The Bible as Literature
The effort to make the Bible available to the English-speaking reader has always involved an interplay between scholarship and technology. While fragments of Scripture were put into English in earlier centuries, John Wycliffe's Bible (1382) was the first entire Bible in English. Since every copy was made by hand, copies were scarce and expensive, and access to them was very limited. William Tyndale's New Testament (1525) was the first portion of English Scripture to be printed. The development of the printing press and the concomitant development of paper-making technology helped to make Bibles available to the public, not simply to well-endowed churches or wealthy individuals. But access was still limited, since few speakers of English were literate, and few were wealthy enough to afford even a printed Bible. Because of the limitations of the printing process, binding, and the quality of available paper, Bibles were large, cumbersome objects.
The Geneva Bible (1560) was conceived not only as a translation, but also as an edition that would be available to larger numbers of people. It was still a large, heavy book by modern standards, but it was smaller than previous Bibles and was printed in Roman type, making it easier to read for newly literate people than the traditional block-letter type. The Geneva Bible, produced by Puritans within the Church of England, spread widely and became the Bible that might be owned by a family and read in the home, although one would never have thought of carrying it to church.
Meanwhile, churches in England used in their services the Great Bible (1539), a revision of Miles Coverdale's Bible (1535), itself a revision and addition to Tyndale's work. The Great Bible was revised in turn as the Bishops' Bible (1568).
The Authorized or King James Version (KJV) appeared in 1611. It was a creative revision of the Bishops' Bible, keeping in its wording a great amount of material that went all the way back to Tyndale. At first it appeared only as a very large and heavy volume, but as it became available in a variety of editions it gradually became more popular, eventually supplanting the Geneva Bible in homes and the Bishops' Bible or Great Bible in churches. By the time of the American Revolution the KJV had become the version most Englishspeaking Protestants meant when they thought of "the Bible"
While the 19th century was not without creative attempts at Bible translation, the main advances in making the Bible accessible were accomplished by technology and business. From an early date, book buyers bought printed pages, which they would then take to a professional binder. In the early 19th century Bible publishers introduced a new concept of placing printing and bookbinding under one roof, so that the buyer could purchase a finished product. Printing itself became more efficient as stereotyping came into use, doing away with the need to set type into frames letter by letter, and as rotary presses took the place of hand presses. Technology developed to make paper thinner. All this contributed to making Bibles that were small enough to be held in the hand and read conveniently. Still, Bibles are books, and books are heavy. Only with the coming of the railroads did it become possible to transport Bibles in large quantities to all parts of the country economically. Riding the rails were Bible salesmen, whether wholesalers making Bibles available to distant bookstores or retailers walking dusty roads and streets selling door-to-door. By the end of the 19th century Bibles were common possessions in Protestant households, widely read and now often carried to church. Virtually all of these were the King James Version.
Psalms 23-25 in the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible (Robert Barker, first edition 1611, London). (British Library)
The first half of the loth century was a time of advance in translation. New discoveries and critical techniques had made it possible to have a Hebrew or Greek text much closer to the original writings than were available to King James's translators, and the English language itself had changed so dramatically that the KJV text was often not understood, or, more dangerously, misunderstood. The American Standard Version (1901) was an attempt to make the text of the Bible more accurate, but it was so lacking in literary grace that it was seldom used for worship, although it often served as a text in seminaries. Among other translations of the early loth century, all of which found a readership, were James Moffatt's Bible (1913-24), the American Translation of J. M. Powis Smith and Edgar Goodspeed (1931), J. B. Phillips's rendering of the New Testament (1947), and Charles B. Williams's New Testament (1937). The Revised Standard Version (RSV 1952) was a conscious attempt to provide a realistic alternative to the KJV, not only bringing scholarship up to date, but also writing in a pleasing English style, sticking as closely as possible to the cadences of the KJV.
The RSV was not just another in a long series of Bible translations. It was a major undertaking, recognized by conservative American Protestants as a serious challenge to the King James. Slowly the RSV won its way among liberal and more moderate churches. During the second half of the century, however, it became more and more evident to conservative Christians that the King James Version had seen its day, and a variety of translations began to appear that were done under safely conservative auspices. Among the more recent have been the New American Standard Bible (1971,1995), the New International Version (NIV, 1978), the New King James Version (1982), and the Living Translation (1996). The NIV shows signs of becoming widely accepted among a theologically conservative readership. A revision of the RSV as the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1991) seems to be establishing itself as a norm among church people willing to accept a Bible translated by nonconservative scholars.
From developments in translation theory came the dynamic equivalent model, less concerned to reflect the sentence structure of the original language as to convey the meaning, even when it meant a drastic breaking down and reconstruction of the original syntax. An early attempt at this was the Twentieth Century New Testament (1902). More ambitious efforts were the New English Bible (NEB, British, 1970) and, at a simpler level of vocabulary, Today's English Version (TEV, 1976). The Contemporary English Version (1995) goes far beyond both the NEB and TEV in choice of vocabulary and freedom of restatement. A revision of the NEB in 1989 as the Revised English Bible was notable for being less venturesome and somewhat more traditional in its translation technique, while at almost the same time the NRSV was willing to venture into a freer translation style than its predecessor, the RSV.
American Jews throughout the loth century used the Jewish Publication Society Version (1917). More recently, English-speaking Jewish scholars have made available for their readership (and Christians as well) the New Jewish Publication Society Version completed in 1985. Roman Catholic Christians, long accustomed to using the Douai-Rheims version (1582-1610; translated from the Latin Bible but thoroughly revised by Richard Challoner in 1750), have produced two notable versions, the Jerusalem Bible (1966; revised as the New Jerusalem Bible, 1990) and the New American Bible (1970), both translated from the original Greek and Hebrew, and both freely used by Protestant scholars as well. Most modern Catholics are also quite comfortable with most Protestant translations.
Social change has led to a series of revisions of existing versions so as to use inclusive language. Among these are the RSV (as NRSV, 1991), TEV (1992), and NEB (as Revised English Bible, 1989). A move so to revise the NIV was originally halted, largely from pressure by new leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention, but resulted in the publication of Today's New International Version (2002).
In recent years the attempt to make the Bible accessible has turned once again to technology and business. Many fine translations are available, but there is an increased desire on the part of Bible lovers and biblical scholars to access these texts on computers, where search engines and other aids open up new possibilities for studying the text. To business has fallen the task of making the Bible a desirable object. Whereas people once considered possession of a Bible to be a precious privilege, today increasing numbers do not care whether they own one or not. Publishers increasingly turn not to fresh translations, but to novel ways of marketing existing translations, often offering the same translation with different covers, under different titles, and with notations, directed at specific markets, such as teenagers, men, women, or children.
FOR FURTHER READING
Comfort, Philip W. The Essential Guide to Bible Versions. Wheaton: Tyndale, 2000.
Gutjahr, Paul C. An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777-1880. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
ROGER A. BULLARD