Therefore as S. Augustine saith, that variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversity of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is no so clear, must needs do good, yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded. We know that Sixtus Quintus expressly forbiddeth, that any variety of readings of their vulgar edition, should be put in the margin, (which though it be not altogether the same thing to that we have in hand, yet it looketh that way) but we think he hath not all of his own side his favorers, for this conceit. They that are wise, had rather have their judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than to be captivated to one, when it may be the other. If they were sure that their high Priest had all laws shut up in his breast, as Paul the Second bragged, and that he were as free from error by special privilege, as the Dictators of Rome were made by law inviolable, it were another matter; then his word were an Oracle, his opinion a decision. But the eyes of the world are now open, God be thanked, and have been a great while, they find that he is subject to the same affections and infirmities that others be, that his skin is penetrable, and therefore so much as he proveth, not as much as he claimeth, they grant and embrace.
As an example of this marginal annotation, you have Judges 19:2, which is translated as (modernized spelling): “
And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father’s house to Bethlehemjudah, and was there four whole months.” The marginal note for this verse, meanwhile, gives alternate translations for the last three words: “Or,
a year and four month: Heb.
days, four months” (a more literal rendering of the Hebrew
yomim 'arba’ah ḥodeshim, “days four moons”). A couple of another ones I’ll give are from Genesis 1:4-5:
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/1966/footnote.jpg
Yet another interesting specimen is from Acts 13:18 (“
and about the time of forty years suffered he their manners in the wilderness”) has the footnote (original spelling): “
Gr. ἐτροποφόρησεν, perhaps, for ἐτροφοφόρησέν, as a nurſe beareth, or feedeth, her childe, Deut. 1.31. 2. macc 7.27, according to the Sept[uagint]. and ſo Chryſoſt[om].” Note the reference to 2 Maccabees!
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1966/footnote.jpg
But tell me, when was the last time you saw a KJV with an annotation like this?
Now the base text of the KJV happens to be the
Bishops’ Bible (1568), text, and where they departed from that in favour of another translation, this was most commonly the Geneva. However, the degree to which readings from the Bishop’s Bible survived into final text of the King James Bible varies greatly from company to company, as did the propensity of the King James translators to coin phrases of their own. John Bois’s notes of the General Committee of Review show that they discussed readings derived from a wide variety of sources and versions, including explicitly both Henry Savile’s 1610 edition of the works of St. John Chrysostom, and also the Rheims NT, which was the primary source for many of the literal alternative readings provided for the marginal notes.
The Bishops’ Bible was itself an early effort by the CofE to counter the popularity of the Puritan Geneva, but it never achieved the status the KJV subsequently enjoyed; in fact, after it was published in 1611, the KJV soon took the Bishops’ Bible’s place as the
de facto standard translation of the Church of England. Later generations have not been kind to the Bishops’ Bible either; people found the Geneva a better read than the Bishops’.
For the record, the Geneva’s ‘flatter’ style you mention may be due to it having a more direct, modern style when compared to the KJV’s more dramatic, slightly archaic style. Fof example, “
and the moon was like blood” (Geneva) versus “
and the moon became as blood” (King James).
Oh, and as an aside, the Geneva is actually John Bunyan’s, John Donne’s, John Milton’s, and William Shakespeare’s Bible.
