History of English Bibles

[B_Dohle]

Hello, I would like to have a brief outline of the dates of the various Bible translations into English. I have a person that says the King James Version is the oldest complete (all the books included) English translation. I would like to get information to give to that person that shows that Catholics are the first ones to translate the complete Bible into English. And maybe show that person that that version is still used - with modifications of course.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Hello, I would like to have a brief outline of the dates of the various Bible translations into English. I have a person that says the King James Version is the oldest complete (all the books included) English translation. I would like to get information to give to that person that shows that Catholics are the first ones to translate the complete Bible into English. And maybe show that person that that version is still used - with modifications of course.

You are right, the Catholic translation or the Douay Rheims version of the complete Bible was published in 1582, (New Testament) 1609-1610 (Old Testament) The King James Bible was not published until a year later, and the Douay/Rheims is still being used just as you thought. But that is only part of the story.

Complete English Protestant Bibles were in print long before the King James Version or the Douay Rheims Bible.

However, before the invention of Printing ( c. 1450) Catholic Bibles had been translated into English as manuscript copies. We know for a fact that St. Bede translated the Gospels (if not the whole Bible) into Old Saxon English back in the early 8th century. Your Protestant friend is not very knowledgable about English versions of the Bible it would seem.

 

[JeanneH]

Hello, I would like to have a brief outline of the dates of the various Bible translations into English. I have a person that says the King James Version is the oldest complete (all the books included) English translation. I would like to get information to give to that person that shows that Catholics are the first ones to translate the complete Bible into English. And maybe show that person that that version is still used - with modifications of course.

Try this site

greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

Jeanne

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Try this site

greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

Jeanne

Know that that is a very Protestant biased site. He is not presenting the complete picture of manuscripts copies of the Bible in English, but only highlights the Wycliffe version.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

I think you will also find the Church worked to prevent translation corruption by banning the use of these bibles. So most original translations were not considered actual bibles but educational scripts for beginning bible scholars.

 

[Fidelis]

**The Bible In English (before printing) **

Various parts of the Bible were translated into Saxon, the language of England at that time, by:

c. 670 Caedmon, a monk
c. 709 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne
c. 735 Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow
c. 849-901 King Alfred
c. 955-1020 Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury
c. 1020-15thC. English, as we know it today, was developed during this time, and translations appeared in the language of the time.
c. 1382 John Wycliffe produced the first complete translation of the entire Bible in English

Printed Bibles - (A) Protestant

1525 Tyndale Bible
Translated by William Tyndale. It had many errors in it, and was not complete.
1535 Coverdale Bible
This was the first complete English Bible to be printed, and was commissioned by King Henry VIII’s Secretary of State, Cromwell.
1537 Matthew’s Bible
This was the work of John Rogers.
1539 The Great Bible
This was the work of Miles Coverdale. It was the first official Church of England Bible. It was in the language of the people and set up in every church in England.
1560 Geneva Bible
Sometimes called the “Breeches Bible”. “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches.” (Genesis 3:7 GB). It was a revision of the Tyndale and Great Bible, and was the Bible of Shakespeare, Bunyan and the Puritans.
1568 Bishop’s Bible
Replaced the Great Bible as the official Bible of the Church of England.
1611 King James Bible (Authorized Version)
King James I appointed 54 of the best scholars in England to revise the Bishop’s Bible. It took them seven years. The authorities authorized this translation which had enormous influence on the minds of people, and on English literature. The New Testament in the King James translation was taken, with few exceptions, from the Catholic Douay Rheims translation, which was completed 29 years previously. Like all translations, the King James translation had errors in it. In the last century, Protestant Scripture scholars met to come up with a better translation because there were several thousand errors in the existing King James translation.
1881-1885 Revised Version
The King James version was revised.
1952 Revised Standard Version
King James translation again revised.
1970 New English Bible
1973 New International Version
1980 New King James Version
1986 New Revised Standard Version

Printed Bibles - (B) Catholic

1582-1609 Douay Rheims
This translation was done from the Vulgate by Gregory Martin and William Allen in Douay and Rheims, France.
1749-1763 Challoner Revision
Bishop Challoner revised the Douay-Rheims and this remained in almost universal use among English-speaking Catholics for nearly 200 years.
1941 Confraternity Revision
It revised only the New Testament.
1944-1950 Knox Bible
Ronald Knox was commissioned by the English Bishops to make a new translation from the Vulgate.
1952-1970 New American
This translation, from the original languages, was commissioned by the American Bishops, and in 1964 was adopted for use in the Liturgy.
1966 Jerusalem Bible
The Jerusalem Dominicans edited this French translation. It was then translated into English.
1965 Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition
New Testament was prepared by a committee of the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain. It included wording which reflects Catholic Tradition.
1966 Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition
Old Testament was an updated translation of the KJV which included the Deuterocanonical books.

www.scborromeo.org

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Fidelis:

c. 1382 John Wycliffe produced the first complete translation of the entire Bible in English

I would just add that the Wycliffe version may be the oldest extant version that we have of the complete English Bible, but that does not rule out earlier and later manuscript versions as testified by Erasmus and Foxe.

If one recalls the horrendous looting, pillaging and destruction that took place during the time of Henry VIII in the dissolution of the Monasteries (where most of the English Bible’s would have been housed) not to mention the great Libraries of Oxford and elsewhere that were laid waste, it seems amazing that we are able to turn up anything let alone partial translations.

One should also bear in mind that the Church did not suppress translations of the Bible into English as is claimed so strenuously by Protestants, but after the time of Wycliffe, the Church required that any English Translation be approved by the local ordinary (the Bishop)

When one considers that these would have been manuscript copies to begin with, and that they would have been translated by someone that was capable of reading Latin and translating into English, unless they were in mind to publish their translation for some reason, there would have been no reason for them to even produce the translation in the first place.

One should remember that prior to Henry VIII’s schism, most people were illiterate, and could not even read English. Furthermore, those that were educated and literate, were able to read Latin.

The Protestant clamor for getting the Scripture into English was mainly to promote the Protestant rebellion by suggesting that the Church was withholding the Scriptures from them. Even the very earliest English Protestant Bibles that were printed were going unsold, and a law had to be passed to force people to buy a copy of the new printed Bible, even though it could not be read by them.

 

[JeanneH]

Know that that is a very Protestant biased site. He is not presenting the complete picture of manuscripts copies of the Bible in English, but only highlights the Wycliffe version.

What about if the OP picked up a copy of Where We Got The Bible

by Henry G. Graham. But I guess that wouldn’t be a history of the English bible .

Oh well just my thoughts

Jeanne

 

[Contarini]

You are right, the Catholic translation or the Douay Rheims version of the complete Bible was published in 1582, (New Testament) 1609-1610 (Old Testament) The King James Bible was not published until a year later, and the Douay/Rheims is still being used just as you thought. But that is only part of the story.

Complete English Protestant Bibles were in print long before the King James Version or the Douay Rheims Bible.

However, before the invention of Printing ( c. 1450) Catholic Bibles had been translated into English as manuscript copies. We know for a fact that St. Bede translated the Gospels (if not the whole Bible) into Old Saxon English back in the early 8th century. Your Protestant friend is not very knowledgable about English versions of the Bible it would seem.

But as you admit, that wasn’t a complete Bible. The first complete Bible in English was the Lollard translation (probably not actually done by Wycliffe, though his name has been associated with it). Whether we want to count the Lollards as Catholics is perhaps a tricky matter, but the translation was based on the Latin Vulgate.

The next complete English translation of the Bible was the Tyndale/Coverdale version, and it was revised a number of times by different people, improving the scholarship and tweaking the language. The KJV was the final result of this process, and the KJV did indeed postdate the Douay-Rheims. The other major English translation in the 16th century was the Geneva Bible, which I believe was done directly from the original languages (but of course all of these translators were consulting each other), and which predated the Douay-Rheims.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

One should also bear in mind that the Church did not suppress translations of the Bible into English as is claimed so strenuously by Protestants, but after the time of Wycliffe, the Church required that any English Translation be approved by the local ordinary (the Bishop)

The Arundel Constitution of 1408 seems to go beyond this and prohibit new translations altogether, although Catholics (including Thomas More, whom I take seriously both as a legal expert and as someone writing just over a century later, though of course he had an axe to grind!) have argued that this only forbade unauthorized translations. In the end I suppose the point is moot, because the plain fact is that no translation was authorized.

When one considers that these would have been manuscript copies to begin with, and that they would have been translated by someone that was capable of reading Latin and translating into English, unless they were in mind to publish their translation for some reason, there would have been no reason for them to even produce the translation in the first place.

Only if they wanted lots of people to have access to the Bible in English! Yes, there were manuscript copies with large parts of the Bible in them, but it’s still significant than England (in contrast to most European countries) there was no printed Bible before Tyndale came along. That’s sixty years of printing, which in other languages saw a flood of Bible versions. There is a reason for this!

One should remember that prior to Henry VIII’s schism, most people were illiterate

I’m not sure I’ll argue the “most” since it may be true that a majority was. But a very large number of middle-class and upper-class people were literate in the later Middle Ages. Why do you think so many books were being printed in those sixty years?

and could not even read English. Furthermore, those that were educated and literate, were able to read Latin.

That’s false. It’s more or less true for the early Middle Ages (though perhaps not in England given the literary output in Old English), but not from about the 12th century on (though in England those educated laypeople would have mostly been reading French rather than English until the 14th century).

The Protestant clamor for getting the Scripture into English was mainly to promote the Protestant rebellion by suggesting that the Church was withholding the Scriptures from them.

I’m sorry, but this is special pleading. It’s clear that there was a substantial segment of the population that genuinely hungered after the Bible in their own language. A minority no doubt, but still substantial.

Even the very earliest English Protestant Bibles that were printed were going unsold, and a law had to be passed to force people to buy a copy of the new printed Bible, even though it could not be read by them.

It’s certainly true that the masses did not share in this Biblicist piety the way traditional Protestant propaganda has claimed. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a real and substantial part of the picture.

Edwin

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Contarini:

That’s false. It’s more or less true for the early Middle Ages (though perhaps not in England given the literary output in Old English), but not from about the 12th century on (though in England those educated laypeople would have mostly been reading French rather than English until the 14th century).

I think if you research a little more, you will find that English was not even taught in the schools until late in the 14th Century. Literate people could read Latin just as readily as French. It wasn’t really until the late 14th Century that English was being reclaimed by Englishmen like G. Chaucer and Wycliffe. Publishing works in the vulgar language was usually reserved for literary works, but not scholarly ones.

If you are familiar with early printed English works, you would agree that perhaps 80% or better of them were printed in Latin. It wasn’t until the controversies of the English Reformation that a flood of English language books is ignited (relatively speaking.) Even in the field of English History, late in the 16th c., Camden was writing his monumental work in Latin. In fact writing scholarly works in Latin persisted well into the 17th century. So I must disagree with your view that the literate could not understand and read Latin.

Perhaps the real difference in perspective was that the Church considered the Bible to be MORE than a scholarly work, being a Sacred and Holy Text, which required education and maturity to understand and read, whereas the Protestant reformers looked upon the Sacred Text as more of a Literary form, that should be understandable to the meanest intelligence. This tension between viewpoints would have been exacerbated, and not relieved by the Protestant reformation, repelling both sides away from each other.

To be honest, this difference still exists today. That is why the Catholic will defer to the Church in interpretation of texts, and the Protestant will continue to rely on private judgment.

 

[Zooey]

A point that I think is very important to make, is that it was NOT the Catholic Church that was opposed to having the Bible in English; it was the English crown.
A history of the Bible in English is very interesting to read side by side with a history of the British royals…So that, for example, one of the main reasons that many religious “Nonconformists” (non- Church of England groups) were such a large number of the early settlers in North America, is that they wanted to get away from the prescribed use of the King James (& earlier, the Bishops’ Bible) in public worship…and now, their descendants are often heard to be touting “KJV Only”. They have no idea how horrified the Pilgrims/Puritans/et al, would have been at the very thought of using a Bible specifically translated to meet the requirements of the English monarch.
Somehow, in all of this, folks have lost sight of the fact that, English Catholics & English Nonconformists had one BIG thing in common: the desire to escape political interference in Bible translation: both the Douay & the various independant Protestant Bible translations were produced to provide what we today would call “politically incorrect” Bibles for readers.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Very thoughtful comments Zooey! I liked this especially:

Zooey:

They have no idea how horrified the Pilgrims/Puritans/et al, would have been at the very thought of using a Bible specifically translated to meet the requirements of the English monarch.

I think the same thing when I consider the modern NAB in light of all the efforts of Gregory Martin et. al. in opposing the very wording and interpretations that the NAB is so pleased to use. I’m not even sure the translators of the old KJV would have been comfortable with the NAB.

 

[luciasclay]

What about if the OP picked up a copy of Where We Got The Bible

by Henry G. Graham. But I guess that wouldn’t be a history of the English bible .

Oh well just my thoughts

Jeanne

I recommend that book for this topic. It has a great section on the English Bible. In it he demonstrates the earlier works, in various states of completeness. He describes where the earlier copies went. He cites protestant sources to show complete English translations extant at the time and in the hands of layity with the knowledge and permission of Bishops.

Even the KJV translators in their original notes speak of the preextant translations of English versions, including the full copies translated in the time of King Richard II.

The book “Where We Got the Bible” by Henry G. Graham is a must buy/read.

I have some quotes from that book in a rant I did on this very topic a few days ago.

thewooleyswamp.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/wycliff-shmycliff/

Wycliff’s translation was bad all around. And if I recall the KJV translators gave credit to the Douay Rheims version and their referencing of it in their work in producing the KJV.

 

[luciasclay]

More complete set of quotes from Graham that were transcribed by another blogger I found.

alltheblognamesarealreadytaken.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/the-myth-of-the-catholic-church-and-vernacular-scriptures/

 

[Contarini]

I think if you research a little more, you will find that English was not even taught in the schools until late in the 14th Century.

Actually that more or less matches with what I said. However, newsflash for you: people do sometimes learn things outside of school

Literate people could read Latin just as readily as French.

I dispute this. Why then were there so many translations and paraphrases from Latin into French (and into English once English began to be established as a literary vernacular).

If you are familiar with early printed English works, you would agree that perhaps 80% or better of them were printed in Latin.

I don’t know the figures, but that seems high. A quick Internet search produced this list of incunabula printed in England: of the 31 books listed, 26 appeared to be in English and five in Latin, which more than reverses your estimate. I am quite willing to be corrected by more accurate sources.

Even in the field of English History, late in the 16th c., Camden was writing his monumental work in Latin. In fact writing scholarly works in Latin persisted well into the 17th century. So I must disagree with your view that the literate could not understand and read Latin.

We don’t disagree on whether scholars wrote in Latin. My point is that there were many people who could read and write but were not scholars–many though not all of them were women.

Protestant will continue to rely on private judgment.

Some Protestants are still silly enough to believe that such a thing exists

Edwin

 

[Manfred]

I think the same thing when I consider the modern NAB in light of all the efforts of Gregory Martin et. al. in opposing the very wording and interpretations that the NAB is so pleased to use. I’m not even sure the translators of the old KJV would have been comfortable with the NAB.

Most of us who post here on a regular basis are not comfortable with the NAB, and have not been for some time. This is due to exactly what you and another poster have stated: the NAB’s wording and interpretations are FAR INFERIOR to anything into which Gregory Martin et al put their while hearts and souls.

As far as the KJV translators: the banality and lack of poetic sense alone of the NAB would make them most uncomfortable.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Contarini:

Some Protestants are still silly enough to believe that such a thing [private judgment] exists

What an odd thing to say.

 

[Contarini]

What an odd thing to say.

Why is this odd? Could you elaborate? Don’t you agree that “private judgment” is a silly concept?

Edwin

 

[Jolly_Joe]

Hello, I would like to have a brief outline of the dates of the various Bible translations into English. I have a person that says the King James Version is the oldest complete (all the books included) English translation. I would like to get information to give to that person that shows that Catholics are the first ones to translate the complete Bible into English. And maybe show that person that that version is still used - with modifications of course.

Well, the Bishop’s Bible includes all the books and it predates the DRB, as does the Geneva.

In any case, it’s a topic very easy to talk past others.

Were there translations? Certainly, many were not complete. Some such as what is called Wycliffe’s were complete.

Most were not circulated or used over any wide area.

I’m trying to remember the details, but there was a Catholic church in England that translated the bible into English and using it resulted in huge crowds coming to hear it. I’m fuzzy on the details, but if they were somehow critical let me know and I’ll do some digging. Anyway, that was right about the time of Tyndale. I don’t know if the work survives or if it was complete, but it showed the desire of the English people to hear the scriptures in their language.

It’s true that most people couldn’t read or write at all, those who could commonly could read Latin, what doesn’t seem appreciated is that many people did not understand Latin, at least not well, when they heard it.

Anyway, there certainly were translations but probably not as many as some seem to claim.

It appears that some mistook some of the copies of Wycliffe’s that were around as being other translations. Being forbidden, I guess we have to understand why the outside cover doesn’t proclaim Wycliffe in big gold letters, nor for that matter, does the inside. You need to study them to see they one of Wycliffe’s since they never state so. So we have some references that say there were quite a few translations, but there is no evidence of them. This is taken as they must have been destroyed, and certainly things were destroyed, but it seems the reason these translations seem to completely disappear is, they never existed in the first place except as a mistaken idea. Not again to say there were absolutely no translations, but they were not numerous nor common nor distributed.

Can it be absolutely proven how many translations were done and by whom? No. Mostly it’s a not very useful debate by which nothing much is really proven.

Lot’s of myths floating around among some about the KJV too. Including such things as it being the first in well, anything. Or that they had hundreds of manuscripts we don’t have today, or whatever, go ahead and make something up other’s evidently do.