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NLA News - home March 2002 Volume XII Number 6
The Book: The History of the Bible in Printed Form

The Byble, That Is To Say All the Holy Scripture … (London: Ihon Daye and William Se
Ann Nugent looks at Bibles
in the Library’s Collection
to trace the history of the
printed English Bible

First page, with woodcut illustration,
reproduced from The Byble, That Is To Say All the Holy Scripture … (London: Ihon Daye and William Seres, 17 August 1549)

The oldest printed book, the best printed book and the most printed book is the Bible’ (E. Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 1938). That is if one excludes printing produced in China several centuries before the Gutenberg Bible was printed in Europe. Let us re-phrase—‘the first large book printed with moveable type and still in existence is the Gutenberg 42-line Bible printed by Johann Gutenberg circa 1455.’ Today there are hundreds of editions of the Old and New Testaments, in more than a thousand languages and in a bewildering number of formats.

Bibles are scattered throughout the National Library’s collections, in Rare Books, Manuscripts and the Asian Collections, as well as in special collections such as the Ferguson, Coedes and Luce. In this article, I have attempted to use items from the Library’s various collections to trace the story of the ‘Englishing’ of the Bible in print form from the sixteenth century onwards. I have also briefly followed the ‘translating’ of the Bible out of English into the vernacular of other regions, particularly into Asian and Australian Aboriginal languages.

The Holie Bible, Faithfully Translated into English out of the Authentical Latin, Diligently Conferred with the Hebrew, Greeke, and Other Editions in Diuers Languages ...

Frontispiece and title page of first volume, and cover of the second volume, reproduced from
The Holie Bible, Faithfully Translated into English out of the Authentical Latin, Diligently Conferred with the Hebrew, Greeke, and Other Editions in Diuers Languages: With Arguments of the Bookes and Chapters, Annotations, Tables, and Other Helpes for Better Understanding of the Text, for Discoverie of Corruption in Some Late Translations and for Clearing Controversies in Religion. English College of Douay (Douay: Printed by Lavrence Kellam, 1609-10)

 

The proliferation of translations of the Bible into English occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Until then the standard version of the Bible was the Latin Vulgate, a translation from Hebrew and Greek texts by Saint Jerome in the late fourth century. By 1524, Martin Luther had translated the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek into German and, in the process, exposed inaccuracies in Jerome’s Latin translation. Thus, it needed the technical revolution of printing and a little help from Luther to seriously challenge Jerome’s Vulgate.

As English emerged as a major language, the English church reformers, inspired by Luther’s translation, set about translating the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. Foremost in their ranks was William Tyndale. He had declared to Church officials: ‘I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more scripture than thou dost.’ However, the idea that lay persons should be able to read the Bible in the vernacular was resisted by the Roman Catholic Church, which saw this as threatening its clerical monopoly on access to, and interpretation of, the Scriptures.

Finding little support for a new translation in England, in 1524 Tyndale went to Germany. It is likely that Tyndale completed his translation of the New Testament between May 1524 and July 1525. In August of 1525, he settled in Cologne where he entrusted the printing of his translation to Peter Quentell. However, Quentell was also printing for the anti-Lutheran Johannes Cochlaeus. When Cochlaeus learned that Quentell was printing Lutheran New Testaments in English, he arranged for a raid on the presses. Tyndale escaped with the translation text and about 10 printed sheets of paper (the equivalent of 80 quarto pages). In February 1526, the printing was completed, undetected, in Worms. Nine years later, Tyndale was betrayed into the hands of his Catholic opponents. He was convicted of heresy and, on October 6, 1536, he was strangled and burned at the stake. His translation of the Old Testament was left unfinished.

For nearly 300 years, the sheets printed at Cologne were presumed lost. But, in 1834, eight of the Cologne sheets were discovered bound into another work. The British Museum holds the unique piece of Tyndale’s New Testament known as the ‘Cologne Fragment’. In the National Library’s general collection, there is a 1938 reprint of the 1534 edition of Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, and a facsimile of the ‘Cologne Fragment’ published by Oxford University Press in 1926. 

The National Library’s Manuscript Collection holds fragments of several early printed Bibles. The first complete version of the Bible printed in English (the Old and New Testaments combined) was made by Miles Coverdale (1488–1569) and published in either Zurich or Marburg, on October 4, 1535. Coverdale based his compilation on earlier translations, including Tyndale’s. The 1537 edition of Coverdale’s Bible has the distinction of being the first Bible in English actually printed in England. The Library’s fragment of a 1550 edition contains an Epistle of St Paul. The relatively small size of the page suggests that these pages were designed for household rather than church use.

Pages reproduced from The Beginning of the New Testament

Pages reproduced from The Beginning of the New Testament, facsimile of the unique fragment of the uncompleted Cologne edition; introduced By Alfred W. Pollard. [Illust.] translated by William Tyndale, 1527 (Oxford, 1926)

 

Another connection to Tyndale is Matthew’s Bible. In 1537 John Rogers, a friend of Tyndale, published a complete Bible based on Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s works. Because this volume carried a dedication signed by Thomas Matthew (a pseudonym of Rogers) it is called Matthew’s Bible. The Library holds a single leaf of a 1549 edition of the Matthew’s Bible and two leaves from a 1537 edition. The latter pages are from The Song of Solomon and include the words ‘Christ to the Churche’ in red, and the following text in black:

‘Thou art pleasant o my love
Even as lovliness itself…’

The Geneva Bible, the most popular Bible in English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was the work of William Whittingham assisted by Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson and others. Whittingham and his fellow refugees fled from Mary Tudor’s Catholic England and joined the close-knit English Protestant community in Calvin’s Geneva. Whittingham and his colleagues meticulously translated from Greek and Latin texts, giving variant translations where they were considered useful, as well as annotations. Their New Testament was published in 1557. In 1558, Mary Tudor died. When Elizabeth I came to the throne and proved sympathetic to the Protestant cause, many of the religious exiles returned to England. Whittingham, however, remained in Geneva where his new translation of the Bible was published in 1560, giving it the name ‘Geneva’ Bible. The translators promised ‘the best translations in divers languages, with most profitable annotations upon all the hard places’. It was these annotations that provoked the Catholic faction.

The Geneva was the first English Bible to be printed in the clearer Roman, rather than Gothic or black letter script. The Library’s single leaf from a 1562 edition of the Geneva Bible is the title page of the New Testament. The page is engraved with a seven-branched candlestick and carries the inscription: ‘This is the message we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is the light, and in him is no darkness.’

The New Testament of Iesvs Christ: Translated Faithfully into English out of the Authentical Latin in the English College of Rhemes

 

 

Pages with annotations reproduced from The New Testament of Iesvs Christ: Translated Faithfully into English out of the Authentical Latin in the English College of Rhemes (Rhemes: Printed by Ion Fogny, 1582)

The Library also has a copy of the first Geneva Bible without the Apocrypha, that is some of the books of the Old Testament regarded by the Protestant reformers as being non-Scriptural because they were not originally included in the Hebrew Bible. The Library’s copy is dated 1599 but it is known that there are six to eight spurious imprints of that date. All have the printer Christopher Barker’s name on them.

The remaining fragment in the National Library’s Manuscript Collection is from the Great Bible of 1539–1541. Coverdale’s 1539 revision of Matthew’s Bible became known as The Great Bible. In September 1538, Henry VIII commanded that every parish church should provide ‘one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English, and the same be set up in some convenient place within the said church’. During his reign, copies of the Great Bible were chained to stands in various parts of the larger churches for parishioners to read. The Library’s substantial fragment from the 1539 edition of the Great Bible shows that it was a very big Bible indeed, printed in commanding Gothic black print.

The Catholic translators were rather slow off the mark because the Roman Church had held to the Latin Vulgate as a matter of principle and power. However, just as people with Protestant leanings escaped from Mary Tudor’s England to avoid religious persecution, so the Catholics in their turn fled when Elizabeth I ascended the throne. The English Catholics settled first at Rheims. In 1578, scholars of the English College at Rheims started work on a Catholic translation of the New Testament from Latin into English vernacular. They finished translating the New Testament in 1582 and provided it with annotations that were strongly critical of Protestant teaching. The Library holds a 1582 edition of some 745 numbered pages ‘translated faithfully into English, out of authentical Latin’ by the ‘English College of Rhemes’. By the time it came to translating the Old Testament, the Catholic exiles had moved to Douai (Douay) and their rate of translation slowed. The Old Testament (1124 printed pages), ‘The Second Tome of the Holie Bible’ including Apocrypha, did not reach the printers until 1609–1610. The Library holds the two volumes of the Rhemes-Douay Bible, with the Old Testament volume dated 1610.

The Bible, That s,the Holy Scripture Conteined in the Olde and Newe Testament, Translated According to the Ebrew and Greeke, and Conferred with the Best Translations in Divers Languages. With Most Profitable Annotations upon All the Hard Places, and Other Things of Great Importance ...

Title page with illustration reproduced from, The Bible, That s,the Holy Scripture Conteined in the Olde and Newe Testament, Translated According to the Ebrew and Greeke, and Conferred with the Best Translations in Divers Languages. With Most Profitable Annotations upon All the Hard Places, and Other Things of Great Importance
(London: imprinted at London by Deputies of Christopher Barker, 1599)

 

The zenith of ‘Englishing’ the Bible came with the King James Authorised Version. James I of England declared that he had yet to see ‘a Bible well translated into English’, so he directed that the ‘best-learned in both universities’ (Oxford and Cambridge) should begin work on a new translation of the Bible. Companies of translators were set up and, between 1604 and 1611, they completed their work.

The first issue of the King James version had many errors in its text, including ‘and he went into the city’ (Ruth iii. 15) instead of ‘and she went into the city’. The earlier edition was thus called the Great ‘He’ Bible, 1611. The second issue corrected the error and became known as the Great ‘She’ Bible, 1611.

The Library holds a 1613 edition of the King James Authorised Version in its Rare Book Collection. It is large and gilt-edged with a black leather cover, but its status as a ‘He’ version or a ‘She’ is confused. Handwritten notes bound into the back of the Library’s edition suggest that this Bible appears to have been mixed sheets of both previous editions and that it ‘is not an exact reprint of the Great He Bible of 1611, or of the Great She Bible of 1611–1613’. However the Library’s copy shows correctly ‘she went into the city’.

Another printing error gave rise to the Wicked Bible in which the commandment was rendered ‘Thou shalt commit adultery,’ a shock for pious readers. Printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were fined severely for their lapse. Gradually errors were corrected and, over the next decades, the King James Authorised Version overtook the Geneva Bible as the most popular Bible among English-speaking peoples. Many editions of the Authorised Version, like the Library’s 1741 edition printed for John Baskett, London, were smaller sized volumes designed for home reading.

After the King James Authorised Version, there were no other lasting revisions of the English Bible for almost 250 years. English Bible-readers, it seems, were satisfied with the Authorised Version as formed by the schoolmen of Oxford and Cambridge. The Authorised Version became part of the everyday world of generations, and it spread across the globe just as surely as the Imperial red on world maps.

In the nineteenth century, the emphasis of Bible translation work shifted from translating into English to translating out of English into ‘foreign languages’. Underlying this nineteenth-century surge of translating was the same evangelical belief that had inspired the sixteenth-century translators, namely that all people should be able to read the Scripture in their own language.

Bibles translated into Shan, Thai, Awabakal, and Pitjantjatjara

Bibles translated into Shan, Thai, Awabakal, and Pitjantjatjara
Reproduced from The New Testament in Shan ([Burma: s.n.], 1905);
Mark ([Thailand?: British & Foreign Bible Society?]);
An Australian Language as Spoken by the Awabakal, the People of Awaba or Lake Macquarie (Near Newcastle, New South Wales) Being an Account of Their Language, Traditions and Custom.
L.E. Threlkeld; rearrranged, condensed and edited with an appendix by John Fraser
(Sydney: Charles Potter, Govt Printer, 1892)

 

The National Library’s strongest collection of Asian language Bibles is in Chinese and is part of the London Missionary Society (LMS) Collection, acquired by the Library in 1961. Also in the LMS Collection are a translation of the New Testament in the Toba-Batak dialect of Northern Sumatra published in 1902, an illustrated Old Testament in Shanghainese, and a Korean translation of the Bible, Shonggyong kaeyok, published in Korea in 1938–1939 during the period of Japanese rule.

The Luce Collection, housed in Asian Collections, contains translations from the Bible into a number of Burmese languages, while the Coedes Collection has translations into Thai, including a very fragile one from the 1890s.

In 1969, the British and Foreign Bible Society began depositing Bibles and related materials with the National Library. In the Collection is an 1840 Bible in Welsh. However, of more interest from an Australian perspective are the translations into Aboriginal languages. Recently, an 1892 edition of the Awabakal (Newcastle/Lake Macquarie area) translation of Luke’s Gospel was reprinted by the Bible Society in Australia and intended as a gesture of Reconciliation.

Another relatively early translation (1949) into an Aboriginal language is a Pitjantjatjara edition of the Gospel according to St Mark held in the Ferguson Collection. The most extensive Aboriginal translation is Yimi-nyayirni-wangu kaatu-kurlangu, a 1513-page New Testament with significant portions of the Old Testament in the Warlpiri language (Central Australia) published last year.

Looking back at the history of English translations we see that, although some revised versions appeared in the nineteenth century, most notably the English Revised Version of 1881–1885, it was not until the twentieth century that new translations began once again to proliferate. In 1926, there was a new translation by Protestant James Moffatt, who was inspired by the discovery of Greek papyri in Egypt and, in the mid-1940s, Catholic scholar Ronald Knox published another.

Then, in 1947, came the almost unbelievable discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which gave scholars access to texts older than the earliest known Hebrew texts. This discovery prompted a new translating surge, with dozens of new translations and revisions. Like the translators of the sixteenth century, the modern scholars were driven, at least in part, by new advances in knowledge, this time not in printing but in archaeology, textual analysis and linguistics.

I have an advertising brochure left over from Christmas, 16 glossy pages crammed with Bibles for readers in the twenty-first century. Here in the marketplace, the New King James Version rubs shoulders with the New International Version, the New American Standard and the Jerusalem. Take your pick: Bibles in audio or on CD-ROM, Bibles for dads, couples and children, even the ‘extreme teens’. One wonders if the early translators, the martyr Tyndale and those who followed in his footsteps, could have foreseen that their work in making the Bible available in the vernacular would give rise to the number and variety of Bibles on sale today.

ANN NUGENT is a Canberra-based writer

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