CHAPTER XVII

THE PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLE 1525-1539

As time went on and copies of the Bible in English multiplied, its influence on the thoughts and language of the people increased likewise, and this, while primarily due to religion, was due also to the interest of the people in a kind of literature that took hold on their hearts. Later, May 6, 1541, after Tindale's and Coverdale's and the Great Bible had been printed, Cromwell, as Vicar General, by authority of Henry VIII notified every curate "that one book of the whole Bible, of the largest volume in English, should be set up in some convenient place within the church." Day after day crowds gathered around these Bibles to hear them read aloud. "So far as the nation at large was concerned, no history, no romance, hardly any poetry save the little-known verse of Chaucer, existed in the English tongue when the Bible was ordered to be set up in churches.1"

The printing of a Bible in English, in England, during the early part of the sixteenth century, would have been dangerous for the man who did it, so, for this reason, the early editions were printed abroad, but Caxton, the first English printer, translated from Latin the popular Golden Legend, written by Jacobus de Voragine, an Italian, who died in 1298. This collection of stories of saints, martyrs, and ecclesiastics, was reprinted many times, after 1470, when the first printed 1 J. R. Green, History of the English People, vol. 3, p. 10.

edition appeared. Caxton protected himself against censure by reprinting the legends, but added to the volume many Bible stories, not in the original, and in this way made accessible in printed form much of the Bible, including stories from the Apocrypha. Caxton's Golden Legend, 1483, contains the first printing in English of any portion of the Bible. The first book printed from movable type was the Mazarin Bible, 1455-6, of Gutenberg. The first printed book bearing a date was the Psalter, 1457, of Gutenberg. In 1505 a portion of the Psalms was printed. These were in Latin. Tindale's New Testament, issued in two editions, a quarto and an octavo, both in 1525, represents the first printing of any complete division of the Bible in English.

Caxton is the authority for the statement that John of Trevisa translated the Bible, a statement repeated in the preface to the 1611 version. Caxton's statement, in the preface to Higden's Polychronicon, is that John of Trevisa at the request of "one Sir Thomas Barkley" had translated the Polychronicon, the Bible, and the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomæus Anglicus. We have two of these, but know nothing of the Bible translation.

There are several reasons why the Wycliffite versions were superseded by others. One was that much of the language became obsolete, another that they were translations from the Latin version of Jerome, the Vulgate, which, although the authoritative Bible of the Western Church, was itself a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible were printed later and thus became readily accessible to scholars.

The capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in

1453, drove to the West scholars from the capital of the Eastern Empire, where Greek learning had flourished. These scholars brought with them Greek manuscripts, and it was probably on the basis of manuscripts thus made accessible to Western Europe, which prior to this had received its Greek literature chiefly through Latin sources, that Erasmus was able to issue in 1516 his New Testament in the original Greek, with a Latin translation. He issued a second edition in 1519 with more than three hundred changes. Aldus had reprinted, at Venice in 1518, the first edition, with over two hundred corrections. The third edition in 1522 contains for the first time the verse I John, 5:7, which had long been in the Vulgate, but could not be found in any early Greek manuscript. It appears with differences in two manuscripts, one that of Dr. Moulfort, probably of the fifteenth century, and one in the Vatican, of about the same age. From the former Erasmus took it. The Complutensian New Testament, the first printed Greek Testament, although printed 1514-17, was not published until 1520 when Pope Leo X sanctioned it. Erasmus used it in preparing his fourth edition in 1527, and a fifth, differing from it in only four places, in 1535. The fourth edition of Erasmus was the most important.

Aldus printed the Septuagint in 1518. The Old Testament had been printed in Hebrew, the Psalms in 1477 at Bologna; the Law in 1482; the Hebrew Scriptures in 1488 at Soncino Lombardy; in 1491-93 at Naples; in 1494 at Brescia. In 1518 and 1525 the Old Testament was printed in Hebrew under the direction of the Rabbis. Between 1514 and 1517 the Complutensian Polyglot (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), had been printed at Alcala (Latin Complutum), in Spain, under

the care of Cardinal Ximenes. This consisted of (1) the Hebrew text of the Old Testament with the Aramaic parts, (2) the Targum of Onkelos to the Pentateuch, (3) the Septuagint, (4) the Vulgate, (5) the Greek New Testament. Latin translations of the Septuagint and the Targum were printed with them.

With this array of original sources, which had not been accessible to Wycliffe, the way was open for a translation of the Bible into English from Hebrew and Greek. Luther published the New Testament in German in 1522 from the Greek of Erasmus, and the Old Testament in 1534 on the basis of the Massoretic Hebrew text of 1494, edited by Ben Moseh. Luther placed the Apocryphal books in a group by themselves, as the books were not in Hebrew. This was done in the other Protestant versions. He used also the Septuagint and the Vulgate, as well as the Hebrew, in making his version.

TINDALE'S TRANSLATIONS, 1525-1535

The decree of 1408 had forbidden any person to undertake the translation of the Bible without special authorization. The publication of the Greek Testament with a Latin translation by Erasmus in 1516, with revision and reprinting in 1519 and 1522, and the translation of the New Testament from Greek into German by Luther, printed in 1522, probably had great influence in leading William Tindale, who had studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, who may have heard Erasmus lecture at Cambridge, and who was fired by zeal to place the Bible in the hands of the people, to proceed to London to ask from the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, authority to make a

translation of the New Testament directly from the Greek, not as in the case of all previous English versions from the Latin. In the Preface to Genesis in Tindale's translation of the Pentateuch, he relates his experiences, and tells how he brought with him to London "an Oration of Isocrates, which he had then translated out of Greeke into Englishe" as evidence of his ability. It must be remembered that only a short time before this, Greek had been, for the first time, introduced in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It was only after having been refused room in the Bishop's house to translate the New Testament, that Tindale, financially assisted by "Humphrey Monmouth and certain other good men-tooke hys leave of the realm and departed into Germanie.” Tindale had declared to a learned divine, with whom he had been arguing, "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 dost."

It was a time of religious controversy, and this had much to do with the translation of the Bible into German by Luther, and the New Testament, 1525, the Pentateuch, 1530, and lessons from the Old Testament, 1534, into English by Tindale, who declared in the Preface to Genesis:

"... I had perceaved by experyence, how that it was impossible to stablysh the laye people in any truth, excepte the Scripture were playnly layde before their eyes in their mother tonge, that they might se the processe, ordre and meaninge of the texts." 1

Wycliffe and Tindale endeavored to put the Bible into the actual language of the common people. Of 1 A. W. Pollard, Records of the English Bible, p. 95.