The History of the (English) Bible Text
The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century
version of the Bible
in Latin partly
revised and partly translated by Jerome on the orders of Pope
Damasus I in 382. It takes its name from the phrase versio vulgata,
i.e., "the translation made public", and was written in a common 4th
century style of literary Latin in conscious distinction to the more elegant Ciceronian Latin.
The Vulgate was designed to be a definitive and officially promulgated
translation of the Bible, improving upon several divergent translations then in
use. It was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible with an
Old
Testamenttranslated directly from the Hebrew
rather than from the Greek Septuagint. In 405 A.D., Jerome completed the protocanonical books of the Old Testament from
the Hebrew, and the deuterocanonical books of Tobias
and Judith
from the Aramaic. The remainder of the version and the psalter
were translated from the Greek. Since the Council
of Trent, the Latin Vulgate has been the official bible of the Roman Catholic Church. There are 76 books in the Celementine edition of
the Vulgate Bible, 46 in the Old
Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and 3 in the Apocrypha.
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Contents [hide] |
1)
Relation with the Old Latin Bible
a)
In Jerome's day, the word Vulgata
was applied to the Greek Septuagint. The Latin Bible used before the Vulgate is
usually referred to as the Vetus
Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old
Latin Vulgate".
b)
This text was not translated by a
single person or institution, nor even uniformly edited. The individual books
varied in quality of translation and style -- modern scholars often refer to
the Old Latin as being in "translationese" rather than standard
Latin. Its Old Testament books were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not
from the Hebrew.
c)
The Old Latin version remained in use
in some circles even after Jerome's Vulgate became the accepted standard
throughout the Western Church. Some Gauls continued to prefer the Old Latin
version for centuries.
2)
[edit] Jerome's Translation
a)
Thirty-eight of the thirty-nine protocanonical books of the Vulgate's Old
Testament (all except for the Psalms) were translated anew by Jerome from Hebrew. He also
translated Judith and Tobias.
The rest of the Vulgate was a revision of earlier Latin translations from
Greek. Jerome thoroughly revised the psalms and the four
Gospels; how much the rest of the New
Testament was revised is difficult to judge today. The rest of the Old
Testament was perhaps revised only slightly, or not at all.
b)
In his prologues, Jerome described
those books of the Old Testament which were not found in the Hebrew as
being non-canonical; he called them apocrypha.[1][2]
Nevertheless the Old Testament of the Vulgate contained them,
following the tradition of the Vetus
Latina and the Septuagint, which was at that time the translation most
widely used by Greek-speaking Christians. Of these books, Jerome translated
only Tobit
and Judith
anew. The others retained the Old Latin renderings. Their style can still be
markedly distinguished from Jerome's.
3)
[edit] Psalters
i.
Main article: Latin
Psalters
b)
Although some early manuscripts of the
Vulgate contain Jerome's translation of the psalms from the Hebrew, the version
of the psalms that is contained in all later manuscripts and editions is the Gallicana translation from the Hexaplar Greek.
4)
[edit] Manuscripts and
Early Editions
a)
A number of early manuscripts
witnessing to the early Vulgate still survive today. Dating to the 8th century,
the Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving complete manuscript
of the Vulgate. The Codex Fuldensis, from around 545, is an earlier
surviving manuscript that is based on the Vulgate, however the gospels are an
edited version of the Diatessaron.
b)
Over the course of the Middle Ages, the
Vulgate had succumbed to the inevitable changes wrought by human error in the
countless copying of the text in monasteries across Europe. From its earliest
days, readings from the Vetus Latina were introduced. Marginal notes were
erroneously interpolated into the text. No one copy was the same as the other
as scribes added, removed, misspelled, or mis-corrected verses in the Latin
Bible.
c)
About 550, Cassiodorus
made an attempt at restoring the Vulgate to its original purity. Alcuin of York
oversaw efforts to make a corrected Vulgate, which he presented to Charlemagne
in 801. Similar attempts were repeated by Theodulphus
Bishop of Orleans (787?- 821), Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089), Stephen
Harding, Abbot of Cîteaux (1109-1134), and Deacon Nicolaus Maniacoria
(about the beginning of the thirteenth century).
d)
Though the advent of printing greatly
reduced the potential of human error and increased the consistency and
uniformity of the text, the earliest editions of the Vulgate merely reproduced
the manuscripts which were readily available to the publishers. Of the hundreds
of early editions, the most notable today is Mazarin
edition published by Johann Gutenberg in 1455, famous for its beauty
and antiquity. In 1504 the first Vulgate with variant readings was published in
Paris. One of the texts of the Complutensian Polyglot was an edition of the
Vulgate made from ancient manuscripts and corrected to agree with the Greek. Erasmus published
an edition corrected to agree better with the Greek and Hebrew in 1516. In
1528, Robertus Stephanus published the first critical
edition which would form the basis of the later Sistine and Clementine
editions. The critical edition of John Hentenius of Louvain followed in 1547[3].
5)
[edit] The Clementine Vulgate
a)
b)
c)
Prologue of the gospel
of John, Clementine Vulgate, 1922 edition
d)
The Clementine Vulgate (Biblia Sacra
Vulgatae Editionis Sixti Quinti Pontificis Maximi iussu recognita atque edita)
is the edition most familiar to Catholics who have lived prior to the reforms
of Vatican
II (in reaction to which the use of Latin in the liturgy became rare).
e)
After the Reformation,
when the Church of Rome strove to counter the attacks and refute the doctrines
of Protestantism,
the Vulgate was reaffirmed in the Council
of Trent as the sole, authorized Latin text of the Bible. To reinforce this
declaration, the council commissioned the pope to make a standard text of the
Vulgate out of the countless editions produced during the renaissance
and manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages. The actual first manifestation
of this authorized text did not appear until 1590. It was sponsored by Pope
Sixtus V (1585-90) and known as the Sistine Vulgate. It was based on the
edition of Robertus Stephanus corrected to agree with the Greek, but it was
hurried into print and suffered from many printing errors. It was soon replaced
by a new edition with the advent of the next pope, Clement
VIII (1592-1605) who immediately ordered corrections and revisions to be
made. This new revised version was based more on the Hentenian edition. It is
called today the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, or simply the Clementine, although
it is Sixtus' name which appears on the title page. Clement published three
printings of this edition in 1592, 1593, and 1598.
f)
The Clementine differed from the
manuscripts on which it was ultimately based in that it grouped the various
prefaces of St. Jerome together at the beginning, and it removed 3 and 4 Esdras and
the Prayer of Manasses to an appendix.
g)
The psalter of the Clementine Vulgate,
like that of almost all earlier editions, is the Gallicanum.
h)
The Clementine Vulgate of 1592 became
the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Catholic
Church until 1979,
when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.
i)
[edit] Later Editions
j)
In 1734 Vallarsi published a corrected
edition of the Vulgate. Most other later editions limited themselves to the New
Testament, most notably Tischendorf's edition of 1864 and the Oxford edition of Bishop J. Wordsworth and
H.J. White in 1889.
k)
In 1907 Pope Pius X
commissioned the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome in Rome to
prepare a critical edition of Jerome's Vulgate as a basis for a revision of the
Clementine.
6)
[edit] New Psalters
i.
Main article: Latin
Psalters
7)
[edit] Nova Vulgata
a)
The Nova Vulgata (Bibliorum
Sacrorum nova vulgata editio) is currently the official Latin version
published and approved by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1965, towards the
close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul
VI appointed a commission to revise the existing Vulgate in accord with
modern textual and linguistic studies, while preserving or refining its
Christian Latin style. The Commission published its work in eight annotated
sections, inviting criticism from Catholic scholars as the sections were
published. The Latin Psalter was published in 1969 and the entire Nova Vulgata
in 1979[4].
b)
The foundational text of most of the
Nova Vulgata is the critical edition done by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey
of St. Jerome under Pius
X. The foundational text of the books of Tobit and Judith are from
manuscripts of the Vetus Latina rather than the Vulgate. All of these
base texts were revised to accord with the modern critical editions in Greek,
Hebrew, and Aramaic. There are also a number of changes where the modern
scholars felt that Jerome had failed to grasp the meaning of the original
languages.
c)
The Nova Vulgata does not
contain those books, found in the Clementine and some other editions, that are
considered apocryphal by the Roman Catholic Church, namely
the Prayer of Manasses and 3rd and 4th Book of
Esdras.
d)
In 1979, after decades of preparation,
the Nova Vulgata was published and declared the Catholic Church's
current official Latin version in the Apostolic Constitution Scripturarum
Thesaurus, promulgated by the late Pope John Paul
II.
e)
The Nova Vulgata has not been
widely embraced by conservative Catholics, many of whom see it as being in some
verses of the Old Testament a new translation rather than a revision of
Jerome's work. Also, some of its readings sound unfamiliar to those who are
accustomed to the Clementine.
f)
In 2001, the Vatican
released the instruction Liturgiam
Authenicam, establishing the Nova Vulgata as a point of reference for all
translations of the liturgy into the vernacular from the original languages,
"in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to
the Latin Liturgy".
8)
[edit] The Stuttgart Vulgate
a)
A final mention must also be made of an
edition of the Vulgate published by the German Bible Society (Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, alternatively titled Biblia
Sacra Vulgata or Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (ISBN
3-438-05303-9), seeks to reconstruct an early Vulgate text closer to that
which Jerome himself produced 1,600 years ago. It is based on earlier critical
editions of Vulgate, namely the Benedictine edition and the Latin New Testament
produced by Wordsworth and White, which provided variant readings from the
diverse manuscripts and printed editions of the Vulgate and comparison of
different wordings in their footnotes. The Stuttgart Vulgate attempts, through
critical comparison of important, historical manuscripts of the Vulgate, to
recreate an early text, cleansed of the scribal errors of a millennium. One of
the most important critical sources for the Stuttgart Vulgate is Codex
Amiatinus, the highly-esteemed 8th century,
one-volume manuscript of the whole Latin Bible produced in England, regarded as
the best medieval witness to Jerome's original text. An important feature in
the Stuttgart edition for those studying the Vulgate is the inclusion of all of
Jerome's prologues to the Bible, the Testaments, and the major books and
sections (Pentateuch, Gospels, Minor Prophets, etc.) of the Bible. This again
mimics the style of medieval editions of the Vulgate, which were never without
Jerome's prologues (revered as much a part of the Bible as the sacred text
itself). In its spelling, the Stuttgart also retains a more medieval Latin
orthography than the Clementine, sometimes using oe rather than ae,
and having more proper nouns beginning with H (i.e., Helimelech
instead of Elimelech), but the spelling is inconsistent throughout, as
it is in the manuscripts. It contains two psalters, both the Gallicanum and the
juxta Hebraicum, which are printed on facing pages to allow easy comparison and
contrast between the two versions. In has an expanded Apocrypha, containing Psalm 151
and the Epistle to the Laodiceans in addition to 3 and 4 Esdras and
the Prayer of Manasses.
b)
In addition, its modern prefaces are a
source of valuable information about the history of the Vulgate.
c)
Though closer than the New Vulgate to
the Clementine edition, the Stuttgart Vulgate still has enough divergence from
the Clementine text to render it unfamiliar to accustomed Catholics. In
addition, its sparse, unpunctuated text and unusual spellings can be difficult
to read, especially in verses with multiple clauses.
d)
[edit] Electronic Vulgate
e)
One reason for the Stuttgart edition's
importance rests in the fact that it is the one most disseminated on the
Internet. This electronic version is usually mutilated, lacking all formatting,
notes, prefaces and apparatus, and lacking the Gallican Psalter, Apocrypha, and
Deuterocanonical books, and often containing only the first three chapters of
Daniel (stopping at the point where the deuterocanonical Song of the Three
Holy Children would begin.)
9)
[edit] Issues of translation
a)
The Vulgate translated from a Greek
source for the New Testament and for Psalms, most of the
deuterocanonical books, and the apocrypha[5]
in the Old Testament. The New Testament was written in
Greek. The Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, was
used by Christians in a Greek translation called the Septuagint
made by Jews during the three centuries before Christ. The linguistic
separation between Hebrew and Latin is nearly as vast as the linguistic
separation between Latin and Greek is narrow, and the Vulgate New Testament, in
particular, sometimes follows the Greek model word for word. Latin and Greek
are both highly inflected languages with very flexible word-order, but the
attempt to render such things as the richer array of Greek participles
sometimes resulted in clumsy Latin that was preserved in the English of the King
James Bible. We can see this in Luke
2:15, for example:
i.
Greek:
καὶ ἐγένετο ὡς ἀπῆλθον ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ ἄγγελοι, οἱ ποιμένες ἐλάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Διέλθωμεν δὴ ἕως Βηθλέεμ καὶ ἴδωμεν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο τὸ γεγονὸς ὃ ὁ κύριος ἐγνώρισεν ἡμῖν.
ii.
(Literal translation: And it-happened
that they-withdrew from them into the heaven the angels, and the shepherds
spoke to each-other: let-us-go-over then to Bethlehem and let-us-see the thing
that [demonstrative pronoun] the happened which the Lord has-declared to-us.)
iii.
Latin: Et factum est
ut discesserunt ab eis angeli in caelum, pastores loquebantur ad invicem:
Transeamus usque Bethleem et videamus hoc verbum quod factum est quod fecit
Dominus et ostendit nobis.
iv.
(Literal translation: And happened
it-has that they-withdrew from them angels into heaven, shepherds spoke to
each-other: Let-us-go over-to Bethlehem, and let-us-see this word which
has-become, which has-done the Lord, and has-manifested to-us.)
v.
English (King James version): And it came to pass, as the
angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,
Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass,
which the Lord hath made known unto us.
10)
[edit] Prologues
a)
In addition to the biblical text the
Vulgate contains seventeen prologues, sixteen of which were written by Jerome. Jerome's
prologues are in some sense mis-named, they were written not so much as
prologues than as cover letters to specific individuals to accompany copies of
his translations. Because they were not intended for a general audience, some
of his comments in them can be quite cryptic. These prologues are to the
Pentateuch[6]
to Joshua,[7]
and to Kings, which is also called the Prologus Galeatus.[8]
Following these are prologues to Chronicles,[9]
Esdras,[10]
Tobias,[11]
Judith,[12]
Esther,[13]
Job,[14]
Psalms,[15]
Solomon,[16]
Isaias,[17]
Jeremias,[18]
Ezechiel,[19]
Daniel,[20]
Minor prophets,[21]
the Gospels,[22]
and the final prologue which is to the Pauline Epistles and is better
known as Primum quaeritur.[23]
Related to these are Jerome's Notes on the Rest of Esther[24]
and his Prologue to the Hebrew Psalms.[25]
b)
A recurring theme of the Old
Testament prologues is Jerome's preference for the Hebraica veritas
(i.e., Hebrew truth) to the Septuagint, a preference which he defended from his
detractors. He stated that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigures Christ
than the Greek. Among the most remarkable of these prologues is the Prologus
Galeatus, in which Jerome described an Old
Testament canon of 22 books, which he found represented in the 22-letter Hebrew
alphabet. Alternatively, he numbered the books as 24, which he described as the
24 elders in the Book of Revelation casting their crowns before
the Lamb.
c)
Also of note is the Primum quaeritur,
which defended the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and compared Paul's
10 letters to the churches with the 10 commandments. The author of the Primum
quaeritur is unknown. The editors of the Stuttgart Vulgate remark that this
version of the epistles first became popular among the Pelagians.
But Adolf von Harnack,[26] argued that this prologue was written by Marcion
of Sinope or one of his followers. Harnack noted: "We have indeed long
known that Marcionite
readings found their way into the ecclesiastical text of the Pauline epistles,
but now for seven years we have known that Churches actually accepted the
Marcionite prefaces to the Pauline epistles! De Bruyne has made one of the
finest discoveries of later days in proving that those prefaces, which we read
first in Codex Fuldensis and then in numbers of later
manuscripts, are Marcionite, and that the Churches had not noticed the cloven
hoof."
11)
[edit] Influence on
Western Culture
a)
In terms of its importance to the
culture, art, and life of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate stands supreme. Through
the Dark
Ages and onto the Renaissance and Reformation, St. Jerome's monumental work
stood as a last pillar of Roman glory and the bedrock of the Western church as
it strove to unite a fractured Europe through the Catholic faith. As the
version of the Bible familiar to and read by the faithful for over a thousand
years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate exerted a powerful influence, especially in
art and music as it served as inspiration for countless paintings and hymns.
Early attempts to render translations into vernacular tongues were invariably
made from the Vulgate, as it was highly regarded as an infallible, divinely
inspired text. Even the translations produced by Protestants, that sought to
replace the Vulgate for good with vernacular versions translated from the
original languages, could not avoid the enormous influence of Jerome's
translation in its dignified style and flowing prose. The closest equivalent in
English, the King James Version, or Authorised Version, shows
a marked influence from the Vulgate in its homely, yet dignified prose and
vigorous poetic rhythm.
b)
[edit] Translations
Based on the Vulgate
c)
Before the publication of Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu, the Vulgate was
the source text used for many translations of the Bible into vernacular
languages. In English, the interlinear translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels as well as other Old English Bible translations, the translation
of John
Wycliffe, the Douay Rheims Bible, the Confraternity Bible, and Ronald Knox's
translationwere all made from
the Vulgate.
d)
[edit] Influence on
the English Language
e)
The Vulgate had a large influence on
the development of the English language, especially in matters of religion and
the Bible. Many
Latin words were taken from the Vulgate into English nearly unchanged in
meaning or spelling: creatio (e.g. Genesis 1:1, Heb
9:11), salvatio (e.g. Is 37:32, Eph 2:5), justificatio (e.g. Rom 4:25, Heb 9:1),
testamentum(e.g. Mt 26:28), sanctificatio
(1 Ptr 1:2, 1 Cor 1:30), regeneratio (Mt 19:28), and raptura
(from a noun form of the verb rapiemur in 1 Thes 4:17). The word
"publican" comes from the Latin publicanus (e.g., Mt 10:3),
and the phrase "far be it" is a translation of the Latin expression absit
(e.g., Mt 16:22 in the King James Bible). Other examples include apostolus,
ecclesia,
evangelium,
Pascha,
and angelus.
om
John Wycliffe (also Wyclif, Wycliff, or Wickliffe,
Czech Jan
Viklef) (c.1320 – December 31, 1384) was an English theologian and early proponent of reform in the Roman Catholic
Church during the 14th
century. He made an English translation of the Bible in one complete edition [1] This was considered a
precursor of the Protestant Reformation (thus he became
known as "The Morning Star of the Reformation"), though this is disputed.[citation needed] Wycliffe
was born at Ipreswell (modern Hipswell), Yorkshire,
England, between 1320 and 1330 and died at Lutterworth (near Leicester) in 1384.
1)
[edit] Early life of John Wycliffe
a)
Wycliffe was born in the small village
of Ipreswell in Yorkshire, England. 1324 is the year
usually given for Wycliffe's birth although it may have been earlier.[2]
b)
His family was of early Anglo-Saxon
origin, long settled in Yorkshire. In his time the family was a large one, covering
considerable territory, principally centered around Wycliffe-on-Tees, of which
Ipreswell was an outlying hamlet.
c)
[edit] Education
(1)
Wycliffe probably received his early
education close to his home.[citation needed] It is
not known when he first came to Oxford, with which he was so closely connected
until the end of his life, but he is known to have been at Oxford around 1345. He was influenced
by such men as Roger Bacon, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Bradwardine, William
of Occam, and Richard Fitzralph.[citation needed]
(2)
Wycliffe owed much to William
of Ockham's work and thought. He showed an interest in natural
science and mathematics, but applied himself to the study of theology, ecclesiastical law, and philosophy.
Even his opponents acknowledged the keenness of his dialectic,
and his writings prove that he was well grounded in Roman and English law,
as well as in native history.[citation needed]
ii)
[edit] Conflict at Oxford
(1)
During this time there was a friction
between "nations" at Oxford between the northern "Boreales" and southern "Australes".
(2)
Each faction had its procurator
chosen by the corps or nation.
(3)
Wycliffe belonged to Boreales, in which
the prevailing tendency was anticurial, while the other was curial. Not less sharp was the separation over Nominalism
and Realism
(see Scholasticism).
(4)
Wycliffe was a Realist.
iii)
[edit] Headship
(1)
John de Balliol whose seat was in the
neighborhood of Wycliffe's home – Barnard
Castle – had founded Balliol College, Oxford, to which Wycliffe
belonged, first as scholar, then as master.
(2)
He attained the headship no later than 1360.
2)
[edit] Early career
a)
[edit] At Oxford
i)
In 1361, he was presented by the
college with the parish
of Fylingham in Lincolnshire.
For this he had to give up the leadership of Balliol, though he could continue to live
at Oxford. He is said to have had rooms in the buildings of Queen's. As baccalaureate
at the university, he busied himself with natural science and mathematics, and
as master he had the right to read in philosophy.
b)
[edit] Beginnings in Theology
i)
Obtaining a bachelors degree in theology,
Wycliffe pursued an avid interest in Biblical
studies.
(1)
His performance led Simon Islip,
Archbishop of Canterbury, to place him at
the head of Canterbury Hall in 1365, where twelve
young men were preparing for the priesthood. Islip had designed the foundation
for secular
clergy; but when he died in 1366, his successor, Simon
Langham, a man of monastic training, turned the leadership of the college over
to a monk.
(2)
Though Wycliffe appealed to Rome, the outcome was
unfavorable to him.
(a)
This case would hardly have been
thought of again had not contemporaries of Wycliffe, such as William
Woodford, seen in it as the beginnings of Wycliffe's assaults upon Rome and
monasticism.[citation needed]
ii)
Between 1366 and 1372, he became a doctor of theology, making use of his right to lecture upon systematic divinity.
(1)
But these lectures were not the origin of his Summa.
In 1368, he gave up
his living at Fylingham and took over the rectory of Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire, not far
from Oxford, which enabled him to retain his connection with the university.
(2)
Six years later, in 1374, he received the
crown living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire,
which he retained till his death.
(3)
He had already resigned as prebend of
Aust in Westbury-on-Trym.
3)
[edit] Bases of
his reformatory activities
a)
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b)
It was not as a teacher or preacher
that Wycliffe gained his position in history; this came from his activities in
ecclesiastical politics, in which he engaged about the mid-1370s, when his
reformatory work also began.
i)
In 1374 he was among the
English delegates at a peace congress at Bruges.
ii)
He may have been given this position
because of the spirited and patriotic behavior with which in the year 1366 he sought the
interests of his country against the demands of the papacy.
iii)
It seems he had a reputation as a
patriot and reformer; this suggests the answer to the question how he came to
his reformatory ideas.
iv)
[Even if older evangelical parties did
not exist in England before Wycliffe, he might easily have been influenced by
continental "evangelicals."]
c)
The root of the Wycliffite reformatory
movement must be traced to his Bible study and to the ecclesiastical-political
lawmaking of his times.
i)
He was well acquainted with the
tendencies of the ecclesiastical politics to which England owed its position.
ii)
He had studied the proceedings of King Edward I of England, and had attributed to them
the basis of parliamentary opposition to papal usurpations.
iii)
He found them a model for methods of
procedure in matters connected with the questions of worldly possessions and
the Church. Many sentences in his book on the Church recall the institution of
the commission of 1274, which caused problems for the English clergy.
iv)
He considered that the example of
Edward I should be borne in mind by the government of his time; but that the
aim should be a reformation of the entire ecclesiastical establishment.
v)
Similar was his position on the
enactments induced by the ecclesiastical politics of Edward III, with which he was well acquainted
and are fully reflected in his political tracts.
4)
[edit] Political career
a)
The Reformer's entrance upon the stage
of ecclesiastical politics is usually related to the question of feudal tribute
to which England had been rendered liable by King
John, which had remained unpaid for thirty-three years until Pope
Urban V in 1365 demanded it with menaces.
i)
Parliament declared that neither John
nor any other had the right to subject England to any foreign power.
ii)
Should the pope attempt to enforce his
claim by arms, he would be met with united resistance. Urban apparently
recognized his mistake and dropped his claim. But there was no talk of a
patriotic uprising.
iii)
The tone of the pope was, in fact, not
threatening, and he did not wish to draw England into the maelstrom of politics
of western and southern Europe.
iv)
Harsh words were bound to be heard in
England, because of the close relations of the papacy with France.
v)
It is said that on this occasion
Wycliffe served as theological counsel to the government, composed a polemical
tract dealing with the tribute, and defended an unnamed monk over against the
conduct of the government and parliament.
vi)
This would place the entrance of
Wycliffe into politics about 1365–66.
b)
Wycliffe's more important participation
began with the peace congress at Bruges.
i)
There in 1374 negotiations were
carried on between France and England, while at the same time commissioners
from England dealt with papal delegates respecting the removal of
ecclesiastical annoyances.
ii)
Wycliffe was among these, under a
decree dated July
26, 1374.
iii)
The choice of a harsh opponent of the Avignon system
would have broken up rather than furthered the peace negotiations.
iv)
It seems he was designated purely as a theologian, and
so considered himself, since a noted Scripture scholar was required alongside
of those learned in civil and canon law.
v)
There was no need for a man of renown,
or a pure advocate of state interests.
vi)
His predecessor in a like case was John
Owtred, a monk who formulated the statement that St Peter
had united in his hands spiritual and temporal power – the opposite of what Wycliffe
taught.
vii)
In the days of the mission to Bruges
Owtred still belonged in Wycliffe's circle of friends.
c)
Wycliffe was still regarded by papal
partisans as trustworthy; his opposition to the ruling conduct of the Church
may have escaped notice.
i)
It was difficult to recognise him as a heretic. The
controversies in which men engaged at Oxford were philosophical rather than
purely theological or ecclesiastical-political, and the method of discussion
was academic and scholastic.
ii)
The kind of men with whom Wycliffe
dealt included the Carmelite monk John Kyningham (Cunningham; cf. Fasciculi
Zizaniorum, p. 3, London, 1858) over theological questions (utrum
Christus esset humanitas), or ecclesiastical-political ones (De
dominatione civili; De dotatione ecclesiae). Wycliffe's contest with John
Owtred and William Wynham (or Wyrinham) were formerly unknown, as were the
earlier ones with his opponent William Wadeford.
iii)
When it is recalled that it was once
the task of Owtred to defend the political interests of England against the
demands of Avignon, one would more likely see him in agreement with Wycliffe
than in opposition.
iv)
But Owtred believed it sinful to say
that temporal power might deprive a priest, even an unrighteous one, of his
temporalities; Wycliffe regarded it as a sin to incite the pope to
excommunicate laymen who had deprived clergy of their temporalities, his dictum
being that a man in a state of sin had no claim upon government.
d)
Wycliffe blamed the Benedictine
professor of theology at Oxford, William Wynham of St Albans
(where the anti-Wycliffite trend was considerable) for making public
controversies which had hitherto been confined to the academic arena.
i)
But the controversies were
fundamentally related to the opposition which found expression in parliament
against the Curia.
Wycliffe himself tells(Sermones, iii. 199) how he concluded that there
was a great contrast between what the Church was and what it ought to be, and
saw the necessity for reform.
ii)
His ideas stress the perniciousness of the
temporal rule of the clergy and its incompatibility with the teaching of Christ and the
apostles, and make note of the tendencies which were evident in the measures of
the "Good Parliament" (1376-77).
iii)
A long bill was introduced, with 140
headings, in which were stated the grievances caused by the aggressions of the
Curia; all reservations and commissions were to be done away, the exportation
of money was forbidden, and the foreign collectors were to be removed.
5)
[edit] Public
declaration of his ideas
a)
It was in this period that Wycliffe
came significantly to the fore.
i)
He was among those to whom the thought
of the secularization of ecclesiastical properties in England was welcome.
ii)
His patron was John of
Gaunt. He was no longer satisfied with his chair as the means of
propagating his ideas, and soon after his return from Bruges he began to
express them in tracts and longer works – his great work, the Summa
theologiae, was written in support of them. In the first book, concerned
with the government of God and the ten
commandments, he attacked the temporal rule of the clergy – in temporal
things the king is above the pope, and the collection of annates and
indulgences is simony.
iii)
But he entered the politics of the day
with his great work De civili dominio. Here he introduced those ideas by
which the good parliament was governed – which involved the renunciation by the
Church of temporal dominion.
iv)
The items of the "long bill"
appear to have been derived from his work. In this book are the strongest
outcries against the Avignon system with its commissions, exactions,
squandering of charities by unfit priests, and the like.
v)
To change this is the business of the
State. If the clergy misuses ecclesiastical property, it must be taken away; if
the king does not do this, he is remiss.
vi)
The work contains 18 strongly stated
theses, opposing the governing methods of the rule of the Church and the
straightening out of its temporal possessions. [These are conveniently given in
DNB,lxiii. 208-209.] Wycliffe had set these ideas before his students
at Oxford in 1376, after becoming involved in controversy with William Wadeford
and others.
vii)
Rather than restricting these matters
to the classroom, he wanted them proclaimed more widely and wanted temporal and
spiritual lords to take note.
viii) While
the latter attacked him and sought ecclesiastical censure, he recommended
himself to the former by his criticism of the worldly possessions of the
clergy.
6)
[edit] Conflict with the
Church
a)
Wycliffe wanted to see his ideas
actualized – his fundamental belief was that the Church should be poor, as in
the days of the apostles.
i)
He had not yet broken with the
mendicant friars, and from these John of Gaunt chose Wycliffe's defenders.
ii)
While the Reformer later claimed that
it was not his purpose to incite temporal lords to confiscation of the property
of the Church, the real tendencies of the propositions remained unconcealed.
The result of the same doctrines in Bohemia – that
land which was richest in ecclesiastical foundations – was that in a short time
the entire church estate was taken over and a revolution brought about in the
relations of temporal holdings.
iii)
It was in keeping with the plans of
Gaunt to have a personality like Wycliffe on his side. Especially in London the
Reformer's views won support; partisans of the nobility attached themselves to
him, and the lower orders gladly heard his sermons. He preached in city
churches, and London rang with his praises.
b)
The first to oppose his theses were
monks of those orders which held possessions, to whom his theories were
dangerous.
i)
Oxford and the episcopate were later
blamed by the Curia, which charged them with so neglecting their duty that the
breaking of the evil fiend into the English sheepfold could be noticed in Rome
before it was in England. Wycliffe was summoned before William
Courtenay, Bishop of London, on 19 February
1377, in order
"to explain the wonderful things which had streamed forth from his
mouth".
ii)
The exact charges are not known, as the
matter did not get as far as a definite examination. Gaunt, the earl marshal Henry Percy, and a number
of other friends accompanied Wycliffe, and four begging friars were his
advocates.
iii)
A crowd gathered at the church, and at
the entrance of the party animosities began to show, especially in an angry
exchange between the bishop and the Reformer's protectors.
iv)
Gaunt declared that he would humble the
pride of the English clergy and their partisans, hinting at the intent to
secularise the possessions of the Church.
v)
The assembly broke up and the lords
departed with their protege. (An excellent account of this dispute between the
bishop and the protectors of Wycliffe is given in the Chronicon Angliae,
the gist of which is quoted in DNB, lxiii. 206-207.)
c)
Most of the English clergy were
irritated by this encounter, and attacks upon Wycliffe began, finding their
response in the second and third books of his work dealing with civil
government.
i)
These books carry a sharp polemic,
hardly surprising when it is recalled that his opponents charged Wycliffe with
blasphemy and scandal, pride and heresy.
ii)
He appeared to have openly advised the
secularisation of English church property, and the dominant parties shared his
conviction that the monks could better be controlled if they were relieved from
the care of secular affairs.
d)
The bitterness occasioned by this
advice will be better understood when it is remembered that at that time the
papacy was at war with the Florentines and was in dire straits.
i)
The demand of the Minorites that
the Church should live in poverty as it did in the days of the apostles was not
pleasing in such a crisis.
ii)
It was under these conditions that Pope
Gregory XI, who in January, 1377, had gone from Avignon to Rome, sent, on May 22 five
copies of his bull against Wycliffe, despatching one to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others
to the bishop of London, Edward III, the chancellor, and the
university; among the enclosures were 18 theses of his, which were denounced as
erroneous and dangerous to Church and State.
e)
The reformatory activities of Wycliffe
effectively began here: all the great works, especially his Summa
theologiae, are closely connected with the condemnation of his 18 theses,
while the entire literary energies of his later years rest upon this
foundation.
i)
The next aim of his opponents – to make
him out a revolutionary in politics – failed.
ii)
The situation in England resulted in
damage to them; on June 21, 1377, Edward III died. His successor was Richard II, a boy, who was under the
influence of John of Gaunt, his uncle.
iii)
So it resulted that the bull against
Wycliffe did not become public till 18 December.
Parliament, which met in October, came into sharp conflict with the Curia.
iv)
Among the propositions which Wycliffe,
at the direction of the government, worked out for parliament was one which
speaks out distinctly against the exhaustion of England by the Curia.
f)
Wycliffe tried to gain public favour by
laying his theses before parliament, and then made them public in a tract,
accompanied by explanations, limitations, and interpretations.
i)
After the session of parliament was
over, he was called upon to answer, and in March, 1378, he appeared at
the episcopal palace at Lambeth to defend himself.
ii)
The preliminaries were not yet finished
when a noisy mob gathered with the purpose of saving him; the king's mother, Joan of Kent,
also took up his cause.
iii)
The bishops, who were divided,
satisfied themselves with forbidding him to speak further on the controversy.
iv)
At Oxford the vice chancellor,
following papal directions, confined the Reformer for some time in Black Hall,
from which Wycliffe was released on threats from his friends; the
vice-chancellor was himself confined in the same place because of his treatment
of Wycliffe.
v)
The latter then took up the usage
according to which one who remained for 44 days under excommunication
came under the penalties executed by the State, and wrote his De
incarcerandis fedelibus, in which he demanded that it should be legal for
the excommunicated to appeal to the king and his council against the
excommunication; in this writing he laid open the entire case and in such a way
that it was understood by the laity.
vi)
He wrote his 33 conclusions, in Latin
and English. The masses, some of the nobility, and his former protector, John
of Gaunt, rallied to him.
vii)
Before any further steps could be taken
at Rome, Gregory XI died (1378). But Wycliffe was already engaged in one of his
most important works, that dealing with what he perceived as the truth of Holy
Scripture.
g)
The sharper the strife became, the more
Wycliffe had recourse to his translation of Scripture as the basis of all
Christian doctrinal opinion, and expressly tried to prove this to be the only
norm for Christian faith.
i)
In order to refute his opponents, he
wrote the book in which he endeavored to show that Holy Scripture contains all
truth and, being from God, is the only authority.
ii)
He referred to the conditions under
which the condemnation of his 18 theses was brought about; and the same may be
said of his books dealing with the Church, the office of king, and the power of
the pope – all completed within the space of two years (1378-79).
iii)
To Wycliffe, the Church is the totality
of those who are predestined to blessedness.
iv)
It includes the Church triumphant in
heaven, those in purgatory, and the Church militant or men on earth.
v)
No one who is eternally lost has part
in it. There is one universal Church, and outside of it there is no salvation.
Its head is Christ.
vi)
No pope may say that he is the head,
for he can not say that he is elect or even a member of the Church.
7)
[edit] Statement
regarding royal power
a)
It would be a mistake to assume that
Wycliffe's doctrine of the Church – which made so great an impression upon Jan Hus, who
adopted it literally and fully – was occasioned by the western
schism (1378–1429).
i)
The principles of the doctrine were
already embodied in his De civili dominio. The contents of the book
dealing with the Church are closely connected with the decision respecting the 18
theses.
ii)
The attacks on Pope
Gregory XI grow ever more extreme. Wycliffe's stand with respect to the
ideal of poverty became continually firmer, as well as his position with regard
to the temporal rule of the clergy. Closely related to this attitude was his
book De officio regis, the content of which was foreshadowed in his 33
conclusions:
iii)
One should be instructed with reference
to the obligations which lie in regard to the kingdom in order to see how the
two powers, royal and ecclesiastical, may support each other in harmony in the
body corporate of the Church. The royal power, Wycliffe taught, is consecrated
through the testimony of Holy Scripture and the Fathers.
iv)
Christ and the apostles rendered
tribute to the emperor. It is a sin to oppose the power of the king, which is
derived immediately from God. Subjects, above all the clergy, should pay him
dutiful tribute.
v)
The honors which attach to temporal
power hark back to the king; those which belong to precedence in the priestly
office, to the priest.
vi)
The king must apply his power with
wisdom, his laws are to be in unison with those of God. From God laws derive
their authority, including those which royalty has over against the clergy.
vii)
If one of the clergy neglects his
office, he is a traitor to the king who calls him to answer for it. It follows
from this that the king has an "evangelical" control. Those in the
service of the Church must have regard for the laws of the State. In
confirmation of this fundamental principle the archbishops in England make
sworn submission to the king and receive their temporalities.
viii) The
king is to protect his vassals against damage to their possessions; in case the
clergy through their misuse of the temporalities cause injury, the king must
offer protection.
ix)
When the king turns over temporalities
to the clergy, he places them under his jurisdiction, from which later
pronouncements of the popes can not release them.
x)
If the clergy relies on papal pronouncements,
it must be subjected to obedience to the king.
b)
This book, like those that preceded and
followed, had to do with the reform of the Church, in which the temporal arm
was to have an influential part.
i)
Especially interesting is the teaching
which Wycliffe addressed to the king on the protection of his theologians.
ii)
This did not mean theology in its
modern sense, but knowledge of the Bible.
iii)
Since the law must be in agreement with
Scripture, knowledge of theology is necessary to the strengthening of the
kingdom; therefore the king has theologians in his entourage to stand at his
side as he exercises power. It is their duty to explain Scripture according to
the rule of reason and in conformity with the witness of the saints; also to
proclaim the law of the king and to protect his welfare and that of his
kingdom.
8)
[edit] Wycliffe and the papacy
a)
The books and tracts of Wycliffe's last
six years include continual attacks upon the papacy and the entire hierarchy of
his times.
i)
Each year they focus more and more, and
at the last, the pope and the Antichrist seem to him practically equivalent concepts.
ii)
Yet there are passages which are
moderate in tone; G. V. Lechler identifies three stages in Wycliffe's
relations with the papacy. The first step, which carried him to the outbreak of
the schism, involves moderate recognition of the papal primacy; the second,
which carried him to 1381, is marked by an estrangement from the papacy; and
the third shows him in sharp contest.
iii)
However, Wycliffe reached no valuation
of the papacy before the outbreak of the schism different from his later
appraisal. If in his last years he identified the papacy with antichristianity,
the dispensability of this papacy was strong in his mind before the schism.
iv)
It was this very man who laboured to
bring about the recognition of Urban VI. (1378–1389), which appears to
contradict his former attitude and to demand an explanation.
b)
Wycliffe's influence was never greater
than at the moment when pope and antipope sent their ambassadors to England in
order to gain recognition for themselves.
i)
In the ambassadors' presence, he
delivered an opinion before parliament that showed, in an important
ecclesiastical political question (the matter of the right of asylum in Westminster
Abbey), a position that was to the liking of the State.
ii)
How Wycliffe came to be active in the
interest of Urban is seen in passages in his latest writings, in which he expressed
himself in regard to the papacy in a favorable sense.
iii)
On the other hand he states that it is
not necessary to go either to Rome or to Avignon in order to seek a decision
from the pope, since the triune God is everywhere.
iv)
Our pope is Christ. It seems clear that
Wycliffe was an opponent of that papacy which had developed since Constantine.
He taught that the Church can continue to exist even though it have no visible
leader; but there can be no damage when the Church possesses a leader of the
right kind. To distinguish between what the pope should be, if one is
necessary, and the pope as he appeared in Wycliffe's day was the purpose of his
book on the power of the pope.
v)
The Church militant, Wycliffe taught,
needs a head – but one whom God gives the Church. The elector [cardinal] can
only make someone a pope if the choice relates to one who is elect [of God].
vi)
But that is not always the case. It may
be that the elector is himself not predestined and chooses one who is in the
same case – a veritable Antichrist.
vii)
One must regard as a true pope one who
in teaching and life most nearly follows Jesus and Saint Peter.
c)
Wycliffe distinguished between what he
saw as the true papacy from the false papacy.
i)
Since all signs indicated that Urban VI
was a reforming and consequently a "true" pope, the enthusiasm which
Wycliffe manifested for him is easily understood.
ii)
These views concerning the Church and
church government are those which are brought forward in the last books of his Summa,
"De simonia, de apostasia, de blasphemia".
iii)
The battle which over the theses was
less significant than the one he waged against the monastic orders when he saw
the hopes quenched which had gathered around the "reform pope", and
when he was withdrawn from the scene as an ecclesiastical politician and
occupied himself exclusively with the question of the reform of the Church.
9)
[edit] Attack on monasticism
a)
His teachings concerning the danger
attaching to the secularizing of the Church put Wycliffe into line with the
mendicant orders, since in 1377 Minorites were his defenders.
i)
In the last chapters of his De
civili dominio, there are traces of a rift. When he stated that "the
case of the orders which hold property is that of them all", the mendicant
orders turned against him; and from that time Wycliffe began a struggle which
continued till his death.
b)
This battle against what he saw as an
imperialised papacy and its supporters, the "sects," as he called the
monastic orders, takes up a large space not only in his later works as the Trialogus,
Dialogus, Opus evangelicum, and in his sermons, but also in a
series of sharp tracts and polemical productions in Latin and English (of which
those issued in his later years have been collected as "Polemical
Writings").
i)
In these he teaches that the Church
needs no new sects; sufficient for it now is the religion of Christ which
sufficed in the first three centuries of its existence.
ii)
The monastic orders are bodies which
are not supported by the Bible, and must be abolished together with their
possessions.
iii)
Such teaching, particularly in sermons,
had one immediate effect – a serious rising of the people.
iv)
The monks were deprived of alms and
were bidden to apply themselves to manual labour.
v)
These teachings had more important
results upon the orders and their possessions in Bohemia, where the
instructions of the "Evangelical master" were followed to the letter
in such a way that the noble foundations and practically the whole of the
property of the Church were sacrificed.
vi)
But the result was not as Wycliffe
wanted it in England – the property fell not to the State but to the barons of
the land.
vii)
The scope of the conflict in England
widened; it no longer involved the mendicant monks alone, but took in the
entire hierarchy. An element of the contest appears in Wycliffe's doctrine of
the Lord's Supper.
10)
[edit] Relation to the
English Bible
a)
Wycliffe believed that the Bible ought
to be the common possession of all Christians, and needed to be made available
for common use in the language of the people. National honour seemed to require
this, since members of the nobility possessed the Bible in French.
i)
Portions of the Bible had been
translated into English, but there was no complete translation. Wycliffe set
himself to the task.
ii)
While it is not possible exactly to
define his part in the translation – which was based on the Vulgate – there
is no doubt that it was his initiative, and that the success of the project was
due to his leadership. From him comes the translation of the New
Testament, which was smoother, clearer, and more readable than the
rendering of the Old Testament by his friend Nicholas of Hereford.
iii)
The whole was revised by Wycliffe's
younger contemporary John Purvey in 1388.
iv)
Thus the mass of the people came into
possession of the Bible (thanks to early innovations in printing and more
traditional bookmaking workshops); but the cry of his opponents may be heard:
v)
"The jewel of the clergy has
become the toy of the laity".
b)
In spite of the zeal with which the
hierarchy sought to destroy it due to what they saw as mistranslations and
erroneous commentary, there still exist about 150 manuscripts, complete or
partial, containing the translation in its revised form.
i)
From this, one may easily infer how
widely diffused it was in the fifteenth century.
ii)
For this reason the Wycliffites in
England were often designated by their opponents as "Bible men".
iii)
Just as Luther's version had great
influence upon the German language, so Wycliffe's, by reason of its
clarity, beauty, and strength, influenced English,
as the King James Version was later to do.
c)
Wycliffe's Bible, as it came to be known,
i)
was widely distributed throughout
England.
ii)
The Church denounced it as an
unauthorised translation.
11)
[edit] Activity as a preacher
a)
Wycliffe aimed to do away with the existing
hierarchy and replace it with the "poor priests" who lived in
poverty, were bound by no vows, had received no formal consecration, and
preached the Gospel to the people.
i)
These itinerant preachers spread the
teachings of Wycliffe.
ii)
Two by two they went, barefoot, wearing
long dark-red robes and carrying a staff in the hand, the latter having
symbolic reference to their pastoral calling, and passed from place to place
preaching the sovereignty of God.
iii)
The bull of Gregory XI
impressed upon them the name of Lollards, intended as an opprobrious epithet, but it became,
to them, a name of honour.
iv)
Even in Wycliffe's time the "Lollards"
had reached wide circles in England and preached "God's law, without which
no one could be justified".
12)
[edit] Anti-Wycliffe synod
a)
In the summer of 1381 Wycliffe
formulated his doctrine of the Lord's Supper in twelve short sentences, and
made it a duty to advocate it everywhere.
i)
Then the English hierarchy proceeded
against him.
ii)
The chancellor of the University of
Oxford had some of the declarations pronounced heretical. When this fact was
announced to Wycliffe, he declared that no one could change his convictions.
iii)
He then appealed – not to the pope nor
to the ecclesiastical authorities of the land, but to the king. He published
his great confession upon the subject and also a second writing in English
intended for the common people. His pronouncements were no longer limited to
the classroom, they spread to the masses. "Every second man that you
meet," writes a contemporary, "is a Lollard". In the midst of
this commotion came the Peasants'
Revolt of 1381.
iv)
Although Wycliffe disapproved of the
revolt, he was blamed. Yet his friend and protector John of Gaunt was the most
hated by the rebels, and where Wycliffe's influence was greatest the uprising
found the least support. While in general the aim of the revolt was against the
spiritual nobility, this came about because they were nobles, not because they
were churchmen. Wycliffe's old enemy, Courtenay, now Archbishop of Canterbury,
called (1382) an ecclesiastical assembly of notables at London.
v)
During the consultations an earthquake
occurred (21 May);
the participants were terrified and wished to break up the assembly, but
Courtenay declared the earthquake a favorable sign which meant the purification
of the earth from erroneous doctrine.
vi)
Of the 24 propositions attributed to
Wycliffe without mentioning his name, ten were declared heretical and fourteen
erroneous.
vii)
The former had reference to the transformation
in the sacrament, the latter to matters of church order and institutions. It
was forbidden from that time to hold these opinions or to advance them in
sermons or in academic discussions.
viii) All
persons disregarding this order were to be subject to prosecution. To
accomplish this the help of the State was necessary; but the commons rejected
the bill.
ix)
The king, however, had a decree issued
which permitted the arrest of those in error.
x)
The citadel of the reformatory movement
was Oxford, where Wycliffe's most active helpers were; these were laid under
the ban and summoned to recant, and Nicholas of Hereford went to Rome to
appeal. In similar fashion the poor priests were hindered in their work.
b)
On 18 November
1382, Wycliffe was
summoned before a synod at Oxford; he appeared, though apparently broken in
body in consequence of a stroke, but nevertheless determined.
i)
He still commanded the favour of the
court and of parliament, to which he addressed a memorial.
ii)
He was neither excommunicated then, nor
deprived of his living.
13)
[edit] Last days
a)
He returned to Lutterworth,
and sent out tracts against the monks and Urban VI, since the latter, contrary
to the hopes of Wycliffe, had not turned out to be a reforming or
"true" pope, but had involved in mischievous conflicts.
i)
The crusade in Flanders
aroused the Reformer's biting scorn, while his sermons became fuller-voiced and
dealt with what he saw as the imperfections of the Church.
ii)
The literary achievements of Wycliffe's
last days, such as the Trialogus, stand at the peak of the knowledge of
his day.
iii)
His last work, the Opus evangelicum,
the last part of which he named in characteristic fashion "Of
Antichrist", remained uncompleted.
iv)
While he was hearing mass in the parish
church on Holy Innocents' Day, 28 December
1384, he was again
stricken with apoplexy
and died on the last day of the year.
v)
Shortly after his death, the great Hussite movement
arose and spread through Western Europe.
b)
c)
Burning Wycliffe's bones, from John
Foxe's book (1563)
d)
The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe (on 4 May 1415) a stiff-necked
heretic and under the ban of the Church.
i)
It was decreed that his books be burned
and his remains be exhumed.
ii)
The latter did not happen till twelve
years afterward, when at the command of Pope
Martin V they were dug up, burned,
iii)
and the ashes cast into the river Swift that flows through Lutterworth.
e)
None of Wycliffe's contemporaries left
a complete picture of his person, his life, and his activities.
i)
The pictures representing him are from
a later period. One must be content with certain scattered expressions found in
the history of the trial by William
Thorpe (1407).
ii)
It appears that Wycliffe was spare of
body, indeed of wasted appearance, and not strong physically.
iii)
He was of unblemished walk in life,
says Thorpe, and was regarded affectionately by people of rank, who often
consorted with him, took down his sayings, and clung to him. "I indeed
clove to none closer than to him, the wisest and most blessed of all men whom I
have ever found.
iv)
From him one could learn in truth what
the Church of Christ is and how it should be ruled and led."
v)
Huss wished that his soul might be
wherever that of Wycliffe was found.
f)
One may not say that Wycliffe was a
comfortable opponent to meet.
i)
Thomas Netter of Walden highly esteemed
the old Carmelite monk John Kynyngham in that he "so bravely offered
himself to the biting speech of the heretic and to
words that stung as being without the religion of Christ".
ii)
But this example of Netter is not well
chosen, since the tone of Wycliffe toward Kynyngham is that of a junior toward
an elder whom one respects, and he handled other opponents in similar fashion.
iii)
But when he turned upon them his
roughest side, as for example in his sermons, polemical writings and tracts, he
met the attacks with a tone that could not be styled friendly.
14)
[edit] Wycliffe's doctrines
a)
Wycliffe's first encounter with the
official Church of his time was prompted by his zeal in the interests of the
State.
i)
His first tracts and greater works of
ecclesiastical-political content defended the privileges of the State, and from
these sources developed a strife out of which the next phases could hardly be
determined.
ii)
One who studies these books in the
order of their production with reference to their inner content finds a direct
development with a strong reformatory tendency.
iii)
This was not originally doctrinal; when
it later took up matters of dogma, as in the teaching concerning transubstantiation, the purpose was the return to
original simplicity in the government of the Church.
iv)
But it would have been against the
diplomatic practice of the time to have sent to the peace congress at Bruges,
in which the Curia had an essential part, a participant who had become known at
home by his allegedly heretical teaching.
b)
Since it was from dealing with
ecclesiastical-political questions that Wycliffe turned to reformatory
activities, the former have a large part in his reformatory writings.
i)
While he took his start in affairs of
church policy from the English legislation which was passed in the times of
Edward I, he declined the connection into which his contemporaries brought it
under the lead of Occam. Indeed, he distinctly disavows taking his conclusions
from Occam, and avers that he draws them from Scripture, and that they were
supported by the Doctors of the Church.
ii)
So that dependence upon earlier
schismatic parties in the Church, which he never mentions in his writings (as
though he had never derived anything from them), is counterindicated, and
attention is directed to the true sources in Scripture, to which he added the
collections of canons of the Church.
iii)
Wycliffe would have had nothing to gain
by professing indebtedness to "heretical" parties or to opponents of
the papacy.
iv)
His reference to Scripture and orthodox
Fathers as authorities is what might have been expected. So far as his polemics
accord with those of earlier antagonists of the papacy, it is fair to assume
that he was not ignorant of them and was influenced by them. The Bible alone
was authoritative and, according to his own conviction and that of his
disciples, was fully sufficient for the government of this world (De sufficientia
legis Christi).
v)
Out of it he drew his comprehensive
statements in support of his reformatory views – after intense study and many
spiritual conflicts.
(1)
He tells that as a beginner he was
desperate to comprehend the passages dealing with the activities of the divine
Word, until by the grace of God he was able to gather the right sense of
Scripture, which he then understood.
(2)
But that was not a light task. Without
knowledge of the Bible there can be no peace in the life of the Church or of
society, and outside of it there is no real and abiding good; it is the one
authority for the faith.
(3)
These teachings Wycliffe promulgated in
his great work on the truth of Scripture, and in other greater and lesser
writings.
(4)
For him the Bible was the fundamental source
of Christianity which is binding on all men. Wycliffe was called "Doctor
evangelicus" by his English and Bohemian followers.
(5)
Of all the reformers who preceded
Martin Luther, Wycliffe put most emphasis on Scripture: "Even though there
were a hundred popes and though every mendicant monk were a cardinal, they
would be entitled to confidence only in so far as they accorded with the
Bible."
(6)
Therefore in this early period it was
Wycliffe who recognized and formulated one of the two great formal principles of
the Reformation-- the unique authority of the Bible for the belief and life of
the Christian.
c)
It is not enough realised that, well
before Luther, Wycliffe also recognised the other great Reformation doctrine,
that of justification by faith, though not in fully worked out form as Luther
achieved. In Christ stilling the Storm he wrote: "If a man believe
in Christ, and make a point of his belief, then the promise that God hath made
to come into the land of light shall be given by virtue of Christ, to all men
that make this the chief matter."
15)
[edit] Basal positions
in philosophy
a)
Wycliffe earned his great repute as a philosopher
at an early date.
i)
Henry
Knighton says that in philosophy he was second to none, and in scholastic
discipline incomparable.
ii)
If this pronouncement seems hardly
justified, now that Wycliffe's writings are in print, it must be borne in mind
that not all his philosophical works are extant. If Wycliffe was in philosophy
the superior of his contemporaries and had no equal in scholastic discipline,
he belongs with the series of great scholastic philosophers and theologians in
which England in the Middle Ages was so rich – with Alexander of Hales, Roger Bacon,
Duns
Scotus, Occam and Bradwardine.
iii)
There was a period in his life when he
devoted himself exclusively to scholastic philosophy: "when I was still a
logician," he used later to say.
iv)
The first "heresy" which
"he cast forth into the world" rests as much upon philosophical as
upon theological grounds.
b)
In Plato, knowledge of
whom came to Wycliffe through Saint Augustine, he saw traces of a knowledge of
the Trinity,
and he championed the doctrine of ideas as against Aristotle.
i)
He said that Democritus,
Plato, Augustine, and Grosseteste far outranked Aristotle.
ii)
In Aristotle he missed the provision
for the immortality of
the soul, and in his ethics the tendency toward the eternal.
iii)
He was a close follower of Augustine,
so much so that he was called "John of Augustine" by his pupils. In
some of his teachings, as in De annihilatione, the influence of Thomas
Aquinas can be detected.
iv)
So far as his relations to the philosophers of the Middle Ages are concerned,
he held to realism
as opposed to the nominalism advanced by Occam, although in
questions that had to do with ecclesiastical politics he was related to Occam
and indeed went beyond him.
v)
His views are based upon the conviction
of the reality of the universal, and he employed realism in order to avoid
dogmatic difficulties.
c)
The uni-divine existence in the Trinity is the
real universal of the three Persons, and in the Eucharist the
ever-real presence of Christ justifies the deliverance that complete reality is
compatible with the spatial division of the existence.
i)
The center of Wycliffe's philosophical
system is formed by the doctrine of the prior existence in the thought of God
of all things and events.
ii)
This involves the definiteness of
things and especially their number, so that neither their infinity, infinite
extension, nor infinite divisibility can be assumed.
iii)
Space consists of a number of points of
space determined from eternity, and time of exactly such a number of moments,
and the number of these is known only to the divine spirit.
iv)
Geometrical figures
consist of arranged series of points, and enlargement or diminution of these
figures rests upon the addition or subtraction of points. Because the existence
of these points of space as such, that is, as truly indivisible unities, has
its basis in the fact that the points are one with the bodies that fill them;
because, therefore, all possible space is coincident with the physical world
(as in Wycliffe's system, in general, reality and possibility correspond),
there can as little be a vacuum as bounding surfaces that are common to
different bodies.
v)
The assumption of such surfaces
impinges, according to Wycliffe, upon the contradictory principle as does the
conception of a truly continuous transition of one condition into another.
d)
Wycliffe's doctrine of atoms
i)
connects itself, therefore, with the
doctrine of the composition of time from real moments, but is distinguished by
the denial of interspaces as assumed in other systems.
ii)
From the identity of space and the
physical world, and the circular motion of the heavens, Wycliffe deduces the spherical form of
the universe.
16)
[edit] Attitude toward
speculation
a)
Wycliffe's fundamental principle of the
preexistence in thought of all reality involves the most serious obstacle to
freedom of the will; the philosopher could assist himself only by the formula
that the free
will of man was something predetermined of God.
i)
He demanded strict dialectical training
as the means of distinguishing the true from the false, and asserted that logic
(or the syllogism) furthered the knowledge of catholic verities; ignorance of
logic was the reason why men misunderstood Scripture, since men overlooked the
connection – the distinction between idea and appearance.
ii)
Wycliffe was not merely conscious of
the distinction between theology and philosophy, but his sense of reality led
him to pass by scholastic questions.
iii)
He left aside philosophical discussions
which seemed to have no significance for the religious consciousness and those
which pertained purely to scholasticism: "we concern ourselves with the
verities that are, and leave aside the errors which arise from speculation on
matters which are not."
The
History of the English Bible Text adapted from
Greatsite.com
(see
also….Tyndale http://www.williamtyndale.com/0welcomewilliamtyndale.htm
vWe
want to remember from today (only)
ØWhat
one main thing John Wycliff did and when
ØWhat
one main thing William Tyndale did and when
ØWhy
the Catholics fought so hard against the English Bible and when did they
give up
ØWho
was the main author of the KJV
ØName
several people killed bringing us an English Bible
ØName
etc
vSome
weird things we might find interesting
ØThere
was a “HE” and “SHE” version of KJV .
ØCatholics
kept the Apocrypha, but Protestants did not.
ØVerses
were first used in the Geneva Bible in 1557
ØJesus
spoke in Aramaic, the OT he read was in Hebrew, the NT was first in Greek,
and the English speaking Catholics used a Latin interpretation of a Greek
interpretation of the Hebrew old Testament
ØThe
first bible printed in the new America was in an Indian dialect.
ØThe
first English Bible printed in the Americas was the
ØThe
Bible brought to Americas by Pilgrims was the
ØThere
were x # of Bibles printed in the world in
1450
Gutenburg invented printing press
1516
Erasmus 1516 printed Greek/Latin New Testament
1517
Martin Luther nailed 95 thesis of Contention to Wittenberg Door
1522
Martin Luther German translation
1525/6
William Tyndale printed first English New Testament
1536
William Tyndale died
1536
10/4/35 first complete English Bible printed, the Cloverdale Bible
1537
John Rogers printed second complete English Bible in 1537
1539
Great Bible
1557
Geneva Bible – New Testament
1560
Geneva Bible – complete (added verses and marginal notes)
1568
Bishops Bible (because marginal notes offensive to Anglican Church
1580
Rhemes Bible ok by Catholic Church finally
1611
King James Versions
1)Wycliff
(or Wycliffe), an Oxford theologian translated out of the fourth century
Latin Vulgate, as the Greek and Hebrew languages of the Old and New Testaments
were inaccessible to him.
2)Curiously,
he was also the inventor of bifocal eyeglasses.
3)Wycliff
spent many of his years writing and teaching against the practices and
dogmas of the Roman Church which he believed to be contrary to the Holy
Writ.
4)Though
he died a nonviolent death, the Pope was so infuriated by his teachings
that 44 years after Wycliff had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up,
crushed, and scattered in the river!
5)Gutenburg
invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be
printed was the Bible (in Latin).
B)With
the onset of the Reformation in the early 1500's,
1)the
first printings of the Bible in the English language were produced illegally
2)and
at great personal risk of those involved.
C)William
Tyndale-1536.
1)was
the Captain of the Army of English reformers, and in many ways their spiritual
leader.
2)His
work of translating the Greek New Testament into the plain English of the
ploughman was made possible through Erasmus' publication of his Greek/Latin
New Testament printed in 1516.
3)Erasmus
and the printer and reformer John Froben published the first non-Latin
Vulgate text of the Bible in a millennium.
D)For
centuries Latin was the language of scholarship and it was widely used
amongst the literate.
E)Erasmus’
Latin was not the Vulgate translation of Jerome,
1)but
his own fresh rendering of the Greek New Testament text that he had collated
from six or seven partial New Testament manuscripts into a complete Greek
New Testament.
2)Erasmus'
translation from the Greek
a)revealed
enormous discrepancies in the Vulgate's integrity amongst the rank and
file scholars, many of
b)whom
were already convinced that the established church was doomed by virtue
of its evil hierarchy.
3)Pope
Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was very profitable to him”
infuriated the people of God.
4)With
Erasmus' 1516 translation, the die was cast.
F)Martin
Luther
1)In
1517 nailed his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Door.
2)would
be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 that
was designed to martyr him,
3)would
translate the New Testament into German from Erasmus' Greek/Latin New Testament
and publish it in September of 1522.
G)William
Tyndale Narrative
1)We
have now to enter into the story of the good martyr of God, William Tyndale;
which William Tyndale, as he was a special organ of the Lord appointed,
and as God's mattock to shake the inward roots and foundation of the pope's
proud prelacy, so the great prince of darkness, with his impious imps,
having a special malice against him, left no way unsought how craftily
to entrap him, and falsely to betray him, and maliciously to spill his
life, as by the process of his story here following may appear.
2)William
Tyndale, the faithful minister of Christ, was born about the borders of
Wales, and brought up from a child in the University of Oxford, where he,
by long continuance, increased as well in the knowledge of tongues, and
other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto
his mind was singularly addicted; insomuch that he, lying then in Magdalen
Hall, read privily to certain students and fellows of Magdalen College
some parcel of divinity; instructing them in the knowledge and truth of
the Scriptures. His manners and conversation being correspondent to the
same, were such that all they that knew him reputed him to be a man of
most virtuous disposition, and of life unspotted.
3)Thus
he, in the University of Oxford, increasing more and more in learning,
and proceeding in degrees of the schools, spying his time, removed from
thence to the University of Cambridge, where he likewise made his abode
a certain space. Being now further ripened in the knowledge of God's Word,
leaving that university, he resorted to one Master Welch, a knight of Gloucestershire,
and was there schoolmaster to his children, and in good favor with his
master. As this gentleman kept a good ordinary commonly at his table, there
resorted to him many times sundry abbots, deans, archdeacons, with divers
other doctors, and great beneficed men; who there, together with Master
Tyndale sitting at the same table, did use many times to enter communication,
and talk of learned men, as of Luther and of Erasmus; also of divers other
controversies and questions upon the Scripture.
4)Then
Master Tyndale, as he was learned and well practiced in God's matters,
spared not to show unto them simply and plainly his judgment, and when
they at any time did vary from Tyndale in opinions, he would show them
in the Book, and lay plainly before them the open and manifest places of
the Scriptures, to confute their errors, and confirm his sayings. And thus
continued they for a certain season, reasoning and contending together
divers times, until at length they waxed weary, and bare a secret grudge
in their hearts against him.
5)As
this grew on, the priests of the country, clustering together, began to
grudge and storm against Tyndale, railing against him in alehouses and
other places, affirming that his sayings were heresy; and accused him secretly
to the chancellor, and others of the bishop's officers.
6)It
followed not long after this that there was a sitting of the bishop's chancellor
appointed, and warning was given to the priests to appear, amongst whom
Master Tyndale was also warned to be there. And whether he had any misdoubt
by their threatenings, or knowledge given him that they would lay some
things to his charge, it is uncertain; but certain this is (as he himself
declared), that he doubted their privy accusations; so that he by the way,
in going thitherwards, cried in his mind heartily to God, to give him strength
fast to stand in the truth of His Word.
7)When
the time came for his appearance before the chancellor, he threatened him
grievously, reviling and rating him as though he had been a dog, and laid
to his charge many things whereof no accuser could be brought forth, notwithstanding
that the priests of the country were there present. Thus Master Tyndale,
escaping out of their hands, departed home, and returned to his master
again.
8)There
dwelt not far off a certain doctor, that he been chancellor to a bishop,
who had been of old, familiar acquaintance with Master Tyndale, and favored
him well; unto whom Master Tyndale went and opened his mind upon divers
questions of the Scripture: for to him he durst be bold to disclose his
heart. Unto whom the doctor said, "Do you not know that the pope is very
Antichrist, whom the Scripture speaketh of? But beware what you say; for
if you shall be perceived to be of that opinion, it will cost you your
life."
9)Not
long after, Master Tyndale happened to be in the company of a certain divine,
recounted for a learned man, and, in communing and disputing with him,
he drove him to that issue, that the said great doctor burst out into these
blasphemous words, "We were better to be without God's laws than the pope's."
Master Tyndale, hearing this, full of godly zeal, and not bearing that
blasphemous saying, replied, "I defy the pope, and all his laws;" and added,
"If God spared him life, ere many years he would cause a boy that driveth
the plough to know more of the Scripture than he did."
10)The
grudge of the priests increasing still more and more against Tyndale, they
never ceased barking and rating at him, and laid many things sorely to
his charge, saying that he was a heretic. Being so molested and vexed,
he was constrained to leave that country, and to seek another place; and
so coming to Master Welch, he desired him, of his good will, that he might
depart from him, saying: "Sir, I perceive that I shall not be suffered
to tarry long here in this country, neither shall you be able, though you
would, to keep me out of the hands of the spirituality; what displeasure
might grow to you by keeping me, God knoweth; for the which I should be
right sorry."
11)So
that in fine, Master Tyndale, with the good will of his master, departed,
and eftsoons came up to London, and there preached a while, as he had done
in the country.
12)Bethinking
himself of Cuthbert Tonstal, then bishop of London, and especially of the
great commendation of Erasmus, who, in his annotations, so extolleth the
said Tonstal for his learning, Tyndale thus cast with himself, that if
he might attain unto his service, he were a happy man. Coming to Sir Henry
Guilford, the king's comptroller, and bringing with him an oration of Isocrates,
which he had translated out of Greek into English, he desired him to speak
to the said bishop of London for him; which he also did; and willed him
moreover to write an epistle to the bishop, and to go himself with him.
This he did, and delivered his epistle to a servant of his, named William
Hebilthwait, a man of his old acquaintance. But God, who secretly disposeth
the course of things, saw that was not best for Tyndale's purpose, nor
for the profit of His Church, and therefore gave him to find little favor
in the bishop's sight; the answer of whom was this: his house was full;
he had more than he could well find: and he advised him to seek in London
abroad, where, he said, he could lack no service.
13)Being
refused of the bishop he came to Humphrey Mummuth, alderman of London,
and besought him to help him: who the same time took him into his house,
where the said Tyndale lived (as Mummuth said) like a good priest, studying
both night and day. He would eat but sodden meat by his good will, nor
drink but small single beer. He was never seen in the house to wear linen
about him, all the space of his being there.
14)And
so remained Master Tyndale in London almost a year, marking with himself
the course of the world, and especially the demeanor of the preachers,
how they boasted themselves, and set up their authority; beholding also
the pomp of the prelates, with other things more, which greatly misliked
him; insomuch that he understood not only that there was no room in the
bishop's house for him to translate the New Testament, but also that there
was no place to do it in all England.
15)Therefore,
having by God's providence some aid ministered unto him by Humphrey Mummuth,
and certain other good men, he took his leave of the realm, and departed
into Germany, where the good man, being inflamed with a tender care and
zeal of his country, refused no travail nor diligence, how, by all means
possible, to reduce his brethren and countrymen of England to the same
taste and understanding of God's holy Word and verity, which the Lord had
endued him withal. Whereupon, considering in his mind, and conferring also
with John Frith, Tyndale thought with himself no way more to conduce thereunto,
than if the Scripture were turned into the vulgar speech, that the poor
people might read and see the simple plain Word of God. He perceived that
it was not possible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the
Scriptures were so plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue
that they might see the meaning of the text; for else, whatsoever truth
should be taught them, the enemies of the truth would quench it, either
with reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making, founded
without all ground of Scripture; or else juggling with the text, expounding
it in such a sense as it were impossible to gather of the text, if the
right meaning thereof were seen.
16)Master
Tyndale considered this only, or most chiefly, to be the cause of all mischief
in the Church, that the Scriptures of God were hidden from the people's
eyes; for so long the abominable doings and idolatries maintained by the
pharisaical clergy could not be espied; and therefore all their labor was
with might and main to keep it down, so that either it should not be read
at all, or if it were, they would darken the right sense with the mist
of their sophistry, and so entangle those who reguked or despised their
abominations; wresting the Scripture unto their own purpose, contrary unto
the meaning of the text, they would so delude the unlearned lay people,
that though thou felt in thy heart, and wert sure that all were false that
they said, yet couldst thou not solve their subtle riddles.
17)For
these and such other considerations this good man was stirred up of God
to translate the Scripture into his mother tongue, for the profit of the
simple people of his country; first setting in hand with the New Testament,
which came forth in print about A.D. 1525. Cuthbert Tonstal, bishop of
London, with Sir Thomas More, being sore aggrieved, despised how to destroy
that false erroneous translation, as they called it.
18)It
happened that one Augustine Packington, a mercer, was then at Antwerp,
where the bishop was. This man favored Tyndale, but showed the contrary
unto the bishop. The bishop, being desirous to bring his purpose to pass,
communed how that he would gladly buy the New Testaments. Packington hearing
him say so, said, "My lord! I can do more in this matter than most merchants
that be here, if it be your pleasure; for I know the Dutchmen and strangers
that have brought them of Tyndale, and have them here to sell; so that
if it be your lordship's pleasure, I must disburse money to pay for them,
or else I cannot have them: and so I will assure you to have every book
of them that is printed and unsold." The bishop, thinking he had God "by
the toe," said, "Do your diligence, gentle Master Packington! get them
for me, and I will pay whatsoever they cost; for I intend to burn and destroy
them all at Paul's Cross." This Augustine Packington went unto William
Tyndale, and declared the whole matter, and so, upon compact made between
them, the bishop of London had the books, Packington had the thanks, and
Tyndale had the money.
19)After
this, Tyndale corrected the same New Testaments again, and caused them
to be newly imprinted, so that they came thick and threefold over into
England. When the bishop perceived that, he sent for Packington, and said
to him, "How cometh this, that there are so many New Testaments abroad?
You promised me that you would buy them all." Then answered Packington,
"Surely, I bought all that were to be had, but I perceive they have printed
more since. I see it will never be better so long as they have letters
and stamps: wherefore you were best to buy the stamps too, and so you shall
be sure," at which answer the bishop smiled, and so the matter ended.
20)In
short space after, it fortuned that George Constantine was apprehended
by Sir Thomas More, who was then chancellor of England, as suspected of
certain heresies. Master More asked of him, saying, "Constantine! I would
have thee be plain with me in one thing that I will ask; and I promise
thee I will show thee favor in all other things whereof thou art accused.
There is beyond the sea, Tyndale, Joye, and a great many of you: I know
they cannot live without help. There are some that succor them with money;
and thou, being one of them, hadst thy part thereof, and therefore knowest
whence it came. I pray thee, tell me, who be they that help them thus?"
"My lord," quoth Constantine, "I will tell you truly: it is the bishop
of London that hath holpen us, for he hath bestowed among us a great deal
of money upon New Testaments to burn them; and that hath been, and yet
is, our only succor and comfort." "Now by my troth," quoth More, "I think
even the same; for so much I told the bishop before he went about it."
21)After
that, Master Tyndale took in hand to translate the Old Testament, finishing
the five books of Moses, with sundry most learned and godly prologues most
worthy to be read and read again by all good Christians. These books being
sent over into England, it cannot be spoken what a door of light they opened
to the eyes of the whole English nation, which before were shut up in darkness.
22)At
his first departing out of the realm he took his journey into Germany,
where he had conference with Luther and other learned men; after he had
continued there a certain season he came down into the Netherlands, and
had his most abiding in the town of Antwerp.
23)The
godly books of Tyndale, and especially the New Testament of his translation,
after that they began to come into men's hands, and to spread abroad, wrought
great and singular profit to the godly; but the ungodly (envying and disdaining
that the people should be anything wiser than they and, fearing lest by
the shining beams of truth, their works of darkness should be discerned)
began to sir with no small ado.
24)At
what time Tyndale had translated Deuteronomy, minding to print the same
at Hamburg, he sailed thitherward; upon the coast of Holland he suffered
shipwreck, by which he lost all his books, writings, and copies, his money
and his time, and so was compelled to begin all again. He came in another
ship to Hamburg, where, at his appointment, Master Coverdale tarried for
him, and helped him in the translating of the whole five books of Moses,
from Easter until December, in the house of a worshipful widow, Mistress
Margaret Van Emmerson, A.D. 1529; a great sweating sickness being at the
same time in the town. So, having dispatched his business at Hamburg, he
returned to Antwerp.
25)When
God's will was, that the New Testament in the common tongue should come
abroad, Tyndale, the translator thereof, added to the latter end a certain
epistle, wherein he desired them that were learned to amend, if ought were
found amiss. Wherefore if there had been any such default deserving correction,
it had been the part of courtesy and gentleness, for men of knowledge and
judgment to have showed their learning therein, and to have redressed what
was to be amended. But the clergy, not willing to have that book prosper,
cried out upon it, that there were a thousand heresies in it, and that
it was not to be corrected, but utterly to be suppressed. Some said it
was not possible to translate the Scriptures into English; some that it
was not lawful for the lay people to have it in their mother tongue; some,
that it would make them all heretics. And to the intent to induce the temporal
rulers unto their purpose, they said it would make the people to rebel
against the king.
26)All
this Tyndale himself, in his prologue before the first book of Moses, declareth;
showing further what great pains were taken in examining that translation,
and comparing it with their own imaginations, that with less labor, he
supposeth, they might have translated a great part of the Bible; showing
moreover that they scanned and examined every title and point in such sort,
and so narrowly, that there was not one I therein, but if it lacked a prick
over his head, they did note it, and numbered it unto the ignorant people
for a heresy.
27)So
great were then the froward devices of the English clergy (who should have
been the guides of light unto the people), to drive the people from the
knowledge of the Scripture, which neither they would translate themselves,
nor yet abide it to be translated of others; to the intent (as Tyndale
saith) that the world being kept still in darkness, they might sit in the
consciences of the people through vain superstition and false doctrine,
to satisfy their ambition, and insatiable covetousness, and to exalt their
own honor above king and emperor.
28)The
bishops and prelates never rested before they had brought the king to their
consent; by reason whereof, a proclamation in all haste was devised and
set forth under public authority, that the Testament of Tyndale's translation
was inhibited-which was about A.D. 1537. And not content herewith, they
proceeded further, how to entangle him in their nets, and to bereave him
of his life; which how they brought to pass, now it remaineth to be declared.
29)In
the registers of London it appeareth manifest how that the bishops and
Sir Thomas More having before them such as had been at Antwerp, most studiously
would search and examine all things belonging to Tyndale, where and with
whom he hosted, whereabouts stood the house, what was his stature, in what
apparel he went, what resort he had; all which things when they had diligently
learned then began they to work their feats.
30)William
Tyndale, being in the town of Antwerp, had been lodged about one whole
year in the house of Thomas Pointz, an Englishman, who kept a house of
English merchants. Came thither one out of England, whose name was Henry
Philips, his father being customer of Poole, a comely fellow, like as he
had been a gentleman having a servant with him: but wherefore he came,
or for what purpose he was sent thither, no man could tell.
31)Master
Tyndale divers times was desired forth to dinner and support amongst merchants;
by means whereof this Henry Philips became acquainted with him, so that
within short space Master Tyndale had a great confidence in him, and brought
him to his lodging, to the house of Thomas Pointz; and had him also once
or twice with him to dinner and supper, and further entered such friendship
with him, that through his procurement he lay in the same house of the
sait Pointz; to whom he showed moreover his books, a and other secrets
of his study, so little did Tyndale then mistrust this traitor.
32)But
Pointz, having no great confidence in the fellow, asked Master Tyndale
how he came acquainted with this Philips. Master Tyndale answered, that
he was an honest man, handsomely learned, and very conformable. Pointz,
perceiving that he bare such favor to him, said no more, thinking that
he was brought acquainted with him by some friend of his. The said Philips,
being in the town three or four days, upon a time desired Pointz to walk
with him forth of the town to show him the commodities thereof, and in
walking together without the town, had communication of divers things,
and some of the king's affairs; by which talk Pointz as yet suspected nothing.
But after, when the time was past, Pointz perceived this to be the mind
of Philips, to feel whether the said Pointz might, for lucre of money,
help him to his purpose, for he perceived before that Philips was monied,
and would that Pointz should think no less. For he had desired Pointz before
to help him to divers things; and such things as he named, he required
might be of the best, "for," said he, "I have money enough."
33)Philips
went from Antwerp to the court of Brussels, which is from thence twenty-four
English miles, whence he brought with him to Antwerp, the procurator-general,
who is the emperor's attorney, with certain other officers.
34)Within
three or four days, Pointz went forth to the town of Barois, being eighteen
English miles from Antwerp, where he had business to do for the space of
a month or six weeks; and in the time of his absence Henry Philips came
again to Antwerp, to the house of Pointz, and coming in, spake with his
wife, asking whether Master Tyndale were within. Then went he forth again
and set the officers whom he had brought with him from Brussels, in the
street, and about the door. About noon he came again, and went to Master
Tyndale, and desired him to lend him forty shillings; "for," said he, "I
lost my purse this morning, coming over at the passage between this and
Mechlin." So Master Tyndale took him forty shillings, which was easy to
be had of him, if he had it; for in the wily subtleties of this world he
was simple and inexpert. Then said Philips, "Master Tyndale! you shall
be my guest here this day." "No," said Master Tyndale, "I go forth this
day to dinner, and you shall go with me, and be my guest, where you shall
be welcome."
35)So
when it was dinner time, Master Tyndale went forth with Philips, and at
the going forth of Pointz's house, was a long narrow entry, so that two
could not go in front. Master Tyndale would have put Philips before him,
but Philips would in no wise, but put Master Tyndale before, for that he
pretended to show great humanity. So Master Tyndale, being a man of no
great stature, went before, and Philips, a tall, comely person, followed
behind him; who had set officers on either side of the door upon two seats,
who might see who came in the entry. Philips pointed with his finger over
Master Tyndale's head down to him, that the officers might see that it
was he whom they should take. The officers afterwards told Pointz, when
they had laid him in prison, that they pitied to see his simplicity. They
brought him to the emperor's attorney, where he dined. Then came the procurator-general
to the house of Pointz, and sent away all that was there of Master Tyndale's,
as well his books as other things; and from thence Tyndale was had to the
castle of Vilvorde, eighteen English miles from Antwerp.
36)Master
Tyndale, remaining in prison, was proffered an advocate and a procurator;
the which he refused, saying that he would make answer for himself. He
had so preached to them who had him in charge, and such as was there conversant
with him in the Castle that they reported of him, that if he were not a
good Christian man, they knew not whom they might take to be one.
37)At
last, after much reasoning, when no reason would serve, although he deserved
no death, he was condemned by virtue of the emperor's decree, made in the
assembly at Augsburg. Brought forth to the place of execution, he was tied
to the stake, strangled by the hangman, and afterwards consumed with fire,
at the town of Vilvorde, A.D. 1536; crying at the stake with a fervent
zeal, and a loud voice, "Lord! open the king of England's eyes."
38)Such
was the power of his doctrine, and the sincerity of his life, that during
the time of his imprisonment (which endured a year and a half), he converted,
it is said, his keeper, the keeper's daughter, and others of his household.
39)As
touching his translation of the New Testament, because his enemies did
so much carp at it, pretending it to be full of heresies, he wrote to John
Frith, as followeth, "I call God to record against the day we shall appear
before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word
against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth,
whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me."
1)would
do the same into English.
2)It
could not, however, be done in England.
3)Laboring
under Luther's shadow, in the relative safety of Cologne and Worms,
4)Tyndale
worked tocomplete his New Testament in English.
5)Tyndale
was fluent in eight languages and is
6)considered
by many to be the primary architect of the modern English language.
7)Already
hunted because of the rumor spread abroad that such a project was underway,
inquisitors and bounty hunters were on Tyndale's trail to abort the effort.
8)God
foiled their plans, and in 1525/6 Tyndale printed the first English New
Testament.
9)The
Bishop of London s
a)ought
to confiscate and burn them,
b)but
copies continued to be smuggled into England.
10)The
more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution, the more fascinated
the public at large became.
11)Bishop
Tunstal
a)declared
that Tyndale's translation contained thousands of errors
b)and
they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy.
12)One
risked death by burning if caught in mere possession of the forbidden books.
13)Like
the Pharisees of old, the clergy
a)realized
that having God's Word available to the people in the language of common
English, would mean disaster to the church.
b)No
longer could they control access to the scriptures.
c)If
people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income
and power would crumble.
d)They
could not continue the selling
(1)of
indulgences (the forgiveness of sins)
(2)or
bartering the release of loved ones from "Purgatory".
e)People
would begin to challenge the church's authority if the practices of the
church were exposed to the light of Scripture.
f)The
contradictions between God's Word and what the priests taught,
(1)would
open the "eyes of the blind"
(2)and
the truth would set them free.
g)Salvation
by GRACE alone –
(1)through
faith
(2)(not
by works) would be revealed.
h)The
need for "priest craft" would give way to the priesthood of all believers.
i)The
veneration of canonized Saints and of the Virgin would be called into question.
j)The
availability of the scriptures in English was the greatest threat imaginable
to the corrupted Romish church.
14)The
Church of Rome would never give up without a fight.
I)Tyndale
New Testament
1)was
the first ever printed in the English language.
2)Its
first printing occurred in1525/6, but only two complete copies of that
first printing are known to have survived.
3)Any
Edition printed before 1570 is very rare and valuable, particularly pre-1540
editions and fragments.
4)Tyndale's
flight was an inspiration to freedom loving Englishmen who drew courage
from the 11 years that he was hunted.
5)Books
and Bibles flowed into England in bales of cotton and sacks of wheat.
6)In
the end, Tyndale was caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he had befriended.
7)Tyndale
was incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the
stake in 1536.
8)His
last words were, "Lord, open the eyes of the King of England".
J)Myles
Coverdale and John Rogers were loyal assistants the last six years of Tyndale's
life, and they carried the project forward.
1)Coverdale
finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 he printed the first
complete Bible in the English language, making use of Luther's German text
and the Latin as sources.
2)Thus,
the first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535, and is
known as the Coverdale Bible.
3)John
Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537.
4)He
printed it under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew", as a considerable part
of this Bible was the translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned
by the English authorities.
5)It
is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535
edition) and Coverdale's Bible and a small amount of Roger's own translation
of the text.
6)It
remains known most commonly as the Matthew's Bible.
K)"Great
Bible".
1)In
1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
a)hired
Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII
b) to
publish the "Great Bible".
2)It
became the first English Bible authorized for public use,
a)as
it was distributed to every church,
b)chained
to the pulpit.
3)By
the decree of the king
a)a
reader was provided s
b)o
that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in their own tongue.
4)William
Tyndale's last prayer had been granted -- three years after his martyrdom.
5)published
by Coverdale,
6)was
known as the Great Bible due to its great size:
a)a
large pulpit folio
b)measuring
over 14 inches tall.
7)Seven
editions of this version were printed between April of 1539 and December
of 1541.
L)The
ebb and flow of freedom continued through the 1540's and into the 1550's.
1)The
reign of Queen Mary("Bloody Mary")
a)was
the next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English.
b)She
was possessed in her quest to return England to the Romish Church.
2)In
1555, John Rogers ("Thomas Matthew") and Thomas Cranmer were both burned
at the stake.
3)Mary
went on to burn reformers at the stake
a)by
the hundreds
b)for
the "crime" of being a Protestant.
4)This
era was known as the Marian Exile,
a)and
the refugees fled from England
b)with
little hope of ever seeing their home or friends again.
M)In
the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland,
1)was
very sympathetic to the reformer refugees
2)and
was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people.
3)Many
of them met in Geneva,
a)led
by Myles Coverdale
b)and
John Foxe
(1)(publisher
of the famous Foxe's Book of Martyrs,
(2)which
is to this day the only exhaustive reference work on the persecution and
martyrdom of Early Christians and Protestants from the first century up
to the mid-16th century),
c)as
well as Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham.
4)the
Church of Geneva
a)There,
with the protection of John Calvin and John Knox,
b) determined
to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued
in exile.
5)The
New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published
in 1560.
a)It
became known as the Geneva Bible.
(1)Due
to a passage in Genesis describing the clothing that God fashioned for
Adam and Eve upon expulsion from the Garden of Eden as "Breeches" (an antiquated
form of” Britches"), some people referred to the Geneva Bible as the Breeches
Bible.
(2)The
Geneva Bible was the first Bible
(a)to
add verse numberings to the chapters,
(b)so
that referencing specific passages would be easier.
(3)Every
chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references
(a)so
thorough and complete
(b)that
the Geneva Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible".
(4)The
works of Shakespeare contain many quotes from the Geneva translation.
(5)The
Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice for over 100 years of English speaking
Christians.
(6)Between
1560 and 1644 at least 144 editions of this Bible were published.
(7)Examination
of the 1611 King James Bible
(a)demonstrates
the great influence of the Geneva Bible,
(b)and
thus the influence of Tyndale.
(8)The
Geneva Bible retains approximately 90% of William Tyndale's translation.
(9)For
many decades, the Geneva Bible remained more popular than that authorized
by King James.
(10)It
holds the honor of being
(a)the
first Bible taken to America,
(b)and
the Bible of the Puritans and Pilgrims.
6)With
the end of Queen Mary's bloody rein, the reformers could safely return
to England.
a)The
Anglican Church, under Queen Elizabeth I, reluctantly tolerated the printing
and distribution of the Geneva Bible in England.
b)The
marginal notes,
(1)which
were vehemently against the institutional Church of the day, did not rest
well with many in authority.
(2)Another
version, one with a less inflammatory tone was desired.
N)In
1568,the Bishop's Bible was introduced.
1)Despite
19 printing between 1568 and 1606, the version never gained popularity
among the people.
2)The
Geneva version was simply too trusted to compete with.
O)By
the 1580's, the Roman Church understanding that God's Word could not be
held captive, surrendered it’s fight for "Latin only".
1)Using
the Latin Vulgate as a source text, they went on to publish an English
Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus had decried
75 years earlier.
2)Because
it was translated at the Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was
known as the Rheims (or Rhemes) New Testament.
3)The
Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 at the College
in the city of Doway (also spelled Douay and Douai).
4)The
combined product is commonly referred to as the"Doway /Rheims" Version.
5)In
1589, Dr. Fluke of Cambridge published the "Fluke’s Refutation", in which
he printed in parallel columns the Bishops Version along side the Rheims
Version, attempting to show the distortion of the Roman Church's corrupt
compromise of an English version of the Bible.
P)With
the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King
James I of England.
1)The
Protestant clergy approached the new King in 1604 and announced their desire
for a new translation to replace the Bishop's Bible first printed in 1568.
2)They
knew that the Geneva Version had won the hearts of the people because of
its excellent scholarship, accuracy, and exhaustive commentary.
3)However,
they did not want the controversial marginal notes (proclaiming the Pope
an Anti-Christ, etc.
4))
Essentially, the leaders of the church desired a Bible for the people,
with scriptural references only for word clarification when multiple meanings
were possible.
5)This
"translation to end all translations" (for a while at least) was the result
of the combined effort of about fifty scholars.
6)They
relied heavily on Tyndale's New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews
Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even used the Rheims New
Testament.
7)The
great revision of the Bishop’s Bible had begun.
8)From
1605 to 1606 the scholars engaged in private research.
9)From
1607 to1609 the work was assembled.
10)In
1610 the work went to press, and in 1611 the first of the huge (16 inch
tall) pulpit folios known as "The King James Bible" came off the printing
press.
11)A
typographical error in Ruth 3:15 rendered the pronoun "He" instead of the
correct "She" in that verse.
12)This
caused some of the 1611 First Editions to be known by collectors as "He"
Bibles, and others as "She" Bibles.
13)It
took many years for it to overtake the Geneva Bible in popularity with
the people, but eventually the King James Version became the Bible of the
English people.
14)It
became the most printed book in the history of the world.
15)In
fact, for around 250 years, until the appearance of the Revised Version
of 1881, the King James Version reigned without a rival.
16)Although
the first Bible printed in America was done in the native Algonquin Indian
Language (by John Eliotin 1663), the first English language Bible to be
printed in America (by Robert Aitken in 1782) was a King James Version.
17)In
1791, Isaac Collins vastly improved upon the quality and size of the type
setting of American Bibles and produced the first "Family Bible" printed
in America -- also a King James Version.
18)That
same year Isaiah Thomas published the first Illustrated Bible printed in
America -- also the King James Version.
19)In
1841, the English Hexapla New Testament was printed.
20)This
wonderful textual comparison tool shows in parallel columns: The 1380 Wycliff,
1534 Tyndale, 1539 Great, 1557 Geneva, 1582 Rheims, and 1611King James
versions of the entire New Testament -- with the original Greek at the
top of the page.
21)Consider
the following textual comparison of John 3:16 as they appear in many of
these famous printings of the English Bible:1st Ed.
a)King
James (1611): "For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten
Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting
life.
b)"Rheims
(1582): "For so God loued the vvorld, that he gaue his only-begotten sonne:
that euery one that beleeueth in him, perish not, but may haue life euerlasting
"Geneva (1557): "For God so loueth the world, that he hath geuen his only
begotten Sonne: that none that beleue in him, should peryshe, but haue
euerlasting lyfe.
c)"Great
Bible (1539): "For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten
sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in him, shulde not perisshe, but haue euerlasting
lyfe.
d)"Tyndale
(1534): "For God so loveth the worlde, that he hath geven his only sonne,
that none that beleve in him, shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge
lyfe.
e)"Wycliff
(1380): "for god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone,
that eche man that bileueth in him perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif,"
It is possible to go back to manuscripts earlier than Wycliff, but the
language is not easily recognizable.
f)For
example, the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of 995 AD renders John 3:16 as:” God
lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan sunu, datnan ne forweorde
de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif.
Q) The
Transmission of the Bible to English
200
BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39
Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.
Greek
Septuagint: The Old Testament was
translated into Greek during the third and second centuries B.C. for Jews
living outside of Palestine. The name “Septuagint” (Latinfor
70) reflects the tradition that it was translated in Egypt by 70 elders
in 70 sessions. It became the Bible of the first generation of Christians
to evangelize the Hellenistic world.
1st
Century AD: Completion of All Original Greek Manuscripts which make Up
The 27 Books of the New Testament.
Greek
New Testament: Paul wrote his letters
for the early Christians in Greek. Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus,
but the whole New Testament was written in Greek, the language of the Mediterranean
world. By the end of the second century the Old and New Testaments in Greek
were used by the church as a special group of sacred writings
390
AD: Jerome's Latin Vulgate Manuscripts Produced which contain All 80 Books
(39 Old Test. + 14 Apocrypha + 27 New Test).
Vulgate
Bible: About 382 the Bishop
of Rome asked Jerome to revise the Latin translation of the Bible. Jerome’s
translation came to be called the Vulgate or “common” Bible, It served
as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church from the Council of
Trent to the Second Vatican Council
500
AD: Scriptures have been Translated into Over 500 Languages.
995
AD: Anglo-Saxon (Early Roots of English Language) Translations of The New
Testament Produced.
1384
AD: Wycliffe is the First Person to Produce a (Hand-Written) manuscript
Copy of the Complete Bible; All 80 Books.
Wycliffe:John
Wycliffe led a movement of poor priests, called Lollards, who preached
to the people in their own language instead of the Latin used in the churches.
He realized that a Bible in English was needed, and under his inspiration
the first translation of the entire Bible into English was made from Latin
about 1384.
1455
AD: Gutenberg Invents the Printing Press; Books May Now be mass-Produced
Instead of Individually Hand-Written. The
First
Book Ever Printed is Gutenberg's Bible in Latin.
1522
AD: Martin Luther's German New Testament.
Luther:
The Reformation brought a renewed demand for the Bible in the language
of the people. Luther himself prepared the German translation (New Testament
1522, Old Testament 1534). This was the first western European Bible not
based on the Latin Vulgate, but on the original Hebrew and Greek texts
1525
AD: William Tyndale's New Testament; The First New Testament to be Printed
in the English Language.
Tyndale: When
church authorities in England prohibited a new English translation, Tyndale
went to Germany where he translated the New Testament from the original
Greek. This first printed English New Testament was published in 1526.
Copies were smuggled into England in shipments of grain and cloth, and
frequently confiscated.Tyndale:~a1so4ranslate&portionsf~the’OldTestament(Pentateuch.—-~
1530, Jonah 1531). Tyndale was betrayèi3 strangled and burned near
Brussels. His work was so excellent that almost every English version
since has been indebted to it.
Apocrypha).
Coverdale: Coverdale,
like Tyndale, fled to Germany to complete a translation of the Bible. He
used Latin and German versions as well as Tyndale’s New Testament and portions
of the Old Testament. This was the first printed English Bible (1535).
Matthew’s Bible (1537) contained additional sections of Tyndale’s unpublished
work (through 2 Chronicles), and portions translated by Coverdale (Ezra
to Malachi and the Apocrypha). A revision of Matthew’s Bible by Coverdale
was known as the Great Bible (1539). The Psalms of the Great Bible are
still used in the Book of Common Prayer.
1537
AD: Matthews Bible; The Second Complete Bible to be Printed in English.
Done by John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers (80
Books).
1539
AD: The "Great Bible" Printed; The First English Language Bible to be Authorized
for Public Use (80 Books).
A
revision of Matthew’s Bible by Coverdale was known as the Great Bible
(1539). The Psalms of the Great Bible are still used in the Book of
Common Prayer.
1560
AD: The Geneva Bible Printed; The First English Language Bible to Add Numbered
Verses to Each Chapter (80 Books).
The
Geneva Bible (1560), also a revision
of the Great Bible, was produced by English Puritans in Geneva; it was
dependent on the Latin texts of Pagninius’ Old Testament (1528) and Bebe’s
New Testament (1556), and exerted a strong influence on the King James
Bible.
1568
AD: The Bishops Bible Printed; The Bible of which the King James was a
Revision (80 Books).
The
Bishops’ Bible (1568), which was a revision
of the Great Bible prepared by Matthew Parker and others, served as the
base for the revision ordered by King James (see below).
1609
AD: The Douay Old Testament is added to the Rheimes New Testament (of 1582)
Making the First Complete English
Catholic
Bible; Translated from the Latin Vulgate (80 Books).
1611
AD: The King James Bible Printed; Originally with All 80 Books. The Apocrypha
was Officially Removed in 1885 Leaving
Only
66 Books.
King
James: The various versions of the Bible
aroused so many arguments that James I, after the Hampton CoUrt Conference,
appointed 54 scholars to make a new version. It took about seven years
to complete the work, a monument to the critical scholarship of the time.
Despite the great variety of the men who worked on it, the translation
was harmonious in style and beauty. It was first published in 1611, and
soon became the most popular English Bible. Roman Catholic Versions: The
New Testament published in Rheims (1582) and the Old Testament in Douai
(1609-1610) were translated from the Latin Vulgate
1782
AD: Robert Aitken's Bible; The First English Language Bible (a King James
Version without Apocrypha) to be Printed in
America.
1791
AD: Isaac Collins and Isaiah Thomas Respectively Produce the First Family
Bible and First Illustrated Bible Printed in
America.
Both were King James Versions, with All 80 Books.
1808
AD: Jane Aitken's Bible (Daughter of Robert Aitken); The First Bible to
be Printed by a Woman.
1833
AD: Noah Webster's Bible; After Producing his Famous Dictionary, Webster
Printed his Own Revision of the King James
Bible.
1841
AD: English Hexapla New Testament; an Early Textual Comparison showing
the Greek and 6 Famous English Translations
in
Parallel Columns.
1846
AD: The Illuminated Bible; The Most Lavishly Illustrated Bible printed
in America. A King James Version, with All 80 Books.
1885
AD: The "Revised Version" Bible; The First Major English Revision of the
King James Bible.
1901
AD: The "American Standard Version"; The First Major American Revision
of the King James Bible.
1971
AD: The "New American Standard Bible" (NASB) is Published as a "Modern
and Accurate Word for Word English
Translation"
of the Bible.
1973
AD: The "New International Version" (NIV) is Published as a "Modern and
Accurate Phrase for Phrase English
Translation"
of the Bible.
1982
AD: The "New King James Version" (NKJV) is Published as a "Modern English
Version Maintaining the Original Style of the
King
James."