Introduction
Introduction
In making this edition of Wycliffe’s monumental work the Publisher has had to make a number of decisions that affect the final outcome of the work. Some of these decisions may be welcomed by the reading public and some perhaps not. All of the decisions were made with the reader in mind. Our intention was to produce an edition of Wycliffe’s Bible translation that was reasonably priced and to do this it must be in one volume. This has meant choosing a large paper format. Other smaller sized editions are over 800 pages. We chose a larger paper size that results in around 250 pages less.
We chose a font that is recognized as easily readable at smaller sizes. Adobe Garamond, 10 pt. was selected. We have tested it and have not found it to be an uncomfortable reading size. If you have reasonable eyesight, you will not need a magnifying glass, as has been reportedly needed for other modern reprints. We hope you like it.
Some will complain that we have not inserted indents and paragraphing. Again, this is a massive volume and we have tried to produce a book that is within one volume so that it is commercially viable for us and you the reader.
It has also meant not including any of the introductions by Wycliffe, Jerome and others, or notes that were a part of the original. Hence the subtitle “Text Edition”. We understand this will not be to everyone’s liking, but we are limited, by the printer, to how many pages our books can be. At the size we chose we are almost at capacity. At a smaller size we could have done over 800 pages, but we still would have had to cram the same amount of text in. So the problem would be the same. The only way around this problem would have been to produce two large volumes and at this time we do question the viability of such an undertaking. However, if it is clear that there is a great demand for it, we may bring out a new two volume edition with that additional text. This may also enable us to insert indents and paragraphing. The introductions and notes will greatly enrich your understanding of Wycliffe’s Bible, but for now you will have to look elsewhere for them.
This work was first produced in the late Middle Ages. The language is therefore extremely archaic. So much so that some of the letters have evolved and changed since then. This edition contains all modern letters. But please note it does not contain modern spelling. It is not a “Modern Edition”. The yogh (which looks like this: ȝ) for example has been replaced as necessary. Purists will complain, but we hope for the average reader this will not present much of a problem.
The History and Influence of the Wycliffe Bible
Wikipedia says of the Wycliffe Bible that "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. These Bible translations were the chief inspiration and chief cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the distinctive teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In the early Middle Ages, most Western Christian people encountered the Bible only in the form of oral versions of scriptures, verses and homilies in Latin (other sources were mystery plays, usually conducted in the vernacular, and popular iconography). Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe’s idea was to translate the Bible into the vernacular, saying "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence".
Long thought to be the work of Wycliffe himself, the Wycliffite translations are now generally believed to be the work of several hands. Nicholas of Hereford is known to have translated a part of the text; John Purvey and perhaps John Trevisa are names that have been mentioned as possible authors. The translators worked from the Vulgate, the Latin Bible that was the standard Biblical text of Western Christianity, and the text conforms fully with Catholic teaching. They included in the testaments those works which would later be called deuterocanonical by most Protestants, along with 3 Esdras which is now called 2 Esdras and Paul's epistle to the Laodiceans.
Although unauthorised, the work was popular. Wycliffite Bible texts are the most common manuscript literature in Middle English. More than 250 manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible survive.
The association between Wycliffe's Bible and Lollardy caused the kingdom of England and the established Catholic Church in England to undertake a drastic campaign to suppress it. In the early years of the 15th century, Henry IV (De haeretico comburendo), Archbishop Thomas Arundel, and Henry Knighton published criticism and enacted some of the severest religious censorship laws in Europe at that time. Even twenty years after Wycliffe's death, at the Oxford Convocation of 1408, it was solemnly voted that no new translation of the Bible should be made without prior approval. However, as the text translated in the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and as it contained no heterodox readings[citation needed], there was in practice no way by which the ecclesiastical authorities could distinguish the banned version; and consequently many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscript English bibles to represent an anonymous earlier orthodox translation. Consequently, manuscripts of the Wycliffe Bible, which when inscribed with a date always purport to precede 1409, the date of the ban, circulated freely and were widely used by clergy and laity.
It is questioned whether Wycliffe himself translated the whole Bible. In any case, it is certain that at the fifteenth century portions of the Scriptures were called Wyclifite.
Supporters of the view that Wycliffe did translate the Bible hold that when Wycliffe took on the challenge of translating, he was breaking a long-held belief that no person should translate the Bible on their own initiative, without approval of the Church. It is said that his frustrations drove him to ignore this and that Wycliffe believed that studying the Bible was more important than listening to it read by the clergy.
At that time people mainly heard the Bible at church since they did not know how to read, and the Bible was costly (before the printing press). It is certain though that the Bible itself was familiar even to laymen in the fourteenth century and that the whole of the New Testament at least could be read in translations. Also during the Middle Ages one who could read, could read Latin also, and he who couldn't read Latin, usually couldn't read at all.
Wycliffe believed every Christian should study the Bible. When met with opposition to the translation he replied “Christ and his apostles taught the people in that tongue that was best known to them. Why should men not do so now?” For one to have a personal relationship with God, Wycliffe believed that need to be described in the Bible. Wycliffe also believed that it was necessary to return to the primitive state of the New Testament in order to truly reform the Church. So one must be able to read the Bible to understand those times.
Wyclifite versions of the Bible were sometimes condemned as such by the Catholic Church because a Wyclifite preface had been added to an orthodox translation.
At this time, the Peasants’ Revolt was running full force as the people of England united to rebel against the unfairness of the English Parliament and its favouring of the wealthier classes. William Courtenay, the Archbishop of Canterbury was able to turn both the church and Parliament against Wycliffe by falsely stating that his writings and his influence were fuelling the peasants involved in the revolt. (It was actually John Ball, another priest, who was involved in the revolt and merely quoted Wycliffe in one of his speeches.) The Church and Parliament’s anger towards Wycliffe’s “heresy” led them to form the Blackfriars Synod in order to remove Wycliffe from Oxford. Although this Synod was initially delayed by an earthquake that Wycliffe himself believed symbolised “the judgement of God,” it eventually re-convened. At this synod, Wycliffe’s writings (Biblical and otherwise) were quoted and criticised for heresy. This Synod ultimately resulted in King Richard II ruling that Wycliffe be removed from Oxford, and that all who preached or wrote against Catholicism be imprisoned.
Then later on, after John Wycliffe was dead, The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe (on 4 May 1415) a heretic and under the ban of the Church. It was decreed that his books be burned and his remains be exhumed. The exhumation was carried out in 1428 when, at the command of Pope Martin V, his remains were dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth. This is the most final of all posthumous attacks on John Wycliffe, but previous attempts had been made before the Council of Constance. The Anti-Wycliffite Statute of 1401 extended persecution to Wycliffe's remaining followers. The "Constitutions of Oxford" of 1408 aimed to reclaim authority in all ecclesiastical matters, specifically naming John Wycliffe in a ban on certain writings, and noting that translation of Scripture into English by unlicensed laity is a crime punishable by charges of heresy.
Although Wycliffe's Bible circulated widely in the later Middle Ages, it had very little influence on the first English biblical translations of the reformation era such as those of William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, as it had been translated from the Latin Vulgate rather than the original Greek and Hebrew; and consequently it was generally ignored in later English Protestant biblical scholarship. The earliest printed edition, of the New Testament only, was by John Lewis in 1731. However, due to the common use of surviving manuscripts of Wycliffe's Bible as works of an unknown Catholic translator, this version continued to circulate among 16th-century English Catholics, and many of its renderings of the Vulgate into English were adopted by the translators of the Rheims New Testament. Since the Rheims version was itself to be consulted by the translators working for King James a number of readings from Wycliffe's Bible did find their way into the Authorized King James Version of the Bible at second hand.”
Sincerely,
CrossReach Publications
November, 2016