligent clergy, and thus the pearl is cast abroad and trodden under the feet of swine; and, that we may not be in doubt who are the swine, he adds: The jewel of the Church is turned into the common sport of the people.
But two strong impulses drive thoughtful men to any effort that will secure wide knowledge of the Bible. One is their love of the Bible and their belief in it; but the other, dominant then and now, is a sense of the need of their own time. Wiclif was impressed with the chasm that was growing between the church and the people, and felt that a wider and fuller knowledge of the Bible would be helpful for the closing of the chasm. It is a familiar remark that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. Wiclif believed that the cure for the evils of religion is more religion, more intelligent religion. He found a considerable feeling that the best things in religion ought to be kept from most people, since they could not be trusted to understand them. His own feeling was that the best things in religion are exactly the things most people ought to know most about; that people had better handle the Bible carelessly, mistakenly, than be shut out from it by any means whatever. We owe the first English translation to a faith that the Bible is a book of emancipation for the mind and for the political life.
Wiclif set out to give the common people the full text of the Bible for their common use, and to encourage them not only in reading it, if already they could read, but in learning to read that they might read it. Tennyson compares the village of Lutterworth to that of Bethlehem, on the ground that if Christ, the Word of God, was born at Bethlehem, the Word of Life was born again at Lutterworth. The translation was from the Vulgate, and Wiclif probably did little of the actual work himself, yet it is all his work. And in 1382, more than five centuries ago, there appeared the first complete English version of the Bible. Wiclif made it the people's Book, and the English people were the first of the modern nations to whom the Bible as a whole was given in their own familiar tongue. Once it got into their hands they have never let it be taken entirely away.
This work of Wiclif deserves the time we have given it because it asserted a principle for the English people. There was much yet to be done before entire freedom was gained. At Oxford, in the Convocation of 1408, it was solemnly voted: ''We decree and ordain that no man hereafter by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English, or any other tongue, by way of a book, pamphlet, or other treatise; but that no man read any such book, pamphlet, or treatise now lately composed in the time of John Wiclif ... until the said translation be approved by the orderly of
the place.'' But it was too late. It was already too late, twenty years after Wiclif's version was available, to stop the English people in their search for religious truth.
In the century just after the Wiclif translation,
two great events occurred which bore
heavily on the spread of the Bible. One was
the revival of learning, which made popular
again the study of the classics and the classical
languages. Critical and exact Greek scholarship
became again a possibility. Under the influence of
Erasmus and his kind, with their new insistence
on classical learning, there came necessarily a
new appraisal of the Vulgate as a translation
of the original Bible. For a thousand years
there had been no new study of the original
Bible languages in Europe. The Latin of the
Vulgate had become as sacred as the Book itself.
But the revival of learning threw scholarship
back on the sources of the text. Erasmus
and others published versions of the Greek
Testament which were disturbing to the Vulgate
as a final version.
The other great event of that same century
was the invention of printing with movable
type. It was in 1455 that Gutenberg printed
his first book, an edition of the Vulgate, now
called the Mazarin Bible. One can see instantly
how printing affected the use of the Bible. It made it
worth while to learn to read--there would be
something to read. It made it worth while to
write--there would be some one to read what
was written.
One hundred years exactly after the death of
Wiclif, William Tindale was born. He was
eight years old when Columbus discovered
America. He had already taken a degree at
Oxford, and was a student in Cambridge when
Luther posted his theses at Wittenburg.
But he came at a troubled time. The new
learning had no power to deepen or strengthen
the moral life of the people. It could not make
religion a vital thing. Morality and religion
were far separated. The priests and curates
were densely ignorant. And, as a century before, Wiclif had felt the
social need for a popular version of the Bible,
so William Tindale felt it now. In one of his writings he
says: ''If you will not let the layman have the
word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the
priests have it, which for the great part of
them do understand no Latin at all, but sing
and patter all day with the lips only that which
the heart understandeth not.'' So bad was
the case that it was not corrected within a whole
generation. Forty years after Tindale's version
was published, the Bishop of Gloucester,
Hooper by name, made an examination of the
clergy of his diocese. There were 311 of them.
He found 168, more than half, unable to repeat
the Ten Commandments; 31 who did not even
know where they could be found; 40 who could
not repeat the Lord's Prayer; and nearly as
many who did not know where it originated;
yet they were all in regular standing as clergy
in the diocese of Gloucester. The need was
keen enough.
About 1523 Tindale began to cast the Scriptures
into the current English. He set out to
London fully expecting to find support and
encouragement there, but he found neither. He
found, as he once said, that there was no room
in the palace of the Bishop of London to translate
the New Testament; indeed, that there was
no place to do it in all England. A wealthy
London merchant subsidized him with the munificent
gift of ten pounds, with which he went
across the Channel to Hamburg; and there and
elsewhere on the Continent, where he could be hid,
he brought his translation to completion. Printing
facilities were greater on the Continent than
in England; but there was such opposition to
his work that very few copies of the several
editions of which we know can still be found.
Tindale was compelled to flee at one time with
a few printed sheets and complete his work on
another press. Several times copies of his books
were solemnly burned, and his own life was frequently
in danger.
There is one amusing story which tells how
money came to free Tindale from heavy debt
and prepare the way for more Bibles. The
Bishop of London, Tunstall, was set on destroying
copies of the English New Testament. He
therefore made a bargain with a merchant of
Antwerp, Packington, to secure them for him.
Packington was a friend of Tindale, and went
to him forthwith, saying: "William, I know
thou art a poor man, and I have gotten thee a
merchant for thy books." "Who?" asked Tindale.
"The Bishop of London." "Ah, but
he will burn them." "So he will, but you will
have the money." And it all came out as it
was planned; the Bishop of London had the
books, Packington had the thanks, Tindale had
the money, the debt was paid, and the new
edition was soon ready. The Bishop
thought he had God by the toe when, indeed,
he found afterward that he had the devil by
the fist.
The final revision of the Tindale translations
was published in 1534, and that becomes the
notable year of his life. In two years he was
put to death by strangling, and his body was
burned. When we remember that this was
done with the joint power of Church and State,
we realize some of the odds against which he
worked.
Spite of his odds, however, Tindale is the real
father of our King James Version. About eighty
per cent. of his Old Testament and ninety per
cent. of his New Testament have been transferred
to our version. In the Beatitudes, for
example, five are word for word in the two versions,
while the other three are only slightly
changed. The peculiar genius which breathes
through it, the mingled tenderness and majesty,
the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur,
unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted
improvements of modern scholars, all are here,
and bear the impress of the mind of one man,
William Tindale.
The revisers of 1881 declared that while the
KJV was the work of many hands, the foundation
of it was laid by Tindale, and that the versions that
followed it were substantially reproductions of
Tindale's, or revisions of versions which were
themselves almost entirely based on it.
There was every reason why it should be a
worthy version. For one thing, it was the first
translation into English from the original Hebrew
and Greek. Wiclif's had been from the
Latin. For Tindale there were available two
new and critical Greek Testaments, that of
Erasmus and the so-called Complutensian,
though he used that of Erasmus chiefly. There
was also available a carefully prepared Hebrew
Old Testament. For another thing, it was the
first version which could be printed, and so be
subject to easy and immediate correction and
revision. Then also, Tindale himself was a
great scholar in the languages. Nor was his spirit
in the work controversial. I say his "spirit in
the work" with care. They were controversial
times, and Tindale took his share in the verbal
warfare. When, for example, there was objection
to making any English version because
"the language was so rude that the Bible could
not be intelligently translated into it," Tindale
replied: "It is not so rude as they are false
liars. For the Greek tongue agreeth more with
the English than with the Latin, a thousand
parts better may it be translated into the English
than into the Latin." And when a high
church dignitary protested to Tindale against
making the Bible so common, he replied: "If
God spare my life, ere many years I will cause
a boy that driveth a plow shall know more of
the Scriptures than thou dost." And while that
was not saying much for the plowboy, it was
saying a good deal to the dignitary. In language,
Tindale was controversial enough, but
in his spirit, in making his version, there was no
element of controversy. For such reasons as
these we might expect the version to be valuable.
All this while, and especially between the time
when Tindale first published his New Testament
and the time they burned him for doing so, an
interesting change was going on in England.
The King was Henry VIII., who was by no means
a willing Protestant. As Luther's work appeared,
it was this same Henry who wrote the
pamphlet against him during the Diet of Worms,
and on the ground of this pamphlet, with its
loyal support of the Church against Luther, he
received from the Roman pontiff the title "Defender
of the Faith," which the kings of England
still wear. And yet under this king this
strange succession of dates can be given. Notice
them closely. In 1526 Tindale's New Testament
was burned at St. Paul's by the Bishop of
London; ten years later, 1536, Tindale himself
was burned with the knowledge and connivance
of the English government; and yet, one year
later, 1537, two versions of the Bible in English,
three-quarters of which were the work of Tindale,
were licensed for public use by the King
of England, and were required to be made available
for the people! What brought this about?
Three facts help to explain it. First, thoughtful
opinion wanted the Bible made available,
and at a convention of bishops and university
men the King was requested to secure the issuance
of a proper translation. Secondly, the
people wanted it, the more because it would
gratify their English instinct of independent
judgment in matters of religion. Thirdly, the
King granted it without yielding his personal
religious position, in assertion of his human
sovereignty within his own realm.
There appeared what is known as the Great Bible in 1539. It was made by Myles Coverdale, and
much influenced by Tindale.
The Great Bible was issued to meet a decree that each
church should make available in some convenient
place the largest possible copy of the
whole Bible, where all the parishioners could
have access to it and read it at their will. The
version gets its name solely from the size of
the volume. That decree dates 1538, twelve
years after Tindale's books were burned, and
two years after he was burned! The installation
of these great books caused tremendous
excitement--crowds gathered everywhere. Bishop
Bonner caused six copies of the great volume
to be located wisely throughout St. Paul's. He
found it difficult to make people leave them
during the sermons. He was so often interrupted
by voices reading to a group, and by the
discussions that ensued, that he threatened to
have them taken out during the service if people
would not be quiet. The Great Bible appeared
in seven editions in two years, and
continued in recognized power for thirty years.
Much of the present English prayer-book is
taken from it.
But this liberty was so sudden that the people
naturally abused it. Henry became vexed
because the sacred words "were disputed, rimed,
sung, and jangled in every ale-house." There
had grown up a series of wild ballads and ribald
songs in contempt of "the old faith,"
while it was not really the old faith which was
in dispute, but only foreign control of English
faith. They had mistaken Henry's meaning.
So Henry began to put restrictions on the use
of the Bible. There were to be no notes or
annotations in any versions, and those that
existed were to be blacked out. Only the upper
classes were to be allowed to possess a Bible.
Finally, the year before his death, all versions
were prohibited except the Great Bible, whose
cost and size precluded secret use. The decree
led to another great burning of Bibles in 1546 --
Tindale, Coverdale, Matthew--all but the Great
Bible. The leading religious reformers took
flight and fled to European Protestant towns
like Frankfort and Strassburg. But the Bible
remained. Henry VIII. died. The Bible lived on.
Under Edward VI, the regency cast off all
restrictions on translation and publication of the Bible.
The order for a Great Bible in every church was
renewed, and there was to be added to it a copy
of Erasmus's paraphrase of the four gospels.
Nearly fifty editions of the Bible, in whole or in part,
appeared in those six years.
And that was fortunate, for then came Mary
--and the deluge. Of course, she again gave in
the nominal allegiance of England to the Roman
control. But she utterly missed the spirit of
the people. They were weary with the excesses
of rabid Protestantism; but they were by no
means ready to admit the principle of foreign
control in religious matters.
So the secret use of the Bible increased. Martyr
fires were kindled, but by the light of them the
people read their Bibles more eagerly. And this
very persecution led to one of the best of the
early versions of the Bible, indirectly even to
the King James version.
The flower of English Protestant scholarship
was driven into exile, and found its way to
Frankfort and Geneva again. There the spirit
of scholarship was untrammeled; there they
found material for scholarly study of the Bible,
and there they made and published a new version
of the Bible in English, by all means the
best that had been made. In later years, under
Elizabeth, it drove the Great Bible off the field
by sheer power of excellence. During her reign
sixty editions of it appeared. This was the version
called the Geneva Bible. It made several
changes that are familiar to us. For one thing,
in the Genevan edition of 1560 first appeared
our familiar division into verses. The chapter
division was made three centuries earlier; but
the verses belong to the Genevan version, and
are divided to make the Book suitable for
responsive use and for readier reference. It was
taken in large part from the work of Robert
Stephens, who had divided the Greek Testament
into verses, ten years earlier, during a journey
which he was compelled to make between Paris
and Lyons. The Genevan version also abandoned
the old black letter, and used the Roman
type with which we are familiar. It had full
notes on hard passages, which notes, as we shall
see, helped to produce the King James version.
The work itself was completed after the accession
of Elizabeth, when most of the religious leaders
had returned to England from their exile under Mary.
Elizabeth herself was not an ardent Protestant,
not ardent at all religiously, but an ardent
Englishwoman. She understood her people, and
while she prided herself on being the "Guardian
of the Middle Way," she did not make the
mistake of submitting her sovereignty to foreign
supervision. She had no wish to offend other
Catholic powers; but she was determined to
develop a strong national spirit and to allow
religious differences to exist if they would be peaceful.
Presently it was found that two versions of
the Bible were taking the field, the old Great
Bible and the new Genevan Bible. On all
accounts the Genevan was the better and was
driving out its rival. Yet there could be no
hope of gaining the approval of Elizabeth for
the Genevan Bible. For one thing, John Knox
had been a party to its preparation; so had
Calvin. Elizabeth detested them both, especially
Knox. For another thing, its notes were not
favorable to royal sovereignty, but smacked so
much of popular government as to
be offensive. For another thing, though it had been
made in a foreign land, and was under suspicion
on that account.
The result was that Elizabeth's
archbishop, Parker, set out to have an authorized
version made, selected a revision committee,
with instructions to follow wherever
possible the Great Bible, to avoid bitter notes,
and to make such a version that it might be
freely, easily, and naturally read. The result
is known as the Bishops' Bible. It was issued
in Elizabeth's tenth year (1568), but there is
no record that she ever noticed it, though Parker
sent her a copy from his sick-bed. The Bishops'
Bible shows the influence of the Genevan
Bible in many ways, though it gives no credit
for that. It is not of equal merit; it was expensive,
too cumbersome, and often unscholarly.
Only its official standing gave it life, and after
forty years, in nineteen editions, it was no longer
published.
Naming one other English version will complete
the series of facts necessary for the consideration
of the forming of the King James Version.
It will be remembered that all the
English versions of the Bible thus far mentioned
were the work of men either already out of favor
with the Roman pontiff, or speedily put out of
favor on that account. That fact
seemed to many loyal Roman churchmen to
put the Church in a false light. So there came about the
Douai version, instigated by Gregory Martin,
and prepared in some sense as an answer to the
Genevan version and its strongly anti-papal
notes. It was the work of English scholars connected
with the University of Douai. The New
Testament was issued at Rheims in 1582, and
the whole Bible in 1609, just before our King
James version. It is made, not from the Hebrew
and the Greek, though it refers to both,
but from the Vulgate. The result is that the
Old Testament of the Douai version is a translation
into English from the Latin, which in
large part is a translation into Latin from the
Greek Septuagint, which in turn is a translation
into Greek from the Hebrew. Yet scholars are
scholars, and it shows marked influence of the
Genevan version, and, indeed, of other English
versions. Its notes were strongly anti-Protestant,
and in its preface it explains its existence
by saying that Protestants have been guilty
of "casting the holy to dogs and pearls to hogs."
The version is not in the direct line of the
ascent of the familiar version, and needs no
elaborate description. Its purpose was controversial;
it did not go to available sources;
its English was not colloquial, but ecclesiastical.
For example, in the Lord's Prayer we read:
"Give us this day our supersubstantial bread,"
instead of "our daily bread." In Hebrews xiii:
17, the version reads, "Obey your prelates and
be subject unto them." In Luke iii:3, John
came "preaching the baptism of penance." In
Psalm xxiii:5, where we read, "My cup runneth
over," the Douai version reads, "My chalice
which inebriateth me, how goodly it is."
There is a careful retention of ecclesiastical
terms, and an explanation of the passages on
which Protestants had come to differ rather
sharply from their Roman brethren, as in the
matter of the taking of the cup by the people,
and elsewhere.
Yet it is only fair to remember that this much
answer was made to the versions which were
preparing the way for the greatest version of
them all, and when the time came for the making
of that version, and the helps were gathered
together, the Douai was frankly placed among
them. It is a peculiar irony of fate that while
the purpose of Gregory Martin was to check
the translation of the Bible by the Protestants,
the only effect of his work was to advance and
improve that translation.
At last, the way was cleared for a free and open setting of
the Bible into English. The way had been
beset with struggle, marked with blood, lighted
by martyr fires. Wiclif and Purvey, Tindale
and Coverdale, the refugees at Geneva and the
Bishops at London, all had trod that way.
Kings had fought them or had favored them;
it was all one; they had gone on. Loyal zest
for their Book and loving zeal for the common
people had held them to the path. Now it
had become a highway open to all men. And
right worthy were the feet which were soon
treading it.
There are factual errors in this account, which presents an early twentieth century Protestant view of the history of bible translation.
1. There were vernacular translations of parts of the Bible in England prior to Wycliffe these were into both Anglo Saxon and Norman French.
2. The Church objected to the Wycliffe and Tyndale translations because in their belief purposeful mistranslations had been introduced to the works in order to promote anticlericalism and heretical views.Thomas More accused Tyndale of evil purpose in corrupting and changing the words and sense of Scripture “from the good and holsom doctryne of Criste to the deuylysh heresyes of theyr own.” Specifically, he charged Tyndale with mischief in changing three key words throughout the whole of his Testament, such that “priest,” “church,” and “charity” of customary Roman Catholic usage became in Tindale’s translation “elder,” “congregation,” and “love.”
3. The Church also objected to Wycliffe and Tyndale's translations because they included notes and commentaries promoting antagonism to the Catholic Church and heretical doctrines, particularly, in Tyndale's case, Lutheranism.
4. Translation of the bible into the vernacular was never forbidden by the Catholic Church. However 'unauthorised' translations were forbidden.
5. Tyndale was executed in the Netherlands, and he was not executed for his translation of the bible, as this article alleges. He was executed on unrelated charges of teaching Lutheranism.
6. Tyndale did not have copies of "original" Hebrew texts. In fact the quality of the Hebrew documents was poor, since no original Hebrew sources earlier than the 10th Century had survivedJewish translations
Early Christian translations
Mediæval translations
John Wycliffe's Middle English translation
Impact of humanist scholarship
William Tyndale
The Great Bible: the first "authorised version"
The Geneva Bible
Elizabeth I
The Bishops' Bible
The Douai-Rheims Version
The King James Bible
Critique of the above text