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ITHE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Some Account of its Origin 
 and Various Versions 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HENRY NETTLETON 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL 
 OF YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2008 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arGliive.org/details/englishbiblesomeOOnettricli 
 
THE ENGLISH BIBLE 
 
 Some Account of its Origin 
 and Various Versions 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HENRY NETTLETON 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL 
 OF YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 
K^' 
 
 Copyright, 191 i, 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 t c * c .^e ., ' 
 
NOTE 
 
 The following pages are a reprint of the In- 
 troduction to the original edition of Old Testament 
 Narratives (Henry Holt and Company, 1909). 
 The aim has been to indicate briefly the processes 
 by which the Bible has come into its modern Eng- 
 lish form. I have tried to present to the general 
 reader many of the chief results of scholarship in 
 fields in which I can make no pretense to original 
 investigation. Of the more general and popular 
 works which I have found helpful I may mention 
 especially A General View of the History of the 
 English Bible, by Brooke F. Westcott, D.D., and 
 The Bible as English Literature, by Professor J. 
 H. Gardiner. I am indebted to Professor C. C. 
 Torrey, of Yale, for valuable comments on my 
 manuscript and proof. 
 
 January 28, igii. 
 
 242449 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The most obvious fact about the English Bible 
 is that it is a translation. Translation usually im- 
 plies distinct loss in both the letter and spirit of the 
 original, but the English Bible has been the most 
 vital influence upon the thought and expression of 
 the English race. Its vigor and spontaneity ani- 
 mate alike religious and secular literature. Its 
 vocabulary and phrase are part of the genius of the 
 language. Since it is, however, a translation, some 
 account should first be given of the origin and 
 development of the original Bible. 
 
 I. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 The word " Bible," singular in usage, but plural in 
 derivation, suggests at the outset that '' The Book " 
 is really a unified collection of books. The most 
 casual reader cannot fail to note division not merely 
 between the Old and New Testaments, but between 
 different parts of the same Testament. Certain 
 current phrases, furthermore, emphasize the group- 
 relationship of individual books — *' the books of 
 Moses," " the Gospels," '' the Epistles." One of 
 the most familiar verses in the Sermon on the 
 Mount reads thus : " Therefore all things whatso- 
 ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 
 so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." 
 
jciv < . INTRODUCTION 
 
 Later in the Gospel of Matthew occurs this passage : 
 '' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
 This is the first and great commandment. And the 
 second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself. On these two commandments hang all 
 the law and the prophets." In each quotation the 
 final phrase is significant. It points to a distinction 
 between parts of the Old Testament as familiar 
 then as the distinction between the two Testaments 
 is to-day. In its more extended form, ** The Law, 
 the Prophets, and the Other Writings (or, the Rest 
 of the Books)," the phrase marks with reasonable 
 accuracy the three major divisions in the formation 
 of the Old Testament. 
 
 The processes of development within each divi- 
 sion may be illustrated sufficiently by some com- 
 ment upon the so-called '' five books of Moses." 
 Whoever reads the account of the death of Moses 
 in the last chapter of Deuteronomy sees that the 
 tradition which ascribes the authorship of the first 
 five books of the Bible to Moses cannot be accepted 
 literally in complete detail. In an earlier chapter 
 in Deuteronomy, where Moses bids the Levites place 
 the " book of the law " which he had written " in 
 the side of the ark of the covenant," the reference 
 is evidently not to the complete Pentateuch, or 
 -'* five books of Moses," in the form now known 
 to the English reader. Obviously the Pentateuch 
 developed gradually, assuming final form only after 
 many transitional stages. Hebrew literature fol- 
 lowed a natural course. With primitive peoples 
 records are transmitted rather by oral tradition 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 than by written document. With progress from a 
 nomadic state to more formal pohtical organization 
 comes the need of permanent laws and records. It 
 has been claimed that the earliest written record in 
 the Pentateuch was probably the " ten words of 
 Moses," afterwards expanded into the Ten Com- 
 mandments. At all events, as the legal and cere- 
 monial aspects of Hebrew life and religion devel- 
 oped, there was a growing necessity for definite 
 written documents. Broadly speaking, the process 
 that went on was the constant transmission and 
 revision, from age to age, of ever increasing literary 
 material — history, law, poetry, religious ritual — 
 until the original elements were moulded into a 
 composite mass. 
 
 Higher Criticism has been busy with the task of 
 resolving this composite into its original elements. 
 Its general conclusions may be briefly indicated. 
 The Pentateuch, in its final form, comes chiefly 
 from the hands of priestly writers during and after 
 the Hebrew exile in Babylon. Previously the 
 various documents included in it had undergone 
 several revisions. Four writers, or sets of writers, 
 can be distinguished in the final composite. Of 
 these the earliest are designated as the Jahvist (or 
 Jehovist), who uses " Jahveh," and the Elohist, 
 who uses " Elohim," to render " God." They date 
 respectively from about 850 and 750 B.C. Their 
 work, found chiefly in the Pentateuch and> Joshua, 
 was united by a later hand. The third writer, the 
 Deuteronomist, dates from Josiah's promulgation 
 of the original Deuteronomy in 621 B.C. Finally 
 come the Priestly revisers, especially about the time 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Ezra and Nehemiah, in the fifth century b.c. 
 Various considerations of statement, style, and 
 viewpoint aid the BibHcal scholar in distinguishing 
 the original elements thus merged in the final com- 
 posite record. 
 
 After the student of literature has become, some- 
 what familiar with the general processes of evolu- 
 tion of the text of the Bible, his inquiry is apt to 
 turn toward the reasons for the inclusion of some 
 and the rejection of other books in the formation 
 of the accepted Bible. The word " Canon," mean- 
 ing in the original Greek a " straight rod," is figu- 
 ratively applied to those Scriptures which are ac- 
 cepted as genuinely of sacred authority, in distinc- 
 tion from the " apocryphal " books of uncertain 
 authority. In 621 b.c. King Josiah took the '' book 
 of the law " found by the high priest, read it in 
 solemn assembly to his people, and " made a cove- 
 nant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and 
 to keep his commandments and his testimonies and 
 his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, 
 to perform the words of this covenant that were 
 written in this book. And all the people stood to 
 the covenant." (2 Kings xxiii. 3.) The act marks 
 the acceptance of certain written words as invested 
 with peculiar sanctity. 
 
 During the period of the Babylonian exile, in the 
 sixth century b.c, the priests developed more and 
 more the authority of the Law. About the middle 
 of the next century there returned from Babylon 
 to Jerusalem with the second section of the Hebrew 
 exiles, *' a ready scribe in the law of Moses " named 
 Ezra. He had *' prepared his heart to seek the law 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel 
 statutes and judgments." It has been suggested 
 that he was " the final redactor of the Pentateuch, 
 separating it from the historical work consisting of 
 Joshua and the subsequent writings." He seems 
 at least a central figure in the establishment of the 
 " Law " as the final authority for the guidance of 
 his race. 
 
 The second division, or " layer," in the Old Testa- 
 ment Canon — the '' Prophets " — is linked with the 
 name of Nehemiah. The second chapter of the 
 second book of the Maccabees records that 
 Nehemiah, '' founding a library, gathered together 
 the acts of the kings, and the prophets, and of 
 David, and the epistles of the kings concern- 
 ing the holy gifts." Nehemiah's collection included 
 probably the historical books beginning with Joshua, 
 most of the prophetic books, and some writings that 
 did not establish themselves in the Canon. Later 
 works, like the book of Jonah, were afterwards 
 added, but in the second century B.C. the frequent 
 use of the phrase, *' The Law and the Prophets," 
 seems to show that the second division of the Old 
 Testament had been completed, and accepted side 
 by side with the " Law." 
 
 The third division of the Old Testament includes 
 the " Other Writings," or " The Rest of the Books." 
 Their varying character and contents raise many 
 details of controversy, but the general basis for their 
 inclusion in the Canon is largely their connection 
 with the previously accepted books. Thus the 
 Psalms gain authority by association with David, 
 and Proverbs with Solomon. Disputes as to the 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 inclusion of such books as Esther and Ecclesiastes 
 did, indeed, persist vigorously until about the end 
 of the first century of the Christian era, and spas- 
 modically even later. Furthermore, even the final 
 establishment of the regular Hebrew Canon did not 
 settle the matter for all sects. The Samaritans 
 accepted only the Pentateuch, while the Alexandrian 
 Jews used the Greek version of the Scriptures, the 
 '' Septuagint," which intermingled canonical and 
 apocryphal books. 
 
 Josephus, the historian, in a memorable, but not 
 wholly accurate passage {Contra Apion. i. 8), shows 
 the attitude of many toward the Hebrew Canon in 
 the latter part of the first century a.d. : " For we 
 have not an innumerable multitude of books among 
 us . . . but only twenty-two books, which con- 
 tain the records of all the past times : which are 
 justly believed to be divine." His added statement, 
 that since the days of Artaxerxes — in whose reign 
 Ezra returned from Babylon — " no one has been so 
 bold as either to add anything to them, to take any- 
 thing from them, or to make any change in them," 
 is disproved by the history of his own century, but 
 there were many to share the belief that the Hebrew 
 Canon was closed. The modern reader notices the 
 discrepancy between the thirty-nine books of the 
 Old Testament, as they now stand, and the number 
 given by Josephus. His list includes five books of 
 Moses, thirteen of the Prophets, and four of 
 " hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of 
 human life." The number twenty-two corresponds 
 with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 
 and is usual with early Christian writers. In the 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 Hebrew Bible, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles 
 counted as single, not double, books and there was 
 other coupling of books which stand separate in the 
 English Bible — as, for instance, Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 Jeremiah and Lamentations. Questions of order 
 and arrangement remained accordingly for later 
 settlement, but, for present purposes, the history of 
 the Hebrew Old Testament ends with the establish- 
 ment of the Canon. 
 
 II. THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE VULGATE. 
 
 Two versions of the Bible in other languages 
 have special significance in the history of the English 
 Bible. The most important Greek version, the 
 *' Septuagint," owes its name to the tradition that 
 it was the work of some seventy men. In its elab- 
 orated form the story went so far as to claim that 
 the translation was made independently by seventy- 
 two Jews, working in separate cells, and that their 
 results when compared were found identical, and 
 hence accepted as inspired. The marked inequal- 
 ities of different parts of the work sufficiently dis- 
 prove this legend and seem to support the belief that 
 the version was the product of different times as 
 well as of different hands. Probably begun about 
 three hundred years before the Christian era, the 
 Septuagint was the version used by the Alexandrian 
 Jews and by the early Christians. From it were 
 taken practically all the quotations from the Old 
 Testament which occur in the Greek New Testa- 
 ment. In the first place, then, it ultimately, though 
 indirectly, influenced the English translations of the 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 Greek New Testament in form of literary ex- 
 pression. In the second place, it gave the modern 
 order of arrangement of the Old Testament books. 
 The Hebrew Canon, it will be recalled, had arranged 
 its three layers in chronological order of develop- 
 ment — the Law, the Prophets, the Other Writings. 
 The Septuagint substituted a literary rearrangement 
 — the historical books in proper sequence, then the 
 poetic and wisdom books, and finally the prophets. 
 In the third place, the Septuagint supplied to 
 English translators the apocryphal books, which 
 were not included in the Hebrew Canon but which 
 possess at least marked literary importance. 
 
 Far more significant, however, in influence upon 
 the English Bible was the great Latin version known 
 as the ** Vulgate." The name, derived from the 
 Latin '' vulgata " (supply " editio " or *'versio"), 
 signifies that it was the commonly known version. 
 Down to the time of the Reformation, in fact, it 
 v^as the Bible of the European Church. Toward 
 the close of the fourth century a.d., the various 
 Latin texts of the Scriptures had become so much 
 corrupted that revision was imperative. For this 
 important work the Pope selected the great scholar 
 best known as Saint Jerome. Jerome's work con- 
 sisted partly of revision of previous texts and partly 
 of direct translation from the original Hebrew of 
 the Old Testament. At first Jerome's Bible 
 encountered violent opposition in some quarters, but 
 eventually it established itself as the recognized 
 version of the Western Church. In process of 
 time errors of copyists and commentators corrupted 
 Jerome's text so that there grew up various dis- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 cordant versions, and there was authoritative re- 
 vision of the Vulgate text at the close of the six- 
 teenth century. 
 
 The Vulgate vitally influenced the English Bible 
 because it was the Bible of the Early English trans- 
 lators. The virile strength and rich beauty of 
 Jerome's Latin animated and colored the literary 
 style of Tyndale and his followers. Jerome's 
 Latin was not classical, but that Low Latin which 
 admitted more colloquial forms and greater flex- 
 ibility of word-order and construction. Further- 
 more, Jerome's work was important in giving to 
 the varying styles of earlier hands a common unity 
 of expression. The Vulgate influenced directly the 
 phrasing of specific passages even in the King James 
 version, and in a larger sense stamped its impress 
 infallibly on the general literary style of the English 
 translators. 
 
 III. ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon literature contains various versions 
 of parts of the Bible, ranging from the free Para- 
 phrase of Csedmon, the seventh-century monk who, 
 according to the venerable Bede, " sang the creation 
 of the world, the origin of man, and all the history 
 of Genesis," together with many other things, to 
 Bede's own translation of the Gospel according to 
 St. John. It is characteristic of that devout spirit 
 which linked naturally the sacred with the secular 
 that Alfred the Great prefixed to his " Book of 
 Laws," in somewhat altered form, the Ten Com- 
 mandments of Moses. In general, the Anglo-Saxon 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 Biblical versions now extant include the Psalter, the 
 Gospels, the Pentateuch^ and some of the Old Testa- 
 ment historical books. Doubtless there were other 
 versions now lost, but though such works may have 
 fostered the spirit of devotion, they can have had 
 little tangible influence upon the letter of the text 
 of the English Bible. After the Norman Conquest 
 there were poetical paraphrases, like the Ormulum, 
 written by the monk Orm, or Ormin, about the 
 beginning of the thirteenth century, and finally 
 some fourteenth-century versions of the Psalter, 
 the earHest in English prose. 
 
 The first complete English translation of the 
 Bible was primarily the work of John Wyclifife, 
 the " Morning Star of the Reformation." Assisted 
 by Nicholas of Hereford, who translated much 
 of the Old Testament and of the Apocrypha, he 
 rendered the Bible from the Latin of the Vulgate 
 into English, about 1382. Wycliffe died in 1384, 
 and a few years later John Purvey revised the 
 work. Copies of the versions circulated in manu- 
 script, despite the opposition of the Church and its 
 prosecution of many who persisted in owning or 
 reading the Bible in English. 
 
 From the scholarly standpoint the chief defect of 
 Wycliffe's Bible is that it was translated not from 
 the original Hebrew and Greek, but from the Latin 
 of the imperfect Vulgate texts then current. From 
 the popular standpoint its chief drawback was that 
 it had to circulate in manuscript. Two mighty 
 influences of the fifteenth century tended to remove 
 these obstacles to the advance of the English Bible. 
 The Renaissance, or revival of learning in Europe, 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 spread the study of Greek among scholars ; the 
 discovery of the art of printing heralded the time 
 when the Bible should become generally accessible 
 to the people. The fall of Constantinople, in 1453, 
 turned the tide of Greek scholarship to Italy. 
 Thence, scholars like Colet and Grocyn, who had 
 studied in Italy, brought to England the new 
 enthusiasm for learning. Oxford and Cambridge 
 began to teach Greek, and finally, in 15 16, Erasmus 
 published the first edition of his Greek New Testa- 
 ment. Later editions were used by Luther and 
 Tyndale. Fortunately, to Colet and Erasmus, 
 scholarship was the means to a great end. For 
 centuries theologians had been, to use Bacon's 
 phrase, cymini sectores, " hairsplitters." Colet and 
 Erasmus declared that the Bible could be readily 
 understood by all and should not be reserved for a 
 handful of theologians. " I totally dissent," wrote 
 Erasmus, ^' from those who are unwilling that the 
 Sacred Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, 
 should be read by private individuals, as if Christ 
 had taught such subtle doctrines that they can with 
 difficulty be understood by a very few theologians, 
 or as if the strength of the Christian religion lay in 
 men's ignorance of it." 
 
 The teachings of Colet and Erasmus found yet 
 more powerful utterance in William Tyndale. 
 Whether he studied directly under Colet at Oxford 
 and under Erasmus at Cambridge is questionable, 
 but at all events his years at both universities 
 brought him close to the enthusiasm they had 
 kindled. The desire of Erasmus that the husband- 
 man might sing parts of the Scriptures at his 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 plough is echoed in Tyndale's remark to a " learned 
 man " : " If God spare my life, ere many years I 
 will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know 
 more of the Scripture than thou doest." Believing 
 that *' it was impossible to establish the lay people 
 in any truth except the Scripture were plainly 
 laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that 
 they might see the process, order and meaning of 
 the text," Tyndale set himself to translate the Bible 
 into English. Unable to accomplish his task either 
 in the country or in London, where he vainly sought 
 the aid of the Bishop of London, he left England 
 forever. Even on the Continent danger threatened. 
 Enemies interrupted his attempt to print his work 
 in Cologne, but in the Lutheran city of Worms he 
 completed both the annotated quarto edition of the 
 New Testament begun at Cologne and an octavo 
 edition without marginal notes — the first English 
 versions translated from the original Greek. 
 
 Despite warnings to Henry VIIL of the impend- 
 ing *' infection and danger," despite determined 
 efforts to destroy or to exclude Tyndale's trans- 
 lation, copies of his New Testament arrived in 
 England early in 1526, and circulated rapidly. 
 Attacks upon the translation as heretical and con- 
 fiscation and burning of copies of the work were 
 alike ineffective in stilling the tide of awakening 
 popular interest. Some four years later Tyndale 
 published a translation from the Hebrew of the Pen- 
 tateuch, and in 1534 a revision of his New Testa- 
 ment. When Tyndale's Testament was burned in 
 England he wrote : " In burning the New Testament, 
 they did none other thing than I looked for; no 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 more shall they do if they burn me also, if it be 
 God's will it shall so be." The words were pro- 
 phetic. Betrayed in Antwerp, Tyndale met death at 
 the stake in 1536. In his Book of Martyrs, Foxe 
 rightly called him " an apostle of England." 
 
 Tyndale was the father of the modern English 
 Bible. He fixed essentially its literary style. Study 
 of his vocabulary and phrase emphasizes the resem- 
 blances rather than the differences between his text 
 and later versions. Clearness, simplicity, vigor, 
 vividness, dignity — these were the qualities which 
 Tyndale impressed upon the English Bible. To 
 other revisers we owe countless and important 
 changes in detail; to Tyndale we owe the very 
 character of the noblest English prose. Scholarly 
 research has shown the remarkable influence of 
 Tyndale upon the Authorised Version, even in the 
 reproduction of faults and inconsistencies in his 
 rendering. Partisans of Wycliffe have sometimes 
 sought to transfer to him much of the credit due to 
 Tyndale, but few who study the biography of Tyn- 
 dale will be disposed to question the sincerity of his 
 statement that he had '' no man to counterfeit 
 [imitate], neither was holpen with English of any 
 that had interpreted the same or such like thing in 
 the Scripture beforetime." 
 
 Tyndale never translated the entire Bible. The 
 first complete translation into English by a single 
 hand was published by Miles Coverdale, in 1535. In 
 the decade since Tyndale's New Testament had ap- 
 peared, Henry VIII. had been proclaimed supreme 
 head of the Church of England, and had broken 
 with the Pope, who had refused to sanction his 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 marriage to Anne Boleyn. Tyndale's work had 
 gone forth without even bearing his name; Cover- 
 dale was able to issue his work under the patronage 
 of Thomas Cromwell, and with a dedication to the 
 king. Coverdale's translation was not direct, but 
 was based on " sundry translations, not only in 
 Latin, but also of the Dutch [German] interpreters," 
 and on Tyndale. His own modest disclaimers show 
 that he spoke not with authority, but as one of the 
 scribes. His chief services were in maintaining 
 Tyndale's simplicity of diction, while imparting 
 greater finish and rhythm of phrase, and in com- 
 pleting the Old Testament translation. 
 
 In 1537 appeared Matthew's Bible. Possibly the 
 name of Thomas Matthew, which stands on the 
 title-page as that of the translator, was only assumed 
 by John Rogers, who edited the work. In all 
 probability Matthew's Bible contains for the first 
 time a translation by Tyndale of the books from 
 Joshua through Chronicles, which he might readily 
 have intrusted to Rogers during his association 
 with him in Antwerp. In general, Matthew's Bible 
 followed the translation of Tyndale, supplying the 
 missing parts from Coverdale's complete version.^ 
 
 Tyndale's translation had been vigorously assailed 
 by the king; Coverdale's first edition, though irot 
 directly sanctioned by the king, was not suppressed, 
 and the editions of 1537 were " set forth with the 
 king's most gracious license;" Matthew's Bible, 
 though it contained Tyndale's condemned work, was 
 ** allowed by his [the king's] authority to be bought 
 
 ^ Of minor importance is Taverner's Bible, printed in 
 London in 1539, based chiefly on Matthew's. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 and read within this reahii." Still more authorita- 
 tive sanction by the government was accorded to 
 the '' Great Bible " of 1539. Thomas Cromwell, 
 who had been instrumental in securing the king's 
 license for the English Bible, sent Miles Coverdale 
 to Paris to prepare a new version based on 
 Matthew's. The work was interrupted by the 
 power of the Inquisition, but Coverdale and Graf- 
 ton, his printer, escaped to London with workmen, 
 presses, and most of their printed sheets, and com- 
 pleted the work. In 1540 a second edition appeared, 
 with a preface by Archbishop Cranmer, and though 
 the " Great Bible " was due mainly to Coverdale's 
 labor and Cromwell's zealous support, the work is 
 frequently known as " Cranmer's Bible." When 
 the king issued a favorable declaration " to be read 
 by all curates upon the publishing of the Bible in 
 English," when six Bibles were set up in St. Paul's 
 Church to be read by the people, and when six 
 editions of the Great Bible were printed in 1540 and 
 1 541, it seemed that the English Bible had become 
 at last an open book. 
 
 The current so favorable to the English Bible 
 soon turned. In 1543 Parliament passed a stringent 
 act restricting the reading of the Scriptures, pro- 
 scribed Tyndale's work, and required the excision 
 of notes in other copies of the Bible. Three years 
 later Coverdale's New Testament came also under 
 the ban. The death of Henry and the accession 
 of Edward VI., in 1547, checked the reaction. In 
 the six and a half years of Edward's brief reign 
 there appeared thirteen editions of the entire Bible 
 and thirty-five of the New Testament. The young 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 king not merely removed Henry's restrictions upon 
 the use of the Bible, but required that copies should 
 be set up for reading in the churches. 
 
 In the reign of Mary the pendulum swung back 
 again to the side of reaction. Rogers and Cranmer 
 suffered death, Coverdale and many other English 
 Protestants became refugees on the Continent, and 
 the English press was shut against the Bible. 
 Geneva, the home of Calvin, was a natural refuge 
 for the English Calvinists. From that little band 
 of exiles came a new translation of the Bible of 
 wide-reaching significance. The Genevan Testa- 
 ment, probably the work of Whittingham, who had 
 married Calvin's sister, was published in 1557. An 
 interesting detail connected with the work is that 
 it gave to English readers for the first time the 
 modern system of short verses in the arrangement 
 of the text. With the accession of Elizabeth, in 
 1558, most of the Protestant exiles returned to 
 England, but. two or three remained with Whit- 
 tingham to complete the Biblical translation. The 
 Genevan Bible ^ was printed in 1560. Everything 
 seemed to conspire in favor of its success. The 
 work had been accomplished under circumstances in 
 reality favorable. The very exile of the translators 
 deepened their solemn devotion to their task, and in 
 Geneva their labors were uninterrupted by political 
 turmoil at home. The work was brought forth 
 after Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne. It 
 was printed in Roman letter, with chapters divided 
 
 ' Popularly, it is known as the " Breeches Bible," on 
 account of the rendering " made themselves breeches,'* in 
 the third chapter of Genesis. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 into verses, and in quarto form instead of in the 
 unwieldy folios that had preceded it. The marginal 
 comments were clear and to the point. The dom- 
 inant note of the translation was faithful accuracy 
 to the original texts. Although it did not supplant 
 the Great Bible in English ecclesiastical use, the 
 Genevan Bible was so popular that some seventy 
 editions of all descriptions were issued during Eliz- 
 abeth's reign. For the larger part of a century it 
 was the household Bible of the English people. 
 
 The popularity of the Genevan Bible soon brought 
 to light the imperfections of the Great Bible, which 
 was still in Church use since the Genevan Bible 
 was colored by traces of Calvinistic theology in its 
 notes. Archbishop Parker determined with the aid 
 of various scholars to make a satisfactory revision. 
 Since many of his helpers were bishops, the work 
 which finally appeared in 1568 was known as the 
 Bishops' Bible. As different books were assigned 
 to different men, the translation wa^ not uniform, 
 and though it obtained the sanction of the Church, 
 it deservedly failed to supplant the Genevan Bible 
 in general use. 
 
 In 1582 was published at Rheims a translation of 
 the New Testament made by Gregory Martin and 
 other Oxford scholars, of the Roman Catholic faith. 
 William Allen, founder of the Romish Seminary 
 at Douai, which was transferred, in 1578, for a 
 time to Rheims, sought to reestablish the power of 
 the Church of Rome in England. The translation 
 which he doubtless suggested was, accordingly, to 
 be based on the Vulgate, the accepted text of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. The appearance of the 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 Old Testament translation, at Douai, was delayed 
 until 1609-10. These works are usually known as 
 the Rhemish New Testament and the Douai Bible. 
 In versions based on the Vulgate it was natural that 
 Latin diction should strongly color the translation. 
 Many renderings of the Rhemish New Testament 
 were retained, in the Authorised Version, with 
 marked gain in richness and variety of phrase. 
 Thus the work of scholars on the Continent directly 
 aided the next translation in England, the King 
 James or Authorised Version. 
 
 IV. THE KING JAMES OR AUTHORISED VERSION. 
 
 At the accession of James I., the two English 
 versions of the Bible in widest use were the Bishops' 
 Bible, sanctioned for ecclesiastical use, and the 
 Genevan Bible, the common version of the people. 
 This unfortunate conflict of authority was soon to 
 be settled. In January, 1604, there was held the 
 Hampton Court Conference, convoked by the new 
 king to settle differences between the Puritans and 
 the Church of England. Among the minor pro- 
 ceedings one developed ultimately into paramount 
 importance. Dr. Reynolds, President of Corpus 
 Christi College, Oxford, a Puritan leader, *' moved 
 his Majesty that there might be a new translation 
 of the Bible, because those which were allowed in 
 the reign of King Henry VIII. and Edward VI. 
 were corrupt, and not answerable to the truth of 
 the original." Although the Conference adjourned 
 without further steps in this matter, the king evi- 
 dently approved the suggestion. On July 22 he 
 wrote to the Bishop of London that he had *' ap- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 pointed certain learned men, to the number of four 
 and fifty, for the translating of the Bible," and in- 
 structed him to enlist the aid of learned scholars, 
 and to provide preferment in the Church for the 
 translators. Serious work on the revision hardly 
 began before 1607. The lists of translators now 
 extant give but forty-seven names instead of the 
 fifty-four of the king's letter, and doubtless there 
 were various modifications of the original plans. 
 The work was finally executed by six companies, 
 two at Westminster, two at Cambridge, and two 
 at Oxford. They divided among them the books 
 not merely of the Old and New Testaments but of 
 the Apocryp^.a. The rules of revision provided 
 that the Bishops' Bible " be followed, and as little 
 altered as the truth of the original will permit," but 
 " these translations to be used when they agree 
 better with the text than the Bishops' Bible: Tin- 
 dale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whitchurch's,^ 
 Geneva." No marginal notes were to be afifixed 
 save for explanation of difficult Hebrew and Greek 
 words, but cross-references from one part of the 
 Bible to another were provided. In each company 
 the dififerent scholars were at first to work inde- 
 pendently, then to compare notes, and then to submit 
 their joint results to the other companies. Knotty 
 points were to be adjusted in a general meeting '' of 
 the chief persons of each company." The final re- 
 vision occupied nine months, and was followed by 
 the publication of the work in 161 1. 
 
 It is natural to ask what were the chief reasons 
 for the supremacy of the Authorised Version. It 
 ' Whitchurch was the printer of the Great Bible. 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 should, indeed, be remembered that it did not win 
 immediately unanimous favor. Puritans missed the 
 Calvinistic tinge of the notes and commentary of 
 the Genevan Bible; others objected because they 
 thought that parts of it were unfairly rendered. 
 Within half a century, however, the Authorised 
 Version grew steadily into general acceptance. 
 Three main characteristics, at least, account for the 
 enduring vitality of the Authorised Version — depth 
 of scholarship, breadth of spirit, and beauty of 
 diction. In the first place, no previous translation 
 of the Bible had been made with equal labor or 
 scholarly research. The Address to the Reader 
 contrasts the slowness of the work with the " post- 
 ing haste " of the Septuagint, and the careful re- 
 vision with the uncorrected work of Jerome. 
 Previous translations and commentaries of English 
 and Continental scholars and the Aramaic and 
 Syriac versions were used in connection w4th the 
 original Hebrew and Greek texts. " Neither did 
 we disdain," wrote the translators, *' to revise that 
 which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil 
 that which we had hammered : but having and using 
 as great helps as were needful, and fearing no re- 
 proach for slowness, nor coveting praise for expe- 
 dition, we have at the length, through the good hand 
 of the Lord upon us, brought the work to that pass 
 that you see." 
 
 In the second place, the Authorised Version was 
 executed in a broad and sympathetic spirit. The 
 provision for the rigid restriction of marginal notes 
 tended to substitute for the Calvinistic tone of 
 the Genevan Bible and for the sectarian bias 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 elsewhere discoverable a spirit of wider tolerance. 
 Testimony seems to prove that King James objected 
 to the inclusion of marginal notes because some 
 annotations in the Genevan Bible showed scant 
 respect for the doctrine of the divine right of kings, 
 but in any case the omission of matter that might 
 excite controversy was a decided gain. It is char- 
 acteristic of the broad spirit in which the revisers 
 worked that, instead of holding to the letter of their 
 instructions, they availed themselves of the best in 
 works like the Roman Catholic Rhemish Version. 
 Puritan, Churchman, and independent scholar 
 worked in common accord, and struck a happy mean 
 between what they termed " the scrupulosity of the 
 Puritans " and " the obscurity " of some scholars. 
 Conceived in such spirit, the Authorised Version 
 became the Bible not of a particular sect, but of the 
 English people. 
 
 In the third place, the Authorised Version set the 
 highest standard in simplicity and beauty of diction. 
 Through the process of years the English Version 
 of the Bible had grown steadily in wealth of vocab- 
 ulary and flexibility of phrase. Objection has been 
 made to the frequent practice of rendering the same 
 word in various ways, but the loss in strict accuracy 
 is, from the literary standpoint, more than ofifset 
 by the gain in richness and variety of expression. 
 Never probably was the English vocabulary better 
 fitted for the translators' purpose than when it was 
 surcharged with the rich, virile, and concrete words 
 and imagery inherited from the Elizabethan period. 
 Age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite 
 variety. Subsequent additions have enormously 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 increased the vocabulary of scientific, philosophical, 
 and abstract terms, but these would have clogged 
 rather than enriched the Biblical style. The Eliza- 
 bethans and their immediate successors had to a 
 marked degree the faculty of choosing the right 
 word for the right place. The phrasing of the 
 Authorised Version has that inevitableness which 
 carries conviction. The matchless simplicity of the 
 Biblical style has been a powerful factor in main- 
 taining its influence. Not even Bunyan, who felt 
 so strongly its potency, makes such an immediate 
 and direct appeal. 
 
 Striking testimony as to " the uncommon beauty 
 and marvellous English " of the Authorised Version 
 is found in the words of the Romanist Father 
 Faber :^ *' It lives on the ear like a music that can 
 never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, 
 which the convert scarcely knows how he can 
 forego. Its felicities seem often to be almost things 
 rather than words. It is part of the national mind, 
 and the anchor of the national seriousness. . . . 
 The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent 
 traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. 
 It is the representative of a man's best moments ; 
 all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, 
 and pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him for 
 ever out of his English Bible." 
 
 V. THE REVISED VERSION. 
 
 For some two centuries and a half the Authorised 
 Version held the field with little challenge to its 
 
 « Quoted in J. Paterson Smyth's "How we got Our 
 Bible," pp. iio-iii. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxv 
 
 supremacy. When the Book of Common Prayer 
 was issued in revised form in 1662, the Psalter of 
 the Great Bible was still retained, but with few 
 exceptions the text of the 161 1 translation was 
 adopted elsewhere, as in the Gospels and Epistles. 
 In the nineteenth century, however, the multiplica- 
 tion of ancient manuscripts hitherto unknown, the 
 advance in textual scholarship, and the inevitable 
 changes in the English vocabulary began to present 
 themselves increasingly as reasons for a revision 
 of the Authorised Version. These tendencies cul- 
 minated in February, 1870, in the action taken by 
 the Convocation of Canterbury : " That a Committee 
 of both Houses be appointed, with power to confer 
 with any Committee that may be appointed by the 
 Convocation of the Northern Province, to report 
 upon the desirableness of a revision of the Author- 
 ised Version of the Old and New Testaments, 
 whether by marginal notes or otherwise, in all those 
 passages where plain and clear errors, whether in 
 the Hebrew or Greek text originally adopted by the 
 translators, or in the translation made from the 
 same, shall, on due investigation, be found to exist." 
 Though the Northern Province declined to co- 
 operate, it was determined to proceed with the work 
 of revision, dividing it between an Old Testament 
 Company and a New Testament Company. A 
 distinguished array of divines and scholars under- 
 took the work, both companies holding their first 
 meetings in June, 1870. Not long afterwards steps 
 were taken to enlist the aid of American scholars, 
 and two American companies began their labors in 
 October, 1872. The revision of the New Testa- 
 
xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 ment was completed in 1880, and the entire Revised 
 Version of the Bible appeared in May, 1885. 
 
 The very name, Revised Version, shows that the 
 intent was to make not a new translation of the 
 Bible, but a revision of the accepted translation. 
 Of the general principles adopted by the revisers 
 it is significant that the first two are these: " i. To 
 introduce as few alterations as possible into the 
 text of the Authorised Version consistently with 
 faithfulness. 2. To limit, as far as possible, the 
 expression of such alterations to the language of 
 the Authorised and earlier English Versions." 
 Whether the Revised Version will ultimately sup- 
 plant the Authorised Version is a question to be 
 determined in the future. The superior scholarship 
 and textual accuracy of the revision is conceded 
 almost without question. From the literary stand- 
 point, the greatest gain seems to be in the emphasis 
 upon literary construction, as in the grouping of 
 many verses into a single paragraph with reference 
 to the thought, and in recognition of the dis- 
 tinction between prose and verse in Hebrew litera- 
 ture. Notwithstanding the many merits of the 
 Revised Version, the fact remains that from the 
 literary viewpoint it must still concede the pride of 
 place to the Authorised Version. It is the Author- 
 ised Version which for almost three centuries has 
 been an integral part of English literature, the 
 source of endless literary reference, the crown- 
 ing achievement of English prose. Gain in pre- 
 cision of rendering in the Revised Version has 
 not outweighed the sacrifice of somewhat of the 
 breadth and elemental vigor of the King James 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxvii 
 
 Version. Whether, as has been suggested, the 
 spirit of scholarly revisers in Uiese latter days 
 sinks inevitably below that of men who stood 
 close to martyrs whose blood had consecrated the 
 pages of the Bible translation, or whether modern 
 imitation lacks Elizabethan virility of diction are 
 questions not to be settled by mathematical proof. 
 But, at least for our day and generation, the Bible 
 of English Literature is still the Authorised Version 
 of 1611. 
 
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