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A translators' notes for the King James Bible. Related Stories. How Millennials Are Reinventing the Priesthood. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. These inspired the brilliant young scholar William Tyndale to try and print the New Testament in English, but the reigning king in England, Henry VIII , was still very much against the Protestant movement at this time so Tyndale fell under suspicion of heresy and fled to Germany in the s.
Tyndale left some Old Testament translations in manuscript and — though he was burned as a heretic in the Low Countries in — much of his translation of the New Testament passed almost unchanged into the version. Coverdale did not know enough Hebrew to tackle the Old Testament afresh, but his translation of the German Psalms became an English liturgical classic. Here is the royal supremacy in action: there is no sign of the pope.
All these s editions rely heavily on the work of Tyndale and Coverdale. Here we see a pattern being established: where translators did not have all the linguistic skills necessary, they improvised, using what was already available.
Printing had vastly increased the number of inexpensive copies that could be sold, so scholars and publishers alike saw a commercial opportunity, not just a religious one. However, commissioning a translation of the whole text of the Bible with a uniform prose style would need considerable resources to support academics for the length of time required.
Meanwhile, the best that publishers could offer was an amalgam of different pieces of translation. Anglo-Saxon versions of the Gospels and Psalms become the first vernacular scriptures. The Lollard reform movement, led by John Wycliffe d , produces two English manuscript versions which closely follow the wording of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
Appearing in , it is known as the Gutenberg Bible. The Great Bible of is published as a lectern Bible intended for use in churches. William Whittingham, exiled in Geneva, publishes in a New Testament, divided into verses for the first time. In he produces the Breeches Bible. It is still used worldwide.
Such developments were brought to a juddering halt on the execution of Thomas Cromwell in The conservative faction at court were suddenly returned to power, along with the Latin Vulgate for official use. Yet by now, printing had made it virtually impossible for any government to control the translations that people had already bought for home use.
For the first time the text was divided into numbered verses for easy reference, and printed in Roman type. It remained influential under Elizabeth and many passages were re-used in the Authorised Version.
The translators worked book by book, without much co-ordination, so the translation varied in quality. Soon they were able to read their own version of the New Testament — courtesy of a translation provided by the English Catholic college at Reims which later moved to Douai in An English Old Testament followed in Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament. Tyndale made some controversial translation choices, but the merits of his work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English including the King James Version.
When Mary I succeeded to the throne in , she returned the Church of England to the Roman Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country, some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship. These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible.
Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in , the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible became painfully apparent. While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age.
It was at this meeting that the proposal for a new translation of the Bible was first raised. It was at this meeting a new English version was proposed in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England.
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