The Geneva Bible
THE GENEVA BIBLE
The GENEva Bible is generally agreed to have mainly been the work of William Whittingham (c. 1524–79), who was assisted by Anthony Gilby and Thomas Sampson. It is also thought that Miles Coverdale, John Knox, and Laurence Tomson were involved, although the extent and nature of their contribution is far from clear. Whittingham was elected a fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1545. His Protestant views led him to flee England under Mary Tudor, and settle in the city of Frankfurt. The English congregation in Frankfurt had been established in April 1554 by a group of French Protestants, originally based at Glastonbury, who had fled England. The minister of this church, Valerand Poullain, urged his congregation to welcome any others who would flee England on account of their religious beliefs.
A few weeks later, a group of English Protestants arrived, and were allowed to use the French church for their own worship. To avoid language difficulties, it was agreed that the English-speaking congregation should worship on its own. But what form of service would they use? A ferocious debate broke out over whether the 1552 Prayer Book of Edward VI should be used or not. The debate split the congregation, and led to continued bitterness over issues—including both matters of liturgy and theology—and would erupt again in England during the reign of Elizabeth and beyond. Whittingham and Gilby were both involved in what came to be known as the “troubles of Frankfurt,” siding with those who wanted to avoid using the Prayer Book. When it became clear that they were losing the debate, they decided to move on.
Following the Frankfurt controversy, Whittingham and Gilby settled in Geneva, under John Knox as the pastor of the English church in the city. Calvin's Geneva provided a place of safety for the refugees; Geneva's Calvin provided them with the biblical commentaries and works of theology that ensured the academic excellence of their translations and annotations. Whittingham's relationship with Calvin went considerably beyond that of the appreciative theological apprentice; he appears to have married Calvin's sister (or perhaps sister-in-law). The English Protestant community in Geneva proved to be especially close-knit, and avoided the divisions and bitterness of émigré communities in other European cities. This close-knit community of entrepreneurs and theologians became the womb within which the Geneva Bible was conceived and nurtured.
Whittingham's first major contribution to the “Englishing” of the Bible was his English New Testament published in 1557. This work was largely derivative, being based primarily on Tyndale's English translation of a generation earlier. However, significant modifications were introduced. Calvin's colleague Theodore Beza had published a new Latin translation of the New Testament in 1556, which was available to Whittingham; it is clear that this influenced his English translation at certain important points. The work was published by Conrad Badius, the son-in law of leading Geneva printer Robert Estienne. Whittingham was quite clear concerning his proposed readership. The translation was, according to Whittingham, aimed at “the simple lambs, which partly are already in the fold of Christ, and so hear willingly their shepherd's voice, and partly wandering astray by ignorance, tarry till the time the Shepherd find them and bring them unto his flock.”
The so-called “Armada portrait” of Elizabeth I by an unknown artist of the English School, c. 1588
The translation is of note in a number of respects, particularly in that it may be regarded as establishing some of the characteristic vocabulary of the King James Version. For example, Whittingham chose to abandon the use of the English term “congregation” to translate the Greek term ekklesia, and replace it with the more nuanced term “church.” Earlier English translations of the New Testament had referred collectively to the letters of James, Peter, John, and Jude as the “Catholic Epistles;” Whittingham established the practice of referring to them as the “General Epistles.” Interesting though this work was, it must be judged to be little more than an anticipation of the greater work we shall consider presently.
In 1558, Mary Tudor died. A surge of relief was experienced throughout English Protestant émigré communities. When it became clear that her successor, Elizabeth, appeared sympathetic to Protestantism, the Marian exiles realized that their moment had come. They would return to England. The Elizabethan “Settlement of Religion” of 1559 seemed to guarantee the position of Protestantism within England, and offer the possibility of it gaining the ascendancy as time went on. There was work for Protestant activists to do at home, and an abundance of opportunities to use the experience they had gained in exile. Most of the Marian exiles returned to England late in 1559 or early 1560. Whittingham, however, chose to remain in Geneva until his major new translation of the Bible was published late in 1560.
The title page of Whittingham's translation of the Bible read as follows:
The Bible and Holy Scriptures, contained in the Old and New Testament. Translated according to the Hebrew and Greek, and conferred with the best translations in divers languages. With most profitable annotations upon all the hard places, and other things of great importance as may appear in the “Epistle to the Reader.” “Fear not, stand still, and behold the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you this day.” Exodus xiv.13. At Geneva. Printed by Rowland Hall. M.D.LX.
The reference to Geneva in this title page explains why this came to be known as the “Geneva Bible.”
The work was printed in the fashion that had gained the ascendancy at Geneva since its revolution of 1535. The Geneva printers Robert Estienne and Jean Girard had produced Bibles in roman, rather than “Black Letter,” type since 1534. The old, Germanic appearance of the “Black Letter” Bibles—such as that of Gutenberg—thus gave way to a more modern style. The older “Black Letter” type was modeled on written script, and was not especially easy to read. The roman type, in contrast, was much clearer, making reading—whether public or private—a considerably more pleasant and less-demanding process. Increasingly, the older “Black Letter” type began to be regarded as archaic in England.
In addition, in a New Testament published in 1551, Estienne introduced the practice of numbering individual verses, and dividing the passages in those verses. In effect, each verse, therefore, begins on a new line—a development that seriously interrupted the flow of the text, and failed to take account of the frequently unsatisfactory division of the text into verses. The technique also made it impossible to distinguish between prose and poetry, in that both were presented in precisely the same manner. Two years later, Estienne issued a complete French translation of the Bible, the first to use the chapter-and-verse division throughout. The basic format that would be followed by the English translation of 1560 was, therefore, in place by 1553.
The considerable costs of producing the work were met by the exiles themselves, or by their covert supporters back in England. Although it is clear that the fundamental motivation for the new translation was a concern to make the Bible accessible and intelligible to a lay English readership, the financial aspects of the project could hardly be overlooked. If the new Bible caught on, fortunes were waiting to be made. With the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth, it was widely anticipated that there would be a surge in demand for English translations of the Bible. The best would win—and the supporters of the Geneva Bible were convinced that it outperformed the competition on every point.
One of the former Marian exiles in Geneva who stood to benefit most from this was John Bodley who secured a license to print the Geneva Bible (under episcopal supervision) for a period of seven years. The archbishops of Canterbury and York indicated that they were prepared to extend this for a further twelve years, under certain conditions. Confident of its adoption in England, John Bodley arranged for a folio edition of the work to be published, this much larger size being suitable for use on lecterns in churches.
It might thus at first seem that the commercial and spiritual prospects for the Geneva Bible were excellent. The 1560 edition was produced relatively cheaply (bringing it within the reach of many families). It was handsomely printed in an attractive typeface, and its relatively compact size—quarto rather than folio—made it convenient for personal and family use. The English translation itself was perhaps the best of its day. The biblical text was broken down into individual verses; words that were introduced into the text, yet had no direct equivalent in the original, were printed in italics. It was important to Whittingham to indicate which parts of the text were the word of God, and which the necessary additions of the translator.
Yet its most important and attractive features were its illustrations, prefaces, annotations, and marginal notes. The illustrations were added to enable the reader to make more visual sense of some difficult passages (for example, the vision of Ezekiel), to offer maps to accompany descriptions of lands or journeys, and to depict scenes from biblical narratives (such as the “garments of the High Priest,” described in Exodus 28). Those who created the Geneva Bible had absorbed Calvin's famous maxim concerning the need to “accommodate to the ability of the individual.” If God “accommodated himself to human capacity” in communicating with humanity—for example, by using visual images, such as “God as shepherd”—why should not Bibles follow this excellent precedent? The divine sanction for explanation and illustration underlies the distinctive approach of the entire Geneva project, which aims to make the engagement with Scripture as simple as possible for the reader. As the preface to the Geneva Bible put it:
Whereas certain places in the books of Moses, of the Kings and Ezekiel seemed so dark that by no description they could be made easy to the simple reader; we have so set them forth with figures and notes for the full declaration thereof that they… as it were by the eye may sufficiently know the true meaning of all such places. Whereunto we have added certain maps of cosmography which necessarily serve for the perfect understanding and memory of divers places and countries, partly described and partly by occasion touched, both in the Old and New Testament.
It may be noted that not all these illustrations were composed specifically for the Geneva Bible; Robert Estienne had amassed a considerable number of biblical illustrations for other Bibles, and was able to draw on these for this new work.
The prefaces aimed to explain what the individual books taught, allowing their readers to see the purpose of the book within the Bible as a whole. For example, consider the preface to Genesis (which is here treated as having been written by Moses himself):
Moses in effect declares three things, which are in this book chiefly to be considered: First, that the world and all things in it were created by God, and to praise his Name for the infinite graces, with which he had endued him, fell willingly from God through disobedience, who yet for his own mercies sake restored him to life, and confirmed him in the same by his promise of Christ to come, by whom he should overcome Satan, death and hell. Secondly, that the wicked, unmindful of God's most excellent benefits, remained still in their wickedness, and so falling most horribly from sin to sin, provoked God (who by his preachers called them continually to repentance) at length to destroy the whole world. Thirdly, he assures us by the examples of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the rest of the patriarchs, that his mercies never fail those whom he chooses to be his Church, and to profess his Name in earth, but in all their afflictions and persecutions he assists them, sends comfort, and delivers them, so that the beginning, increase, preservation and success of it might be attributed to God only. Moses shows by the examples of Cain, Ishmael, Esau and others, who were noble in man's judgment, that this Church depends not on the estimation and nobility of the world: and also by the fewness of those, who have at all times worshipped him purely according to his word that it stands not in the multitude, but in the poor and despised, in the small flock and little number, that man in his wisdom might be confounded, and the name of God praised forever.
The prefaces thus served the purpose of introducing readers to the leading theological themes set out in the books in question. No other work had such a useful feature—a feature that, it need hardly be added, was easily adapted to stressing and defending Protestant doctrines, and critiquing Roman Catholic teachings.
It would be the marginal notes that proved to be of supreme importance in the great religious controversies of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Whereas William Tyndale had assumed—hopelessly optimistically as it proved—that the Bible, once translated, could easily be understood by any plowboy the Geneva Bible explicitly recognized that there were “hard places”—that is, passages of the Bible that needed explanation.
As we shall be exploring some of the Geneva marginal comments in this section, it is appropriate to explain how the text is presented. The biblical text is printed first, along with the note indicators in brackets. These may take the form of letters or numbers, which refer to the annotations that follow. For example, consider the complex argument concerning justification by faith in Paul's letter to the Galatians. Aware that many readers would find difficulty in following the argument—and hence were likely to misunderstand Paul at critical points—the Geneva Bible offered detailed comments on critical verses; or, to use its own phrase, “most profitable annotations upon the hard places.” A good example is provided by Galatians 2:17.
The title page of the Geneva New Testament
{4} But if while {s} we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.
{4} Before he goes any further, he meets with the objection which abhorred this doctrine of free justification by faith, because, they say, men are by this means withdrawn from the performing of good works. And in this sort is the objection: if sinners should be justified through Christ by faith without the Law, Christ would approve sinners, and should as it were exhort them to sin by his ministry. Paul answers that this conclusion is false, because Christ destroys sin in the believers: for so, he says, do men flee to Christ through the terror and fear of the Law, that being acquitted from the curse of the Law and justified they may be saved by him. And in addition he together begins in them by little and little that strength and power of his which destroys sin: to the end that this old man being abolished by the power of Christ crucified, Christ may live in them, and they may consecrate themselves to God. Therefore if any man give himself to sin after he has received the Gospel, let him not accuse Christ nor the Gospel, but himself, for he destroys the work of God in himself.
(s) He goes from justification to sanctification, which is another benefit we receive from Christ, if we lay hold of him by faith.
It can be seen immediately that the marginal notes anticipate the difficulties that might be encountered by readers, and provide clarification to ensure that misunderstandings did not arise. By providing such explanations in plain English, the Geneva Bible secured its position as the market leader—assuming, of course, that there was to be an open market for translations of the Bible in England.