The History of the English Bible: The Bibles of Coverdale, Matthew, the Great Bible, Geneva Bible, Bishop’s Bible and Rheims-Douai Version
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In 1535, an assistant of Tyndale who was named Miles Coverdale translated the entire Bible into English but he did not translate from the Greek and Hebrew but did use Luther’s German translation, more than one Latin text and portions of Tyndale’s Old Testament.
His was the first complete Bible printed in English and was in fact Coverdale’s translation that Henry VIII had already permitted to be printed when Tyndale spoke his dying words.
Coverdale’s Bible placed the Apocrypha at the end of the Old Testament rather than putting these books throughout the Old Testament.
The Apocrypha contained books which were not considered as canonical by the Protestants but were accepted as canonical by the Catholics.
Previous Old Testament translations had the Apocrypha distributed throughout the Old Testament.
All Protestant Bibles that would follow the Coverdale Bible included the Apocrypha as an appendix if they included it at all.
In 1537, Matthew’s Bible was produced by John Rogers whose pen name was Thomas Matthew and he took Coverdale’s Old Testament and combined it with Tyndale’s New Testament and also included 2,000 notes, many of which were controversial.
This Bible is called by some the “Wife-Beater’s Bible” because the marginal note at 1 Peter 3:7 says, “If [the wife] be not obedient and healpfull unto [her husband, he] endeavoureth to beate the feare of God into her…”!
F.F. Bruce however attributes this to the Bible by Bishop Becke.
In 1555, Rogers would become the first martyr to be burned at the stake by the Catholic ruler Mary Tudor who was nicknamed “Bloody Mary.”
Metzger writes “Although the title page of the 1537 Bible identifies the translator as Thomas Matthew, there is reason to think that this was a pseudonym intended to veil the identity of the real translator. The work is generally attributed to a man named John Rogers, a Cambridgegraduate and friend of Tyndale. He had come into possession of some of Tyndale’s unpublished translations of several Old Testament books. Published perhaps at Antwerp, the translation follows closely the Tyndale version. A new preface was provided for the Apocrypha, and, as in Coverdale’s Bible, the books of the Apocrypha were placed by themselves in an appendix to the Old Testament. The Matthew Bible had, for the first time in English, a translation of the apocryphal Prayer of Manasseh, rendered from the French of Olivétan’s Bible. During Edward VI’s short reign (1547–53), Rogers was in favor and given London preferments, and immediately after the king’s death, he preached at St. Paul’s Cross, warning the people against popery. By January 1554, after Mary had established her claim to the throne, Rogers was in prison, and in February 1555 he was burned alive at Smithfield, the first of the Protestant martyrs. The French ambassador wrote that Rogersdied with such composure that it might have been a wedding.”[1]
In 1538, Henry VIII ordered that each church was to have in its possession “one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English.”
The churches were using Matthew’s Bible because it was a large book which was perfect for public reading while Coverdale’s was very small in comparison.
The king’s edict was enthusiastically received by his subjects to the extent that laypeople were reading the Bible aloud to their fellow believers while the preacher was communicating his sermon but the king would forbid this behavior eight months later.
Cromwell commissioned Myles Coverdale to publish a new Bible but it had to be larger than Matthew’s because of the king’s edict and thus, it was called the “Great Bible” because of its enormous size.
The Great Bible was edited by Coverdale but it was based upon Matthew’s Bible.
Since Coverdale did not know Greek or Hebrew, he simply took Matthew’s Bible and revised it and got rid of the notes and so consequently, it became the second revision of Tyndale, after Matthew’s Bible.
Many bishops who were still Roman Catholic were outraged that this Bible separated the Apocrypha from the rest of the Old Testament and because it was not based upon the Latin Vulgate.
During the end of the reign of Henry VIII, Parliament in 1543 forbid any public unauthorized exposition of Scripture as well as all private reading of the Bible among the lower classes.
Three years later, the king outdid Parliament by banning all copies of Tyndale and Coverdale.
The Reformation was in back in full throttle when the son of Henry VIII, Edward VI became king.
However, Edward VI’s reign did not last long and in 1553 Mary Tudor, who was Edward’s sister, came to the throne, she promptly reversed Edward’s Protestant leanings by returning the country to Catholicism and she did this by systematically burning both Bibles and Protestants.
Many Protestant scholars fled England to Geneva as a result of Mary’s actions and it Geneva was the place where the great John Calvin was living and it was here that these Protestant English scholars produced a magnificent English translation of the Bible.
Calvin’s brother-in-law, William Whittingham was one of these English scholars and he completed his translation of the New Testament in 1557 and he and other English scholars and Reformers worked on the whole Bible and in 1560, they produced a translation of the Old Testament and a revised New Testament.
The production of the Geneva Bible was a significant accomplishment since it was the first English Bible translated entirely from the original Greek and Hebrew text and it was also the first Bible which was done by a committee and not just one individual.
It was based on Tyndale’s work and thus can be properly considered as the third revision of Tyndale’s translation of the Bible.
The notes were greatly influenced by the teaching of John Calvin and was the first English Bible with verse divisions which were in relation to the New Testament influenced by Stephanus’ fourth edition of the Greek New Testament which appeared in 1551 and was the first Greek New Testament with verse divisions.
The Geneva Bible also was the first English Bible to use italics extensively for words that were not in the original text.
Interestingly, it was the Bible the Pilgrims took with them when they came to America and landed in Plymouth and it was also the Bible that Shakespeare used.
The print of the Geneva Bible was very small since it was produced originally only in quarto size because it was produced in Europe and shipped back to England.
The Geneva Bible greatly influenced the King James Bible and it is also nicknamed the “Breeches’ Bible” because at Genesis 3:7, Adam and Eve are said to sew fig leaves together and made them into “breeches.”
It is also called the “Wicked Bible” because it left out the “not” in the seventh commandment in Exodus 20:14 which prohibited adultery.
During the 45 year reign of Queen Elizabeth, nearly 100 editions of the Geneva Bible were published and it was still the most popular Bible in England even fifty years after the King James Bible was published.
Its reign in England would come to an end because a new king would want his own translation that was devoid of Calvin’s influence.
The Bishop’s Bible was published in 1568 and it was based upon the Great Bible but was a pulpit Bible and thus, it can be considered the fourth revision of Tyndale’s translation.
This Bible received its name because it was produced by bishops but it was not a very good translation since it was too wooden or too literal in that it did not reflect the sense of the original.
It never was received well and even the queen rejected it and its last printing was in 1606.
Amazingly and ironically, this translation which was inferior to the Geneva Bible became the official base that the King James translators were ordered to use in making their version.
Elizabeth succeeded Bloody Mary and she was a Protestant and this resulted in Catholic scholars fleeing the country because she killed Catholics just as Mary killed Protestants.
Now, the Catholic hierarchy wanted their own English translation but not because they agreed that laypeople should read the Bible but rather they wanted a translation which reflected their religious views so as to control their parishioners.
The preface of this version made clear that the readership was intended to be priests and other dignitaries and laypeople were discouraged from reading the Bible but if they were going to read a Bible, they better read “their” Bible.
The Rheims-Douai Bible was not based upon the original Greek and Hebrew text but rather it was based on the Latin Vulgate which is the case with all Catholic Bibles until the mid-twentieth century and this was the direct result of the Council of Trent in 1544 which decreed that Bibles should be translated from the Latin.
Vatican II rescinded this order.
Therefore, from our study we can see that the first era of English Bible translation occurred from 1382 to 1610 which is nearly 230 years.
Wallace writes “It was a period marked by two things: on the one hand, by a profound concern that every Christian have access to God’s revealed will in the Bible. On the other hand, the church hierarchy suppressed this effort—first by killing the translators and burning their Bibles. And when that failed, an ‘authorized’ translation was made that tried to stem the tide of the Protestant heresy.”[2]
[1] Metzger, B. M. (2001). The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English versions (pp. 61–62). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
[2] History of the English Bible Part 1, page 12.