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Coverdale and Matthew - At the time of Tyndale's death, a printed edition of the English Bible, bearing a dedication to King Henry VIII, had been circulating in England for nearly a year. This was the first edition of the Bible issued by Miles Coverdale (1488-1568), one of Tyndale's friends and associates. This English version reproduced Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch and the New Testament; the rest of the Old Testament was translated into English from Latin and German versions.

Coverdale's Bible of 1535 was the first complete English Bible in print. A second and third edition appeared in 1537. The title page bore the words: "Set forth with the King's most gracious licence." But this was not the only English Bible to appear in 1537 with these words on the title page. Another of Tyndale's associates, John Rogers, published an edition of the Bible that year under the name, "Thomas Matthew." "Matthew's Bible" was similar to Coverdale's with one exception: its translation of the historical books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles was one that Tyndale had finished without publishing before his death.

The Great Bible - Official policy toward the translation and circulation of the Bible in England changed quickly. King Henry's break with the Roman Catholic pope in Rome in 1534 had something to do with it, but deeper factors were also involved. A landmark in the history of the English Bible was the royal injunction of September 1538, directing that "one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English" should be placed in every parish church in England where the people could have access to it. When this decree was issued, another version of the Bible-the "Great Bible"-was being prepared so this commandment could be followed.

Publication of the Great Bible was delayed because French officials halted its production in Paris, where it was being printed. The printing was then transferred to London, where the Great Bible appeared in 1539. The Great Bible was Coverdale's revision of Matthew's Bible, which means that it was essentially a copy of Tyndale's translation. It quickly became the "authorized version" of the English Bible.

One part of the Great Bible remained in use long after the version as a whole had been replaced by later and better versions. To this day the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer that is sung in the services of the Church of England is the Psalms contained in the Great Bible.

The Geneva Bible - During the reign of Mary Tudor of England (1553-1558), many English Reformers sought refuge in other parts of Europe because of her policy of persecution. One community of English refugees settled in Geneva, Switzerland, where John Knox was pastor of the English congregation and where John Calvin dominated theological study. Many of these English refugees were fine scholars, and they began work on a new English version of the Bible. A preliminary edition of the New Testament (Whittingham's New Testament) was published in 1557. This was the first edition of any part of the English Bible to have the text divided into verses. The whole Bible appeared in 1560.

This "Geneva Bible" was the first English Bible to be translated in its entirety from the original biblical languages. Widely recognized as the best English version of the Bible that had yet appeared, it quickly became the accepted version in Scotland. In England it also attained instant popularity among the people, although it was not accepted by church officials. After the publication of the King James Version in 1611, the Geneva Bible remained popular. This was the Bible which the Pilgrims took with them to the new world in 1620; to them the King James Version was a compromise and an inferior production. The Geneva Bible was printed until 1644 and was still found in use 30 years later.

The Bishops' Bible - The rival version to the Geneva Bible sponsored by church leaders in England was published in 1568. It was called the Bishops' Bible because all the translators were either bishops at the time or became bishops later. It was a good translation, based throughout on the original languages; but it was not as sound in scholarship as the Geneva Bible.

The King James Version - Shortly after James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England as James I (1603), he convened a conference to settle matters under dispute in the Church of England. The only important result of this conference was an approval to begin work on the King James Version of the English Bible (KJV).

A group of 47 scholars, divided into six teams, was appointed to undertake the work of preparing the new version. Three teams worked on the Old Testament; two were responsible for the New Testament; and one worked on the Apocrypha. They used the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible as the basis of their revision, but they had access to many other versions and helps, as well as the texts in the original biblical languages. When the six groups had completed their task, the final draft was reviewed by a committee of 12. The King James Version was published in 1611.


The new version won wide acceptance among the people of the English-speaking world. Nonsectarian in tone and approach, it did not favor one shade of theological or ecclesiastical opinion over another. The translators had an almost instinctive sense of good English style; the prose rhythms of the version gave it a secure place in the popular memory. Never was a version of the Bible more admirably suited for reading aloud in public.

Although there was some resistance to the King James Version at first, it quickly made a place for itself. For more than three centuries, it has remained "The Bible" throughout the English-speaking world.

Catholic Versions. A generation before the appearance of the King James Bible, an English version of the Bible for Roman Catholics was undertaken by the faculty of the English College at Douai, France. Unlike the Geneva Bible, which was translated from the original languages, the Douai (or Douay) Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate. The translator of the Douai Bible was Gregory Martin, formerly an Oxford scholar, who translated two chapters a day until the project was finished. Each section was then revised by two of his colleagues. The New Testament portion of this version was issued in 1582 and the Old Testament in 1609-10.

The Douai Bible was scholarly and accurate, but the English style and vocabulary were modeled on Latin usage. It would not have become popular among the Catholic laity if it had not been for the work of Richard Challoner (1691-1781), who revised it thoroughly between 1749 and 1772. What has generally been called the Douai Bible since Challoner's day is in fact the Douai Bible as revised by Challoner. In several respects it was a new version. Until 1945 this Douai revision by Challoner remained the only version of the Bible officially sanctioned for English-speaking Catholics.

Nineteenth Century Revisions. During the 18 th century and the earlier part of the 19 th century, several private attempts were made at revising the King James Version. The reasons for revision included the outdated English of the KJV, the progress made by scholars in understanding the original languages of the Bible, and the availability of better texts in the original biblical languages, especially the Greek text of the New Testament.

One of the most influential private revisions was Henry Alford's New Testament (1869). In the preface to this translation, Alford expressed the hope that his work would be replaced soon by an official revision of the KJV.

This hope was fulfilled in 1870 when the Church of England initiated plans for a revision. Two groups of revisers were appointed, one for the Old Testament and one for the New. Representatives of British churches other than the Church of England were included on these committees. Before long, parallel companies of revisers were set up in the United States. At first these groups worked under the hope that one version might be produced for both England and the United States. But this was not to be. The American scholars, conservative as they were in their procedure, could not be bound by the stricter conservatism of their British counterparts. The three installments of the British revision (RV) appeared in 1881, in 1885, and in 1894. The American revision, or American Standard Version (ASV), was released in 1901, but did not include the Apocrypha.

The RV and ASV were solid works of scholarship. The Old Testament revisers had a much better grasp of Hebrew than the original translators of the King James Bible. The New Testament revision was based on a much more accurate Greek text than had been available in 1611. Although the RV and ASV were suitable for Bible study, they did not gain popular acceptance, mainly because their translators paid little attention to style and rhythm as they rendered the biblical languages into English.

Twentieth Century Enterprises. The first half of the 20 th century was marked by a succession of brilliant private enterprises in translation-both for the New Testament alone and for the whole Bible.

Twentieth Century New Testament - The earliest of these was the Twentieth Century New Testament, a project conducted by a group of intelligent laypersons who used Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament (1881) as their basic text. They were concerned that no existing version (not even the RV) made the Bible plain to young people, and they set out to supply this need. They completed their work in 1901; a revised edition appeared in 1904.

Weymouth - Richard Francis Weymouth, a Greek scholar, published an edition of the Greek New Testament called The Resultant Greek Testament in 1886. Later he issued a translation of this text, The New Testament in Modern Speech, which appeared in 1903, shortly after his death. The "modern speech" into which this translation was rendered was dignified contemporary usage and it paid special attention to accuracy in the translation of details such as the definite article and tenses.

Moffatt - Much more colloquial than Weymouth's version was The New Testament: A New Translation (1913) by James Moffatt. Moffatt was a Scot, and his translation bore traces of the idiom of his native land. While his unique expressions shocked some readers accustomed to more dignified Bible English, they brought home the meaning of the text with greater clarity than ever before.

In 1924 Moffatt added The Old Testament: A New Translation; in 1928 the whole work appeared in one volume, entitled A New Translation of the Bible. In both Testaments Moffatt occasionally took greater liberties with the wording and order than was proper for a translator; yet to this day one of the best ways to get a quick grasp of the general sense of a book of the Bible is to read it through in Moffatt's translation.