Bible Translations and EditionsNotes from Dr Kalyani Vallath

John Wycliffe

• The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were believed to be 

produced in the 1380's AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, 

and theologian

• Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395

• One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that 

people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they 

should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake 

in 1415, with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire.

Gutenberg, Cole, Erasmus

• Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Vulgate Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany.

• In 1496, John Colet, an Oxford professor, humanist and the son of the Mayor of London, started reading the New Testament in Greek and paraphrasing it into English for his students at Oxford, and later for the public at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. Thousands of people came to listen to his reading, and because he was powerful, he escaped execution.

• The great scholar Erasmus attempted to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, and in 1516, with the help of printer John Froben, he published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. This was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium.

• In his preface, Erasmus wrote of the importance of recovering true spirituality by recovering the original Greek (New Testament) and original Hebrew (Old Testament) languages to maintain accuracy

• He also believed that the Bible should be translated faithfully into the languages of the common people, whether that be English, German, or any other tongue.

• All this was considered heretic by the Catholic Church

Tyndale and Luther

• William Tyndale (1494?-1536) was the Captain of the Army of Reformers, and was their spiritual leader. Tyndale’s translation is credited with being the first English translation to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts.

• in 1525-1526 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English 

language (before that no one had translated the entire New Testament into English)

• Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his native tongue. He is frequently referred to as the “Architect of the English Language”

• Martin Luther declared his intolerance for the Roman Church’s corruption on Halloween in 1517, by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Church door.

• Luther translated the New Testament into German for the first time from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and published it in September of 1522.

• In about 1534 he published the entire Bible (Luther Bible) in German.

• They were burned as soon as the Bishop could confiscate them. Today, there are only two known copies left of Tyndale’s 1525-26 First Edition. He was burned at the stake in 1536.

Coverdale

• Myles Coverdale and John “Thomas Matthew” Rogers had been disciples of Tyndale, and they carried the English Bible project forward. Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 he printed the first complete Bible in the English language, making use of Luther's German text and the Latin as sources.

• Thus, the first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535, and is known as the Coverdale Bible.

• John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537 (printed under the name Thomas Matthew). It was, however, the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. It is made from Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s versions 

and is known as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible.

• In 1539, Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the "Great Bible". It became the first English Bible authorized for public use. (It was not that King Henry VIII had a change of conscience 

regarding publishing the Bible in English. His motive was to promote Reformation.)

The Time of Elizabeth and James

• In Switzerland, John Calvin and John Knox wanted to translate the Bible. The New Testament was completed in 1557, and the complete Bible was first published in 1560. It became known as the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters. The Anglican Church, now under Queen Elizabeth I, reluctantly tolerated the printing and distribution of Geneva version Bibles in England. 

• In 1568, a revision of the Great Bible known as the Bishop's Bible was introduced.

• With the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Protestant clergy approached the new King in 1604 and announced their desire for a new translation to replace the Bishop's Bible first printed in 1568.

• This "translation to end all translations" (for a while at least) was the result of the 

combined effort of about fifty scholars. They took into consideration: The Tyndale New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even the Rheims New Testament. In 1611 the first of the huge folios known today as "The 1611 King James Bible” was printed