10. A Brief History of the Bible in English
Chapter 10: A Brief History of the Bible in English
Although the story of the Bible in English has been told many times and in many places, the nature of this book requires that it be told once more. However, rather than write out that history in detail, we have chosen to summarize it with two concerns in mind: (1) to overview the data so the reader will appreciate the rich history of English Bible translation, and (2) to point out how often this endeavor has been embroiled in controversy. We do this not because we love controversy, but to remind the reader of how important is Scripture in one’s native tongue, and therefore how often a “revision” has been met with resistance. While this resistance is the result of people’s love for their Bibles — meaning the ones they have always used and are used to — it has much too often been accompanied with anger and animosity.
Much of the present overview will be in summary form, but because of their importance, the earliest versions receive a bit more attention. This chapter’s overview carries through to the appearance of the Revised Standard Version in 1948 (NT) and 1952 (whole Bible). In the next chapter we will overview some of the translations that have appeared in the last fifty years.
The English Bible before Printing
The first two Bibles to appear in English are both associated with the name of John Wycliffe. A very “wooden,” literal version appeared just before his death in 1384. A more idiomatic, and therefore more readable, version appeared shortly afterward — basically the work of Wycliffe’s secretary, John Purvey. Given the times (pre-Reformation) and circumstances (pre-printing press), this latter Bible had a relatively wide circulation, when one considers that every copy had to be created by hand. It was also a translation from the Latin Bible, since the Greek Bible was used exclusively by the Eastern Church and did not make its way to the West until after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.
It is of interest to note here that the tension between translations into English that are either “literal” or “meaning-based” goes back to the very beginning. Wycliffe himself was responsible for, and obviously preferred, the more “literal” version. This was due in part to his political philosophy that the Bible was basically the codification of God’s law and should thus have a “legal” ring to it. Yet it was the latter version, the more idiomatic one, that won the day, since most people found it more useful.
The First Printed Bibles
The first printed Bible was in fact the first book printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press; it appeared in 1456. This was the Latin Bible, which was the only Bible used by the Church of Rome. But once the Reformation with its emphasis on Scripture took hold in northern Europe, vernacular translations began to appear, beginning with Luther’s German New Testament, published in 1522 (the complete Bible in 1534).
The work of putting the Bible into English, based on the original languages, was taken up by William Tyndale — but not in England, since Henry VIII remained within the Roman Catholic Church until 1534. Tyndale, in exile in Belgium, was arrested there and in 1536 was executed as a heretic. His martyrdom reminds us that many have paid the ultimate price to make God’s Word available to everyone.
Despite the death of its translator, Tyndale’s version was so carefully and well done that it rapidly assumed a life of its own. Eventually, his translation served as the basis for almost all subsequent English versions up to the twentieth century, including the King James Version of 1611, which is estimated to be about ninety percent Tyndale. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that tradition continued through the American Standard Version and its successors (RSV, NASB, NASU, NRSV, ESV). In fact, before the KJV there had been earlier attempts among Protestants to offer a standardized version of Scripture in English, and all but one of these (the Geneva Bible) were based on Tyndale’s version. These can be surveyed by date and name, with a brief historical note about each.
The Coverdale Bible (1535; 2nd ed. 1537). Coverdale, a friend and helper of Tyndale and an English clergyman, made Tyndale’s version available in England, but not under Tyndale’s name. Coverdale used Tyndale for the Pentateuch and the New Testament; the rest of the Bible was trans lated from Latin and German versions, since Coverdale himself had no expertise in Greek and Hebrew. The second edition was published “with the king’s most gracious licence.”
Matthew’s Bible (approx. 1537). This was Tyndale’s completed version, published in England by another of Tyndale’s colleagues, John Rogers, but under the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew.” After all, it would have been impolitic for “Tyndale” to arrive in England under the name of one of his coworkers.
The Great Bible (1539; 7th ed. 1541). This Bible was also the work of Coverdale, but now sponsored by the Church of England as its official version. It was called “The Great Bible” because of its unusually large size (to sit on church lecterns). It was a slight revision of “Matthew’s Bible.” Tyndale’s work, once banned, was now the basis for the official Bible of the Church of England!
The Geneva Bible (1560). This important version was primarily the work of William Whittingham, one of the exiles of Mary Tudor’s reign (1553 – 58). It was the first version in which all of the Old Testament was translated directly from the Hebrew text and was such a superior work to those preceding it that it had a considerable history of its own. It became the official Bible of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), was the only Bible of the dissenters, and thus was brought to New England by the Pilgrims (and is rightly to be found on the tables of the restored Plymouth colony). It was also the Bible of Shakespeare, and its language and cadences can be found throughout his plays and sonnets. In many circles it continued to be the Bible of use for a generation or more after the KJV became the “official” English version.
The Bishops’ Bible (1568). This version, the official Anglican response to the Geneva Bible, was initiated by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was the first version where the various sections were delegated to Hebrew and Greek experts to be translated. All of these translators were, or were to become, Anglican bishops. The revisers were to use translations already in use, including the Geneva Bible, but were to eliminate the (sometimes antagonistic) footnotes of the latter. Although the Bishop’s Bible went through nineteen editions and superseded the Great Bible as the official Bible of the Church, it was seldom used outside the Anglican communion because of the superior quality of the Geneva Bible.
The Douai-Rheims Version (1582; OT 1609). This version was produced by Gregory Martin, one of several Roman Catholic scholars who sought refuge in Northern France during the Elizabethan era. For all practical purposes it became the “KJV” of the English-speaking Roman Catholic Church through the mid-twentieth century. Although it was a translation of the Latin Vulgate rather than the Greek and Hebrew, it shows remarkable similarity to the Bishop’s Bible and to the King James Version, as one can see by reading it side-by-side with the KJV (cf. The Precise Parallel New Testament, ed. John R. Kohlenberger III [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995]).
The King James Version (1611)
By far the most important translation of the Bible into English was the King James Version, which first appeared in 1611 as the “Authorized Version.” Although it was about ninety percent “Tyndale,” it was in fact a careful revision, ultimately based on the original languages and done by the ablest biblical scholars of the Anglican Church. Especially important, it was also “authorized” from the outset (1603) by King James I himself. At least one of the reasons it tended to find more universal acceptance is that the translators (wisely) chose not to include the kinds of controversial footnotes that could be found in most of its predecessors.
As with most of these versions, however, in some quarters the KJV met strong resistance. Yet in time it took its place as perhaps the most significant work ever published in English. So well done was it that it not only held pride-of-place in almost all English-speaking churches for centuries, but it also helped to shape the English language for the next four centuries. Consider a few of the many idioms that have entered the English language through the KJV:
fall flat on your face (Num. 22:31)
escape by the skin of my teeth (Job 19:20)
a fly in the ointment (Eccl. 10:1)
pride goes before a fall (Prov. 16:18)
sour grapes (Ezek. 18:2)
pour out your heart (Ps. 62:8)
everything under the sun (Eccl. 1:3, 9, 14, etc.)
Those who resisted the KJV were people from more conservative expressions of Christian faith, who were not ready to accept anything that came out of the official Church of England and under the auspices of the king. It is therefore of some historical interest that in the twentieth century in the United States, it was similar groups who resisted contemporary translations that deviated from the “real Bible,” the King James Version!
It should also finally be noted that all of these versions of the New Testament that were made directly from the Greek text were based on what came to be known as the Textus Receptus or the “Received Text.” What they have in common is the translation of a late Greek text that had accumulated centuries of variations from the original text (see chap. 8 above). These textual variations represent the main difference between the KJV and the modern versions that began to appear with the Revised Version of 1881. For many this textual issue was the primary point of contention between the KJV and its subsequent revisions.
From the Revised Version to the Revised Standard Version
The history of English versions between 1881 and 1952 has two, quite unrelated, parts to it. First, there is the continuing tradition of “revising” existing Bibles, which began with the Coverdale Bible and carried through the King James Version and its successors: the Revised Version (RV, 1885), the American Standard Version (ASV, 1901), the Revised Standard Version (RSV, 1952), the New American Standard Bible (NASB, 1971), the New King James Version (NKJV, 1982), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989), and the English Standard Version (ESV, 2001). In this way the long tradition of translations based on “formal equivalence” was maintained throughout the twentieth century right into the beginning of the twenty-first.
Second, beginning with the remarkable Twentieth Century New Testament (1901), a new movement in Bible translation began, where the goal was simultaneously to be faithful to the meaning of the original text but also to render it in contemporary English. Following this version, a remarkable number of new versions began to appear, either of the whole Bible or parts of it. In So Many Versions? written by Sakae Kubo and Walter F. Specht (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), a guide to the better-known twentieth-century versions, an appendix includes no less than seventy-six such versions that appeared in English between 1901 and the Revised Standard Version in 1952.
We will note here only a few of the more significant versions within these two streams of tradition (“significant” in the sense that they had a degree of broader use in Great Britain and/or the United States).
The Revised Version (RV) (1881/1885). The first major revision of the KJV took place in England toward the end of the nineteenth century. It had been initiated by the Anglican Convocation of Canterbury in 1870. Its aim was to produce an updated KJV, where the Old Testament continued to be based on the standard Hebrew text (the Masoretic text) while the New Testament was based on an updated Greek text produced by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, both of whom were on the revision committee. Their Greek text was actually published five days before the revised New Testament appeared in 1881.
This revision, which in time was to become the standard Bible in Great Britain, ended up as something of a mixed blessing. Because of many advances in Hebrew scholarship over the preceding two centuries, the Old Testament was a considerable improvement over the KJV, making clear many places that were obscure in the KJV. But the New Testament turned out to be only a partial improvement. On the one hand, because of the textual expertise of Westcott and Hort, the New Testament now had a much more reliable Greek text than the Textus Receptus (the Greek text behind the KJV). On the other hand, eagerness for grammatical precision sometimes superseded the need to be clear in English. Thus the end result was a translation based on a superior Greek text, but one that many people considered to be quite inferior to the KJV in terms of English literary quality.
But perhaps the greatest failing of all was the determination of the revisers to make this a revision of the King James Version rather than a genuinely new translation. In so doing they adopted what has been dubbed as “an archaizing policy,” in which they would use no “modern” expression in English that was not current in 1611. Not only did this inhibit genuine revision, but it kept the Bible from being updated to the language of the day. The result was that even though the Revised Version was initially received with great enthusiasm, it turned out to be more of a scholar’s Bible than one used by everyday readers. Most people found the familiarity of the KJV much more to their liking. Indeed, Charles Spurgeon is reported to have said that the Revised Version “was strong in Greek but weak in English.”
The American Standard Version (ASV) (1901). Early on the British revisers of the Revised Version reached out to their American counterparts to join in the revision process, and an American committee was formed. But because the Atlantic had to be crossed by steamship rather than aircraft, the two committees never met together. Instead, the British draft was sent to the American committee, who then returned it with the committee’s suggestions. Since this became an unworkable scheme, American input into the Revised Version was minimal. The American committee chose to produce its own version of the Revised Version, but because of an agreement with their British counterparts, they had to wait fourteen years to publish it.
Work on the American version began in 1897 and was published in 1901 as the American Standard Version. The hope was that it would eventually replace the KJV on the American side of the Atlantic. And while this translation chose not to be bound by the archaizing policy of the Revised Version, it was still a revision, not a new translation. The revisers chose to keep hundreds of KJV renderings that had fallen out of English usage by the end of the nineteenth century. For example, they kept such archaisms as “he hungered” in Matthew 21:18. The ASV’s greatest idiosyncrasy was rendering the Divine Name in the Old Testament as “Jehovah” instead of as “LORD.” Since this vocalizing of the Divine Name soon fell out of favor with biblical scholars, the ASV introduced a name for God that was seldom used by anyone except the cult known as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Twentieth Century New Testament (1900/1904). Above we described this version as “remarkable,” which indeed it was. Aptly named for the new century in which it appeared, its remarkable nature was that what turned out to be an impressive rendering of the New Testament into contemporary English had no professional biblical scholars on the committee. It was primarily the work of lay people, who were in time joined by a few ministers and whose work was eventually reviewed by two biblical scholars and the classicist R. F. Weymouth. The concern of the two well-educated people primarily responsible for producing this version was for their own children, who found the Revised Version out of reach in terms of understanding. Thus was born a version that sought to do in English what Luther had attempted in German nearly four centuries earlier (see pp. 30, 136 above) — to produce a truly idiomatic version.
Another thing that made this work remarkable was that it was the work of a “committee” that never met together as one. Rather, the NT documents had been portioned out to individual translators, whose work was then passed through the committee for corrections and improvements. Work that began in the mid-1890s was eventually published in three parts between 1898 and 1900. After receiving a great many suggestions from readers, a revised New Testament appeared in 1904. Among other innovations the translators presented the text in paragraphs, with numbers in the margins, and rearranged the books within traditional groupings in what was assumed to be their chronological order. While this version enjoyed a good measure of success in Great Britain, it was scarcely noticed in North America, until an “Americanized” version was published by Moody Press in 1961, where the traditional order of the books was restored. It is still a translation worth reading, or at least consulting.
The New Testament in Modern Speech (R. F. Weymouth; 1903). This excellent translation was the first of many to follow that were the work of a single scholar. Weymouth had been headmaster of a “nonconformist” British private school, who was equally concerned about his students’ ability to understand the English Bible in its traditional wordings, either the KJV or RV. A classicist by training, he set out to provide his students with a New Testament they could understand. The result was The New Testament in Modern Speech: An Idiomatic Translation into Every-day English. Although Weymouth died in 1902 before the finished product was printed, a close friend, and member of the Twentieth Century New Testament committee, made the final revisions and saw the work through to publication. Like the Twentieth Century New Testament, it is still worth reading today.
The New Testament: A New Translation (James Moffatt; 1913/1926 [rev. ed. 1935]). This second significant New Testament to be translated by a single individual was at once both a work of the highest order and one full of idiosyncrasies. Among other things, it was based on the Greek text of H. von Soden, itself an idiosyncratic text. Moffatt was also quite ready to accept emendations of various kinds to the text, including the rearranging of some verses and the omission of others. It also had several very Scottish renderings (e.g., barrister, cairn, hie, kilt). Although idiosyncratic, Moffatt’s version was also engaging and stimulating. It achieved considerable popular success, including a commentary series based on its text.
The New Testament: An American Translation (E. J. Goodspeed;1923/1927). This version, like Moffatt’s, was produced by a brilliant New Testament scholar. As the title indicates, it was as intentionally American as Moffatt’s was Scottish. Despite the occasional idiosyncrasy that occurs in any single-person translation of the Bible, this version rightfully took its place among the better ones and enjoyed many printings. Although it was the work of a noted scholar, the English was readily accessible to the average American and enabled many American readers to read the Bible afresh, as if for the first time.
The Centenary Translation of the New Testament (Helen Barrett Montgomery; 1924). This fourth translation of the NT by a single individual is seldom noted in the literature, in part because its appearance coincided with the centenary celebration of the American Baptists, and thus it was perceived to be more “denominational.” But it is worth noting here if for no other reason than the fact that it was the first translation of the New Testament by a woman scholar. Among the many helps she offered the reader was italicizing of citations of the Old Testament by New Testament authors. She is perhaps best known for considering 1 Corinthians 14:34 – 35 as Paul’s quoting from the Corinthians’ letter to him. Overall this is an excellent translation, altogether less idiosyncratic than Moffat, and still worth reading or consulting.
The Holy Bible: A Translation from the Latin Vulgate (Ronald A. Knox; 1945/1949). The last of the pre-RSV versions to be noted here is this significant Roman Catholic translation by a British monsignor of well-known literary skills. His translation was based on the Latin Vulgate, since Knox was already well on his way to finishing the New Testament portion of the translation when a papal decree in 1943 opened the way for Roman Catholics to translate from the original Hebrew and Greek. What he produced, in fact, was the first approved translation of the Bible into English since the Douai-Rheims version of 1582. Sometimes quite paraphrastic, Knox’s version was an excellent, literary translation that was also readily accessible to all.
The Revised Standard Version (NT 1948; full 1952). The present overview of English translations comes to its proper conclusion with the appearance of the whole Bible in this version. Although it was strongly opposed by some conservative American Christians, the RSV became the Bible of choice for much of American Christendom during the third quarter of the twentieth century.
Its strength, however, was also its primary drawback. As the name implies, it was intended to be in the long line of English Bible revisions traced back to William Tyndale. The translators were in fact “revisers,” and although they were free to offer what scholarship believed to be the best sense of the text, they were also compelled to stay close to the KJV literary tradition as that had come to them through the RV and ASV. The result was actually better than one might have expected from such a hybrid. So it was no surprise that for the majority of American Christians who were not still wedded to the KJV, this became their preferred Bible, and for a few decades was the best-selling English version after the KJV.
By the time the latest revision appeared in 1972 — a revision that succeeded in becoming a “common Bible” for both Protestants and Roman Catholics — the English language itself was also changing at a remarkably rapid pace. So the RSV, too, had to undergo a thorough revision within two decades. But that part of the story is for our next, and final, chapter.
For Further Reading
Bruce, F. F. History of the Bible in English. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001.