|
Christian
Heritage Center is our source for Past Words. Visit their site to learn about their library, camp grounds, conference center and other features.
|
|
The accession to the throne of the
daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn marked a step forward in the
history of the English Bible. Greatly as Elizabeth disliked the growing
Puritan party in the Church of England, and heavily as she laid her hand
upon all who dared to think for themselves in religious matters, the era
had passed when for either reading or translating the Bible any
Englishman could be condemned to death. But in her reign, as in that of
her father, the impulse in the direction of Bible revision came from
without rather than within. It was due, not so much to the dignitaries
and scholars of the Church, as to the men who had been driven into exile
by their evangelical belief and godly life.
Geneva, under the influence of John Calvin, had become the great centre
of the Reformation life and influence upon the Continent. Upon the death
of Edward VI. many influential English reformers had fled, some to
Strasburg, some to Zurich, and some to Frankfort and other German towns.
But in 1555 a little company of influential men, displeased with the
result of discussions upon matters of ritual which took place at
Frankfort, removed to Geneva, and became closely associated there with
Calvin. Chief among these were John Knox, Miles Coverdale, Thomas Cole,
Christopher Goodwin, formerly Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and later
an extreme Nonconformist leader; John Pullain, Anthony Gilbey, Thomas
Sampson, and William Whittingham. Of the last three, Golbey was a
Cambridge man, the other two were from Oxford. It is to the labours of
these three men, in the main, that the translation known as the Geneva
Bible, which was for over seventy-five years the version in daily use
among the English people, was due. GIlbey returned to England, became
Vicar of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and died in 1584. Sampson had been Dean of
Chichester in the reign of Edward VI.; in 1561 he became Dean of Christ
Church, Oxford, but in 1564 was deprived of his office for holding
Nonconformist views. William Whittingham was born near Durham in 1524,
he was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and in 1545 was a Fellow
of All Souls'. He left England in June, 1554, and at Geneva, in 1555, he
married the sister of John Calvin. In 1559 he succeeded John Knox as
pastor of the English Church at Geneva; in 1560 returned to England, and
in 1563 was made Dean of Durham. He contributed a number of the metrical
or singing psalms to what was known as Sternhold and Hopkins'
collection, and died in 1579.
THE GENEVA BIBLE, ENGLAND'S MOST POPULAR EARLY TRANSLATION
NEW TESTAMENT
THE GENEVA BIBLE
First English Bible
Divided Into
Verses
 EDICATION
I. 'To the most
virtuous and noble Queen Elizabeth Queen of England and France and
Ireland, etc., Your humble subjects of the English Church at Geneva,
wish grace and peace from God the Father through Jesus Christ our
Lord;
2. 'To our Beloved in the Lord, the Brethren of England, Scotland,
Ireland, etc., Grace, mercy, and peace, through Christ Jesus."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
These two addresses cover three folios, or
six pages. After the New Testament come–
1. 'A brief table of the interpretation of the Proper
Names which are chiefly found in the Old Testament, wherein the first
number signifieth the chapter, the second the verse.
2. 'A table
of the principal things that are contained in the Bible, after the order
of the alphabet.
3 '"A Perfite Supputation of the Yeres and Times
from Adam unto Christ, proved by the Scriptures, after the collection of
divers authors," followed by the words, in large type, of "Joshua i.8.
Let not this book of the Law depart out of thy mouth, but meditate
therein day and night, that thou mayest observe and do according to all
that is written therein: so shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then
shalt thou have good success."
4. 'The order of the years from
Paul's conversion, showing the time of his peregrination, and of his
Epistles written to the Churches.'
THE ADDRESS TO QUEEN ELIZABETH.
These pieces occupy fourteen
folios, or twenty-eight pages. The address to Queen Elizabeth is a very
different composition from some of the earlier Biblical dedications to
Henry VIII., and from the fulsome flattery of James I., which still
disfigures the A.V. It begins by showing how hard it is "to enterprise
any worthy act," And that nothing is more difficult than "the building
of the Lord’s Temple, the House of God, the Church of Christ,
whereof the Son of God is the head and perfection." EXCERPTS FROM
THE ADDRESS TO THE QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Considering, therefore, how many enemies there are, which by one means
or other, as the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin went about to stay
the buildings of that Temple, so labour to hinder the course of this
building (whereof some are Papists, who, under pretence of favouring
God’s Word, traitcrously seek to erect idolatry and to destroy your
Majesty; some are worldlings, who as Demas have forsaken Christ for the
love of this world; others are ambitious prelates, who as Amaziah and
Diotrephes can abide none but themselves; and as Demetrius many practice
sedition to maintain their errors), we persuaded ourselves that there
was no way so expedient and necessary for the preservation of the one
and destruction of the other, as to present unto your Majesty the Holy
Scriptures faithfully and plainly translated according to the languages
wherein they were first written by the Holy Ghost. For the Word of God
is an evident token of God’s love and our assurance of this
defence, wheresoever it is obediently received: it is the trial of the
spirits, and as the Prophet saith, it is as a fire and hammer to break
the stony hearts of them that resist God’s mercies offered by the
preaching of the same. Yea, it is sharper than any two-edged sword to
examine the very thoughts and to judge the affections of the heart, and
to discover whatsoever lieth under hypocrisy, and would be secret from
the face of God and His Church. So that this must be the first
foundation and groundwork, according whereunto the good stones of this
building must be framed, and the evil tried out and rejected.
PREFACE TO THE READER.
This we may with good conscience
protest, that we have in every point and word, according to the measure
of that knowledge which it pleased Almighty God to give us, faithfully
rendered the text, and in all hard places most sincerely expounded the
same. For God is our witness that we have by all means endeavoured to
set forth the purity of the word and right sense of the Holy Ghost for
the edifying of the brethren in faith and charity. Now, as we have
chiefly observed the sense, and laboured always to restore it to all
integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of the words,
considering that the Apostles, who spake and wrote to the Gentiles in
the Greek tongue, rather constrained them to the lively phrase of the
Hebrew, than enterprised far by mollifying their language to speak as
the Gentiles did and for this and other causes we have in many places
reserved the Hebrew phrases, notwithstanding that they may seem somewhat
hard in their ears that are not well practised and also delight in the
sweet sounding phrases of the holy Scriptures. Yet, lest either the
simple should be discouraged, or the malicious have any occasion of just
cavillation, seeing some translations read after one sort, and some
after another, whereas all may serve to good purpose and edification, we
have in the margin noted that diversity of speech or reading which may
also seem agreeable to the mind of the Holy Ghost and proper for our
language.
... THE "BREECHES BIBLE"
Genesis 3:7. Then the eyes of
them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they
sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves breeches.
From the last word in this extract the absurd custom has arisen of
calling this Bible, and the subsequent editions of it, the "Breeches
Bible." This is akin to the senseless habit of calling the great
Gutenberg Latin Bible, the first book ever printed from movable type,
the Mazarine Bible, because a copy was found in the library of that
prelate. It is true that all preceding translations had used the word
"apurns" (aprons), but the term breeches was used in Wycliffe's MS.
Bible, and in Caxton's edition of the Golden Legend, printed in 1483.
The true title of this translation is that which places it in the proper
historical setting and reveals also something of its nature, viz., the
Geneva Bible.
The reader will also notice that here, for the first time in the Old
Testament, we get the text broken up into verses; and the fact that this
was the first Bible to introduce the misleading and injurious practice
is the most serious charge that can be brought against the masterpiece
of Whittingham and his associates.
ON THE ANNOTATIONS.
It was only to be expected that the notes
in this Bible should exhibit some decided traces of Calvinistic
doctrine, but on the whole they are not so strongly tinged in this
respect as might be expected. It is true that two or three are sometimes
paraded, as though they were fair samples of the whole.
For example, on Rom. ix. 15 the note is: –
As the only will and purpose of God is the chief cause
of election and reprobation: so His free mercie in Christ is an inferior
cause of salvation, and the hardening of the heart an inferior cause of
damnation.
On Rev. ix. 3: –
Locusts are false teachers, heretics, worldly, subtle
prelates, with monks, friars, cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops,
bishops, doctors, bachelors, and masters, which forsake Christ to
maintain false doctrine.
But in the great mass of instances the notes are careful, scholarly,
and very well calculated to instruct and edify the reader. Many of them
were transferred bodily into the Bishop’s Bible of 1568. Not
unfrequently there is a pithy directness about them, as, for example,
that on Genesis xiii. 13. "Lot, thinking to get paradise, found hell."
Moreover, in both text and notes, the English is well worthy careful
study. No earlier Bible can compare with it in regard to the helps
afforded to the reader. The only illustrations admitted were cuts of the
tabernacle and its contents, and the temple of Ezekiel, and several maps
very good for their day.
It is curious to observe that the text of the 1557 New Testament is
not the one included in the 1560. As noted above, the 1557 text was the
work of Whittingham, but the text of the New Testament in the 1560 Bible
shows many evidences that Whittingham's work underwent careful and
thorough revision at the hands of those associated with him in the
larger work of the Bible.
No competent reader can spend an hour or two in careful examination
of a copy of the first edition of the Geneva Bible without coming to the
conviction that it thoroughly deserved the enormous success which it
finally achieved. It was the first Bible printed in Roman type, and it
was a convenient, handy size. It embodied the best Biblical scholarship
of the time, and was in this respect a considerable advance upon all
previous editions. The basis is undeniably Tindale's version and the
Great Bible, but it abounds in evidences of Hebrew scholarship after
Archbishop Parker's death, and after editions had been printed abroad in
1568, 1569, and 1570, it ran through considerably over 150 editions, and
continued to be printed until the middle of the seventeenth century. It
was to the men who fought and conquered in the struggle with Charles I.
what the Tindale Testaments were to the reformers of Henry VIII's day.
|
|
