5. Explaining The “Hard Places”: The Geneva Bible
5
EXPLAINING
THE “HARD PLACES”:
THE GENEVA BIBLE
The English translation of the Bible that did more than anything to shape English religious thought throughout the long reign of Elizabeth I was produced in the city of Geneva in 1560. This immensely influential translation is the source of the many allusions to the Bible that are found in the works of Shakespeare. Perhaps the greatest—and certainly the most curious—tribute to the popularity of the Geneva Bible is the remarkable fact that, when citing from the Bible, the preface to the King James Bible itself chose to use the Geneva translation rather than the new translation that the preface was intended to introduce and commend. The greatest obstacle faced by the King James Version as it sought to establish itself in the seventeenth century was the continuing popularity of the Geneva Bible.
As we shall see, the Geneva Bible did rather more than offer an acceptable English translation of the entire Bible, including the Apocrypha. It offered comments on the text, which often expressed the radical Protestant ideas associated with Geneva at this time. The title page of the Great Bible depicted the close relationship between church and state, monarch and people, which it envisaged as being authorized and encouraged by the Bible. Geneva was a republic, and had a strong interest in spreading its republicanism, as much as its Protestantism, throughout Europe. The Geneva Bible threatened to undermine the entire structure of church and state that had been set up under Henry VIII, and continued more or less unchanged under Elizabeth I.
So how did this enormously influential Bible come into being? Why was the household Bible of Elizabethan English Protestants produced in Geneva? What conceivable reason might there be for a book intended for distribution in England to be produced in a far-off French-speaking city? The answers to these questions are fascinating, and merit close attention.