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Despite being virtually unknown today,
the Geneva Bible is most revolutionary
of all English Bibles. It was born out
of persecution and takes its name from
the initial city of publication. When
Mary I, also known as "Bloody Mary,"
took the throne in 1553, English Bibles
were made illegal and heavy persecution
broke-out against Protestants and
proponents of English Scripture.
Hundreds fled England and many of these
exiles settled in Geneva, Switzerland,
where they produced a new English
Bible—the Geneva Bible.
The Geneva Bible was the first English
version to be translated entirely from
the original languages of Hebrew,
Aramaic, and Greek. Though the text is
principally just a revision of William
Tyndale’s earlier work of 1534, Tyndale
only translated the New Testament and
the Old Testament through 2 Chronicles
before he was imprisoned. The English
refugees living in Geneva completed the
translation of the Old Testament from
Hebrew to English for the first time.
The work was led by William Whittingham.
When the Geneva translation of the New
Testament appeared in 1557 and the
entire Bible in 1560, it was innovative
in both text and format, and quickly
became the household Bible of English
speaking people. It was the first
English Bible to have modern verse
divisions as well as modern chapter
divisions. It was the first Bible to use
italics to indicate words not in the
original language and the first Bible to
change the values of ancient coins into
English pound sterling equivalents. It
was also the first to use plain Roman
type, which was more readable than the
old Gothic type, and it was in a handy
quarto size for easy use. With prologues
before each book, extensive marginal
notes, and a brief concordance, the
Geneva Bible was in fact the first
English "study Bible."
Between its first edition of 1560 and
its last edition in 1644, 160 editions,
totaling around a half million Bibles,
were produced. And for the first time
common people could not only understand
the words in the Bible, they could
actually own one. Its widespread use
first solidified the English language
among the common people, not the 1611
King James Bible as many assume.
Actually, the King James Bible required
decades to surpass the popularity of the
Geneva and supplant it from the hearts
of the English speaking world.
In fact, the Geneva Bible was the
principal English Bible initially
brought to American soil, making it the
Bible that shaped early American life
and impacted Colonial culture more than
any other.
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History of
the English Bible
Through the Dark and early Middle Ages
the English Bible was not necessarily
forbidden; it just did not exist. Though
portions of the Bible had been
translated into English in earlier
centuries, it was a fourteenth century
Oxford scholar, John Wyclif, who
arranged for, and likely assisted in the
first complete English translation of
the Bible. No printing press existed,
therefore these Wyclif Bibles were
handcopied, requiring months to
reproduce just one Bible. Unfortunately,
because knowledge of the original
biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Greek was scarce in England at the
time, they had to be translated from
Latin.
Shortly after John Wyclif’s death in
1384, the reaction against these first
English Bibles and followers of Wyclif,
called Lollards, became intense. The
Lollards, like Wyclif, were deemed
heretics, and the handcopied English
Bibles, as well as Wyclif’s writings,
were declared heretical, confiscated,
and destroyed. In 1401 King Henry IV
enacted a statute called the "De
Heretico Comburendo," which officially
forbid English scripture and made
"heresy" a secular crime—punishable by
being burned at the stake. Despite
persecution, the Lollards continued to
teach and distribute English scripture.
Pope Martin V became so outraged at the
persistence of Wyclif’s followers that
he ordered Wyclif’s bones to be dug up
and burned forty-two years after
Wyclif’s death.
In the century following Wyclif’s death,
two important historical events occurred
that further affected the spread of
English scripture. The first was the
fall of Constantinople to the Turks in
1453, which dispersed Greek refugees and
their Greek biblical texts across
Western Europe. This, along with the
influence of Italian Humanism, returned
the knowledge of Greek language to
Western Europe after being absent for
nearly one thousand years. The second
occurred in Mainz, Germany, between 1453
and 1455 when Johann Gutenberg developed
a printing press with movable type.
Gutenberg’s printing press, considered
the greatest invention of the last
millenia, forever changed Western
Culture and initiated the mass
production of Bibles.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, influenced by
these two historical events, published
the first printed Greek New Testament in
1516 and then four other editions in
1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535.
A
courageous and brilliant German monk
named Martin Luther utilized Erasmus’s
second edition of 1519 to produce the
first printed German New Testament from
the original Greek, in September of
1522. It was not Luther’s "95 Theses"
nailed to the castle church door in
Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31,
1517, that secured the Reformation on
the continent but rather his German
translation of the Bible, which put
scripture in the hands of the people.
While Luther’s German translation of
Erasmus’s Greek text forever changed the
continent, William Tyndale’s first
printed English New Testament in 1526
forever changed the English world. In
Tyndale’s day English scripture was
forbidden, so he published his New
Testament while in exile in Germany.
Tyndale also used Erasmus’s Greek text
(third edition) to produce the first
printed English New Testament. He later
revised his New Testament and it was
printed in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1534.
Despite living as a hunted criminal,
Tyndale’s work was exceptional and so
accurate that the later widespread
Geneva and King James Bibles would
utilize more than 80 percent of his
exact wording. In fact, much of the vast
influence attributed to the Geneva and
King James Bibles should be attributed
to one man—William Tyndale.
In accomplishing his translation,
Tyndale actually created the modern
English language still spoken today.
Tyndale formed his English from the
active, verb-oriented Greek language and
the Old (Saxon) English used before the
Norman invasion of 1066. The influence
of the French language from the Normans
formed the Middle English of Wyclif’s
time. Tyndale remodeled the Middle
English and formed the English language
that is the most spoken language in the
world today. The Geneva Bible, followed
by the King James Bible, began the
worldwide dominance of English, yet
their words were mainly from one man.
Tyndale was also one of the first
Englishmen to know Hebrew (this was his
eighth language), and certainly the
first to ever translate any part of the
Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) into
English. Before he was imprisoned and
subsequently martyred on October 6,
1536, Tyndale translated the Old
Testament from Hebrew through 2
Chronicles as well as the book of Jonah.
Like Wyclif’s earlier work, Tyndale’s
English translations were illegal and
thus confiscated and burned. His final
words before he was strangled and burned
were a simple prayer: "Lord, open the
King of England’s eyes." Tyndale’s
desire was that the Scriptures would be
loosed in the language of the common
people.
While Tyndale was in prison, his close
friend Miles Coverdale published the
first complete printed English Bible in
Antwerp in the fall of 1535. In 1537,
just a few months after Tyndale’s
martyrdom, Coverdale’s second edition
became the first English Bible printed
on English soil. It was published "with
the King’s most gracious license."
Indeed—an answer to Tyndale’s
prayer—King Henry VIII’s eyes were
partly open.
Coverdale’s translation was fair at
best. Though Coverdale was an excellent
Latin and German scholar, he knew little
if any Greek and Hebrew. His New
Testament translation was principally
Tyndale’s work, and the Old Testament
utilized some of Tyndale’s work combined
with translations from German and Latin
texts. Yet the English world is forever
indebted to Miles Coverdale for his
brilliance in poetic structure. Much of
the beautiful prose throughout the book
of Psalms in the Geneva and King James
Bibles originated with Coverdale.
Also in 1537 John Rogers, another close
friend of Tyndale, was given license by
Henry VIII to print another English
Bible. An excellent scholar himself,
Rogers pioneered the process of adding
marginal notes and commentary in
English. He did little new translation
work, but rather was a skillful editor.
He used Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament as
well as his Old Testament translation
through 2 Chronicles with few changes.
For the remainder of the Old Testament
and the Apocrypha, Rogers used
Coverdale’s work with some alteration.
Not wanting to take credit for Tyndale’s
work, Rogers published the Bible under a
penname, "Thomas Matthew," possibly
because it was the upside-down- reverse
of Tyndale’s initials. In fact, he even
printed a large "WT" at the end of the
Old Testament in the first edition
Matthews Bible of 1537 to give credit to
the man whose genius gave us most of our
Bible and the basis of our language.
On the accession of the staunchly
Catholic Mary I in 1553, England was
again under the authority of the Roman
Church. Immediately, Rogers was
imprisoned, leaving no support for his
wife and ten children. Standing at the
stake to be burned, he was again
admonished to recant. Rogers responded,
"That which I have preached I will seal
with my blood." His wife was there with
their now eleven children—one Rogers had
never seen before. Witnesses claim he
washed his hands in the fire until they
were consumed.
Rogers was the first of almost three
hundred martyrs under Queen Mary I, also
called "Bloody Mary." Many more were
imprisoned, tortured, or otherwise
punished. It was Roger’s death that
caused many reformers to flee England
for Geneva setting the stage for the
Geneva Bible.
Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s vicegerent
for ecclesiastical affairs, and Thomas
Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop
of Canterbury, wanted an English pulpit
Bible in each of the 8,500 parish
churches in England. The resulting
massive volume would become known as the
Great Bible.
Miles Coverdale was enlisted to lead an
English team to revise the Matthew’s
Bible and exclude the marginal notes.
Coverdale’s team started work in Paris
in early 1538. In December 1538, the
Inquisition confiscated 2,500 finished
copies for burning under the accusation
of heresy. The English team fled to
London where 3,000 copies were printed
by November 1539, and the 2,500
confiscated copies also appeared in
England in late 1539. Details are
unclear, but it appears that Cromwell
may have used the English possession of
a French-captured German merchant ship
to pry the Bibles from the French.
Another 3,000 copies were printed in
London by May 1540—completing the 8,500
needed for the parish churches. In less
than four years after Tyndale’s prayer
before his death, an English Bible lay
in each parish church in England. In
fact, Henry VIII actually authorized the
Great Bible. The King James Bible is
often erroneously called the "Authorized
Version," but it was never authorized.
Only the Great Bible was ever authorized
by the English Crown.
Cromwell’s efforts to disseminate
English Scripture were not ignored. Most
English bishops were still allied with
Rome and were opposed to Cromwell’s
intentions. Henry VIII, upset over a
marriage that Cromwell arranged for him,
withdrew his protection. A few weeks
after the Great Bibles were delivered to
individual parish churches, Cromwell was
arrested on false charges of heresy and
treason and executed without trial in
July 1540.
The second and subsequent editions of
the Great Bible are often called
Cranmer’s Bible because Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer contributed a prologue.
Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII and
his young son, Edward VI, Cranmer
witnessed more than forty editions of
the Bible appear in English. Yet on the
accession of Mary I in 1553, Cranmer was
immediately arrested. Initially charged
with treason, he was eventually
convicted of the heresies of
Protestantism, and like Rogers and
others before him, he was burned alive
in 1556.
Mary I, the daughter of Henry VIII and
Catherine of Aragon, took the throne in
England in 1553 and set the stage for
the creation of the Geneva Bible.
Sixteen years earlier her father, Henry
VIII, had released the first Bible in
English following his separation from
the Catholic Church at Rome. However,
once Mary was in power, she immediately
began forcing all of England back under
the authority of the Roman Church and
suppressing the circulation of the Bible
in the common (English) tongue.
Specifically, Mary I issued
proclamations in August 1553 forbidding
public reading of the Bible and in June
1555 prohibiting the works of reformers
Tyndale, Rogers, Coverdale, Cranmer, and
others. In 1558 a proclamation was
issued requiring the delivery of the
reformers’ writings under penalty of
death. A vicious persecution was
instituted against anyone who supported
the reformers’ views or attempted to
circulate the scripture in English.
Overall, nearly three hundred people
were burned at the stake under Mary’s
reign, and many more were imprisoned,
tortured, or otherwise punished.
Reformer John Rogers, who produced the
Matthew’s Bible, was the first to be
burned. Others who followed the same
fate included Bishop Thomas Cranmer, who
was involved with the second and
subsequent editions of the Great Bible,
Nicolas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and John
Hooper, who was often referred to as the
"Father of Puritanism."
It is estimated that during Bloody
Mary’s reign as many as eight hundred
reformers fled England to seek shelter
on the Continent. Some settled in
Strasburg, some in Zurich, and some in
Frankfort. Many settled in Geneva, the
"Holy City of the Alps," where
Protestantism was supreme. The city was
under the control of the famed scholar,
John Calvin, with the assistance of
Theodore Beza. By 1556 a sizeable
English-speaking congregation had formed
in Geneva with Scottish reformer John
Knox serving as pastor. William
Whittingham, a tremendous scholar who
according to tradition married a sister
of Calvin’s wife, succeeded Knox as
pastor in 1557.
No new English Bible translations had
emerged since the first Great Bible of
1539, and William Whittingham undertook
the work of improving the English
versions of the New Testament. First
published in Geneva by Conrad Badius in
1557, Whittingham produced a revision of
William Tyndale’s New Testament "with
most profitable annotations of all hard
places." This small, thick octavo
edition included an epistle by Calvin
himself, which helped to introduce
Protestant views to the English people.
In this epistle Calvin declared, "Christ
is the End of the Law…."
Whittingham included a preface entitled,
"To the Reader Mercy and peace through
Christ our Savior." It reads:
In the Church of Christ there are
three kinds of men: some are
malicious despisers of the Word and
graces of God, who turn all things
into poison, and a further hardening
of their hearts: others do not
openly resist and contemn [condemn]
the Gospel, because they are struck
as it were in a trance with the
majesty thereof, yet either they
quarrel and cavil, or else deride
and mock at whatsoever is done for
the advancement of the same. The
third sort are simple lambs which
partly are already in the fold of
Christ, and so willingly hear their
Shepherd’s voice, and partly
wandering astray by ignorance tarry
the time till the Shepherd find them
and bring them unto His flock. To
this kind of people in this
translation I chiefly had respect,
as moved unto zeal, counseled by the
godly, and drawn by occasion, both
of the place where God hath
appointed us to dwell, and also to
the store of heavenly learning and
judgment which so abounded in this
city of Geneva, that justly it may
be called the patron and mirror of
true religion and godliness.
Immediately after the release of
Whittingham’s 1557 New Testament, the
English exiles entered upon a revision
of the whole Bible. Assisted by Beza and
possibly Calvin himself, several English
exiles were involved in the translating,
but it is impossible to say how many.
Miles Coverdale, who produced the
Coverdale and Great Bibles, resided in
Geneva for a time and may have assisted,
and a similar claim may be advanced in
favor of John Knox. The famed
sixteenth-century English historian,
John Foxe, was also in refuge in
Switzerland during this time. Yet the
chief credit belongs to William
Whittingham, who was probably assisted
by Thomas Sampson, Anthony Gilby, and
possibly William Cole, William Kethe,
John Baron, John Pullain, and John
Bodley.
The Old Testament from Genesis through 2
Chronicles and the New Testament were
merely revisions of Tyndale’s previous
monumental efforts. The works of
Coverdale, Rogers, and Cranmer were also
consulted, and the English exiles
completed a careful collation of Hebrew
and Greek originals. They compared Latin
versions, especially Beza’s, and the
standard French and German versions as
well.
While Coverdale’s, Matthew’s, and the
Great Bible were merely revisions of
Tyndale’s translations from the original
Hebrew and Greek, the Geneva Bible
charted new ground. The scholarly
English refugees in Geneva completed the
translation of the remainder of the Old
Testament directly from Hebrew into
English for the first time. Tyndale had
only translated the Hebrew (Masoretic)
text up to 2 Chronicles before he was
imprisoned in 1535, and it was not until
this handful of scholars assembled in
refuge in Geneva that there was
sufficient familiarity with Hebrew among
reformers to complete the translation of
the Old Testament directly from Hebrew.
Thus, the English scholars who escaped
persecution in their native land and
resided in Geneva produced the first
English Bible ever completely translated
from the original languages.
The work took over two years, and in
1560 the world witnessed a new English
Bible, which is now known as the "Geneva
Bible." In a simple prefatory note, the
Geneva Bible was dedicated to "Bloody
Mary’s" successor, Queen Elizabeth I,
the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne
Bolyen.
The 1560 Geneva Bible was popularly
called the "Breeches Bible" because the
Geneva translators chose the term
"breeches" for the coverings referenced
in Genesis 3:7: "Then the eyes of them
both were opened, and they knew that
they were naked, and they sewed fig tree
leaves together, and made them selves
breeches." Tyndale and Coverdale had
previously used "apurns," and the King
James translators later followed Tyndale
and Coverdale and used "aprons." This
name, "Breeches Bible," was born out of
the peculiarity of the term "breeches"
and the implausibility that their
coverings were in fact "breeches." The
1562 Geneva Bible was called the
"Place-makers Bible" because of an
erroneous rendering of Matthew 5:9:
"Blessed are the place-makers." Later,
the Geneva Bible also became known as
the "Pilgrims’ Bible" because the
Pilgrims brought Geneva Bibles when they
sailed to the New World in 1620.
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The First
English Bible in America
Technically, the Geneva Bible was not
the first Bible in America, and possibly
not even the first English Bible in
America. Certainly the Huguenots brought
French Bibles and possibly German Bibles
to Beaufort, South Carolina, when they
fled to the New World to escape
persecution in 1562 and again in 1564.
In 1565 Spain initiated a colony at St.
Augustine, Florida, and the Roman
Catholic priests would have had Latin
Bibles. However, the French and Latin
Bibles had little if any impact on what
would become the United States of
America. German Bibles became quite
common in the British colonies, but
their influence was greatly overshadowed
by the impact of the English Bible in
colonial America.
The first English church service held on
American soil was probably conducted by
a chaplain to Sir Francis Drake when he
put ashore briefly in California in
1579, and the Bible used was more likely
a Great Bible or Bishops’ Bible (first
edition 1568) than a Geneva Bible. Yet
it is unknown.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated Roanoke
Island colony beginning in 1584
certainly had a Bible. Captain John
Smith’s book, The General Historie of
Virginia, published in 1624, states
that Roanoke colonist Thomas Hariot, a
devout Christian, had a Bible among his
possessions. Because of the absence of
any Puritan influence, it is assumed
that Hariot’s as well as other Bibles in
the colony were Bishops’ Bibles. But the
Roanoke colony disappeared mysteriously,
and whether they used a Bishops’ Bible
or Geneva Bible is unknown.
Despite the uncertainty of the Geneva
Bible being the first English Bible
brought to American soil, it is certain
the Geneva Bible became the spiritual
foundation for the future United States
of America. Though earlier temporary
colonies may have used other Bibles, the
Geneva Bible was most likely the Bible
of Jamestown, and clearly the Bible of
the Pilgrims and the Puritans.
It is likely that the Geneva Bible first
came to Jamestown with Captain John
Smith and company in 1607, since the
first ministers of Virginia were
Puritans. In 1609 William Strachey,
secretary of the Virginia Company,
arrived in Jamestown, and quoted from
the Geneva Bible in writing his history
of Virginia. Rev. Alexander Whitaker,
who came to the colony in 1611, used a
Geneva Bible as documented in one of his
surviving sermon texts. It is very
likely that John Rolfe, a young widower,
used a Geneva Bible to teach Matoaka,
better known as Pocahontas, about
Christianity. She became a Christian,
and soon afterwards, on April 5, 1614,
they were married.
Also called the "Pilgrims’ Bible," the
Geneva Bible influenced many of the
Pilgrims. In his book The Genesis of
the New England Churches, Leonard
Bacon says that the Pilgrims’ Pastor,
John Robinson, used the Geneva Bible in
Leyden. It therefore implies that it was
the Geneva Bible that his congregation
carried to the New World. Further,
Massachusetts Governor John Bradford’s
history quotes the Geneva Bible. In
fact, the Pilgrim Society Museum in
Plymouth, Massachusetts has Geneva
Bibles that belonged to Governor
Bradford as well as other Pilgrim
Fathers.
P. Marion Simms, author of The Bible
in America, says of the Geneva
Bible, "Being a Puritan Bible, the
Geneva would be used throughout the
early colonies wherever English-speaking
Puritans were found. New England used it
extensively and the Plymouth colony used
it exclusively." Even the famous Puritan
preacher John Cotton used a copy of the
Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible helped
form the Christian culture in the
English-speaking colonies of the New
World that would later become America.
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The First Modern Verse Divisions
Before chapters could be divided into
verses, the Bible had to be divided into
chapters. Early Bibles and gospel books
used various divisions in the text for
referencing, but there was no
standardization until the beginning of
the thirteenth century. Modern chapter
divisions, which first appeared in the
compact, single-volume Parisian Bibles
of the thirteenth century, are
attributed to Steven Langton, Archbishop
of Canterbury and author of the Magna
Carta.
In the fifteenth century Rabbi Mordecai
Nathan divided the Hebrew Bible
(Christian Old Testament) into separate
verses, and his verse divisions of 1448
became the standard verse divisions used
throughout the world today. The
Reformation began partly born out of
Italian Humanism, an interest in the
original biblical languages of Hebrew
and Greek, which led Reformation Bibles,
whether English, German, or other
languages, to be translated directly
from Hebrew and Greek, not Latin. As
translators began rendering the Hebrew
Bible directly into their own language,
eventually Nathan’s verse divisions were
assimilated into Langton’s chapter
divisions in the Christian Old
Testament. The first English Bible to
incorporate Nathan’s verse divisions for
the Old Testament was the 1560 Geneva
Bible.
The New Testament verse divisions used
today were developed by Parisian
printer, Robert Estienne (Stephanus
in Latin), though he may have been aided
by previous work. Estienne, living in
the staunchly Catholic Paris, began to
express some of the reformers’ views of
theology, which put him at odds with
some professors at the University of
Paris. He was forced to flee Paris in
1551.
Tradition states that Estienne carried a
copy of his third edition Greek New
Testament of 1550 and divided the New
Testament into verses for the first time
while escaping from Paris to Lyon.
Estienne eventually settled in Geneva,
and in 1551 Estienne released his fourth
edition Greek New Testament with the
first modern verse divisions. The 1557
Geneva New Testament was the first
English scripture with modern verse
divisions. The 1560 Geneva Bible was the
first complete English Bible and the
first Bible circulated widely to have
verse divisions (a 1553 French Bible was
the first Bible to incorporate the
Nathan-Estienne verse divisions). It is
often hard for the twenty-first-century
mindset to perceive that the Geneva
Bible was the first English Bible where
John 3:16 was actually John chapter 3,
verse 16.
In this edition we have chosen not to
include any commentary and simply allow
the strength of the translation to come
through to the reader. Yet because of
the near 450 years elapsed since the
original Geneva Bible was printed, we
have identified antiquated words that
are no longer commonly used or have been
so altered in meaning as to be
unfamiliar today, and we have placed
definitions for these words in brackets
within the text as well as in a glossary
in an appendix. These "bracketed"
definitions provide fluid
comprehension and expanded vocabulary
for the modern reader while preserving
the original 1560 Geneva text.
Also see
The Geneva Bible - An Historical
Report
P. Marion
Simms,
The Bible in
America; Wilson – Erickson, New York,
1936
Leonard
Woolsey Bacon, The Genesis of the New
England Churches; Harper and Brothers,
New York, 1874
David
Daniell, The Bible in English, Yale
University Press, New Haven & London,
2003.
Christopher De Hamil, The Book. A
History of the Bible, Phaidon Press
Limited, London, 2001.
Bruce M.
Metzger, The Bible in Translation:
Ancient and English Versions, Baker Book
House Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 2001. |
