Old Testament canon, texts, and versions

A change in atmosphere in England found expression in a translation that, for all its great significance, turned out to be a retrograde step in the manner of its execution, although it proved to be a vindication of Tyndale’s work. On October 4, 1535, the first complete English Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale, came off the press either in Zürich or in Cologne. The edition was soon exhausted. A second impression appeared in the same year and a third in 1536. A new edition, “overseen and corrected,” was published in England by James Nycholson in Southwark in 1537. Another edition of the same year bore the announcement “set forth with the king’s most gracious license.” In 1538 a revised edition of Coverdale’s New Testament printed in England, with the English and the Latin Vulgate in parallel columns, was found to be so full of errors that Coverdale promptly arranged for a rival, corrected version to appear in Paris.

The Thomas Matthew version

In the same year that Coverdale’s authorized version appeared, another English Bible was issued under royal license and with the encouragement of ecclesiastical and political power. It appeared (in Antwerp?) under the name of Thomas Matthew, but it is certainly the work of John Rogers, a close friend of Tyndale. Although the version claimed to be “truly and purely translated into English,” it was in reality a combination of the labors of Tyndale and Coverdale. Rogers used the former’s Pentateuch and 1535 revision of the New Testament and the latter’s translation from Ezra to Malachi and his Apocrypha. Rogers’s own contribution was primarily editorial.

The Great Bible

In an injunction of 1538, Henry VIII commanded the clergy to install in a convenient place in every parish church “one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English.” The order seems to refer to an anticipated revision of the Matthew Bible. The first edition was printed in Paris and appeared in London in April 1539 in 2,500 copies. The huge page size earned it the sobriquet “the Great Bible.” It was received with immediate and wholehearted enthusiasm.

The first printing was exhausted within a short while, and it went through six subsequent editions between 1540 and 1541. “Editions” is preferred to “impressions” here since the six successive issues were not identical.

The Geneva Bible

The brief efflorescence of the Protestant movement during the short reign of Edward VI (1547–53) saw the reissue of the Scriptures but no fresh attempts at revision. The repressive rule of Edward’s successor, Mary, a Roman Catholic, put an end to the printing of Bibles in England for several years. Their public reading was proscribed and their presence in the churches discontinued.

The persecution of Protestants caused the focus of English biblical scholarship to be shifted abroad, where it flourished in greater freedom. A colony of Protestant exiles, led by Coverdale and John Knox (the Scottish reformer) and under the influence of John Calvin, published the New Testament in 1557.

The editors of the Geneva Bible (or “Breeches Bible,” so named because of its rendering of the first garments made for Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7; published in 1560) may almost certainly be identified as William Whittingham, the brother-in-law of Calvin’s wife, and his assistants Anthony Gilby and Thomas Sampson. The Geneva Bible was not printed in England until 1576, but it was allowed to be imported without hindrance. The accession of Elizabeth in 1558 put an end to the persecution of Protestants, and the Great Bible was soon reinstated in the churches. The Geneva Bible, however, gained instantaneous and lasting popularity over against its rival, the Great Bible. Its technical innovations contributed not a little to its becoming for a long time the family Bible of England, which, next to Tyndale, exercised the greatest influence upon the King James Version.

The Bishops’ Bible

The failure of the Great Bible to win popular acceptance against the obvious superiority of its Geneva rival, and the objectionable partisan flavor of the latter’s marginal annotations, made a new revision a necessity. By about 1563–64 Archbishop Matthew Parker of Canterbury had determined upon its execution, and the work was apportioned among many scholars, most of them bishops, from which the popular name was derived.

The Bishops’ Bible came off the press in 1568 as a handsome folio volume, the most impressive of all 16th-century English Bibles with respect to the quality of paper, typography, and illustrations. A portrait of the queen adorned the engraved title page, but it contained no dedication. For some reason, Queen Elizabeth never officially authorized the work, but sanction for its public use came from the Convocation (church synod or assembly) of 1571, and it thereby became in effect the second authorized version.

The Douai-Reims Bible

The Roman Catholics addressed themselves affirmatively to the same problem faced by the Anglican church: a Bible in the vernacular. The initiator of the first such attempt was Cardinal Allen of Reims, France, although the burden of the work fell to Gregory Martin, professor of Hebrew at Douai. The New Testament appeared in 1582, but the Old Testament, delayed by lack of funds, did not appear until 1609, when it was finally published at Douai under the editorship of Thomas Worthington. In the intervening period, the Douai-Reims Bible had been brought into line with the new text of the Vulgate authorized by Clement VIII in 1592.