The Myth of Wycliff When Did It Start?

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Does anyone know of any work that traces the rise of the myth that Wycliff was the first to translate the Bible into English ?

What I find in the 1500 and 1600’s, in works like the preface to the protestant “The Great Bible”, the preface to the “Authorized Version” ( KJV ), the words of the infamousJohn Foxxe as well as the words of St. Thomas Moore a uniform admission the Bible was available in the mother tongue of England well before Wycliffe.

What I am interested in is when and how did the shift happen wherein Wycliffe started being declared as the first to translate into English.

Any info appreciated.
 
bitznbitez said:
Does anyone know of any work that traces the rise of the myth that Wycliff was the first to translate the Bible into English ?

What I find in the 1500 and 1600’s, in works like the preface to the protestant “The Great Bible”, the preface to the “Authorized Version” ( KJV ), the words of the infamousJohn Foxxe as well as the words of St. Thomas Moore a uniform admission the Bible was available in the mother tongue of England well before Wycliffe.

What I am interested in is when and how did the shift happen wherein Wycliffe started being declared as the first to translate into English.

Any info appreciated.
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The credit for the first translation of the Bible into English (as opposed to a translation of a translation of the Bible) should belong to William Tyndale, c.1530–could be off a few years there.

Wycliffe’s translation was popular outside of the church hierarchy for a number of reasons, but primarily because his Lollard followers expended great effort to circulate the translation (hand-copying) and the populace found the translation to be smoother and more understandable. Wycliffe’s Bible had the added appeal of being something “underground” that one would have to obtain via connections. People love stealth. Because it was the first English translation that most people were actually aware of, they began to assume that it was the first, and the assumption stuck.
 
Dave,

I do not doubt your sincerity, and I fully understand the point you are making. However what I am looking for is when this idea that you are promoting became the accepted view.

Its a fact of history that the Scriptures were available in the native language of England before Wycliffe. This was admitted and known by the publishers of The Great Bible, the King James Bible, even John Foxxe says as much. Somewhere along the way this knowledge to lost and now people like you and me grew up convinced that “Wycliffe was the first to translate into English” and “Luther the first into German” when neither is true.

For this thread I’m mainly interested in responses from those who can help trace the timeline of the shift in thought.
 
Partial translations of the Bible into languages of the English people can be traced back to the end of the 7th century, translations into Old English and Middle English as well as the language we know today. Over 450 versions have been created over time.

Toward the end of the seventh century, the Venerable Bede began a translation of Scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Aldhelm (AD 640–709), likewise, translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English. The Wessex Gospels (also known as the West-Saxon Gospels) are a full translation of the four gospels into a West Saxon dialect of Old English. Produced in approximately AD 990, they are the first translation of all four gospels into English without the Latin text.
In the 11th century, Abbot Ælfric translated much of the Old Testament into Old English.

It’s also worth noting Protestants believe the Catholic clergy during the middle ages were afraid to print the bible because there was a risk of the clergy “losing control over the people”. This is completely false, the first bible that was used by the printing press and distributed was the Catholic Gutenberg Bible.

I hope that helps.

God bless,
 
bitznbitez said:
Dave,

I do not doubt your sincerity, and I fully understand the point you are making. However what I am looking for is when this idea that you are promoting became the accepted view.

Its a fact of history that the Scriptures were available in the native language of England before Wycliffe. This was admitted and known by the publishers of The Great Bible, the King James Bible, even John Foxxe says as much. Somewhere along the way this knowledge to lost and now people like you and me grew up convinced that “Wycliffe was the first to translate into English” and “Luther the first into German” when neither is true.

For this thread I’m mainly interested in responses from those who can help trace the timeline of the shift in thought.
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I guess I never thought that Wycliffe was first, so I’m not sure I understand that part. Maybe whoever told you that was simply mistaken?

But at a popular level at the time the translations were being made I think that: 1) the other previous translations you are referring to were not at all widely available, particularly to lay people–and certainly not to the extent that the promotion of the Wycliffe Bible had created availability to lay people, and 2) particularly in the case of German at the time of the reformers, whatever translation had been done previously didn’t “count” academically, because they were translations of the Vulgate, which was considered by the the Reformers to be corrupt and inferior, and also not really a translation of the Bible (which was written in Greek and Hebrew) at all, but a translation of an already poor translation. To the people of that time (as today) transmission “from the original tongues” was a big deal and a revolutionary idea.

So when people were able to access the Bible in their own language (particularly with Luther’s ability to use the printing press), it was indeed a “first” from their perspective and I don’t think there ever was a shift in thinking at all–this was their belief at the time; I think the people of the time always thought they had the first translation into their language. And in the example of the Luther Bible at least, you could make a very good case that they were correct.
 
Dave Noonan:
So when people were able to access the Bible in their own language (particularly with Luther’s ability to use the printing press), it was indeed a “first” from their perspective and I don’t think there ever was a shift in thinking at all–this was their belief at the time; I think the people of the time always thought they had the first translation into their language.
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It’s very easy to oversimplify this question.

First of all there is a question of PLACE. Some European countries had the Bible in the vernacular way back into the middle ages and even earlier. Many Middle East Christians/Catholics have ALWAYS had the Bible in their vernacular.

Secondly it was a question of TIME. During the late middle ages (the time of Wycliffe), ordinary peasants couldn’t read at all in ANY language. People were either peasants or nobles and the merchant upper class. The latter were educated in the University entirely in LATIN. That’s right, they taught and learned in LATIN. They learned to read Latin FIRST. The vernacular or vulgar tongue was barely civilized to the point of having a grammar and acceptable usage for conveying intelligent, especially THEOLOGICAL thoughts, such as the Bible is filled with. The devout Christian/Catholic just didn’t think it was possible to translate the Bible into their own tongue reverently (which at the time was a hodge podge of many dialects.)

However, in England, at the time of Wycliffe, English was JUST starting to become somewhat standardized, by Authors such as Chaucer. But this was VERY highbrow, and hardly the sort of thing read by peasants. With the progress of time, and the advent of the printing press, a revolution started. Much like what the Internet has started in our own time.

There are SO MANY forces at play during the 15th and 16th centuries, that a simple explanation like, Catholics repressed English Bibles is just plain idiocy and historical ignorance. There were situations where some Bibles were repressed yes, but not just the Catholics! The Protestants were doing a lot of repressing of their own.

Usually this whole subject is a strawman argument against the Catholic Church, because ultimately it has no force.
 
AmbroseSJ said:
It’s very easy to oversimplify this question.

First of all there is a question of PLACE. Some European countries had the Bible in the vernacular way back into the middle ages and even earlier. Many Middle East Christians/Catholics have ALWAYS had the Bible in their vernacular.

Secondly it was a question of TIME. During the late middle ages (the time of Wycliffe), ordinary peasants couldn’t read at all in ANY language. People were either peasants or nobles and the merchant upper class. The latter were educated in the University entirely in LATIN. That’s right, they taught and learned in LATIN. They learned to read Latin FIRST. The vernacular or vulgar tongue was barely civilized to the point of having a grammar and acceptable usage for conveying intelligent, especially THEOLOGICAL thoughts, such as the Bible is filled with. The devout Christian/Catholic just didn’t think it was possible to translate the Bible into their own tongue reverently (which at the time was a hodge podge of many dialects.)

However, in England, at the time of Wycliffe, English was JUST starting to become somewhat standardized, by Authors such as Chaucer. But this was VERY highbrow, and hardly the sort of thing read by peasants. With the progress of time, and the advent of the printing press, a revolution started. Much like what the Internet has started in our own time.

There are SO MANY forces at play during the 15th and 16th centuries, that a simple explanation like, Catholics repressed English Bibles is just plain idiocy and historical ignorance. There were situations where some Bibles were repressed yes, but not just the Catholics! The Protestants were doing a lot of repressing of their own.

Usually this whole subject is a strawman argument against the Catholic Church, because ultimately it has no force.
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Concise and clear! 😃

MJ
 
Interesting question. I would venture to guess that it started in the last hundred years and then spread like wildfire thanks to the internet. 😃 You might find the myth in the writing of the anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner.

Karl Keating, in Catholicism and Fundamentalism p, 83, wrote that even John Foxe, author of the decidedly anti-Catholic Book of Martyrs (1563), denied that Wycliffe wrote the first English Bible.

Foxe wrote, “If histories be well examined we shall find both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures was by sundry men translated into our country tongue.” ~Hugh Pope, English Versions of the Bible, 63.
 
bitznbitez said:
Does anyone know of any work that traces the rise of the myth that Wycliff was the first to translate the Bible into English ?

What I find in the 1500 and 1600’s, in works like the preface to the protestant “The Great Bible”, the preface to the “Authorized Version” ( KJV ), the words of the infamousJohn Foxxe as well as the words of St. Thomas Moore a uniform admission the Bible was available in the mother tongue of England well before Wycliffe.

What I am interested in is when and how did the shift happen wherein Wycliffe started being declared as the first to translate into English.

Any info appreciated.
Click to expand...
Ah, just dawned on me that maybe it depends on whether people are meaning the *complete *Bible, or the NT, or various books. The other confusion may come from whether hand-written or printed is meant. Do you think?

Have a look here: catholic-resources.org/Bible/English_Translations.htm
History: a brief listing of some of the earliest translations of the New Testament and/or the full Bible into English:
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900’s: various Old English (Anglo-Saxon) translations of the New Testament
1380’s: John Wycliffe – first complete translation of the Bible into English (hand-written)
1453-55: Johannes Gutenberg – invents printing press; first printed book is the Latin Vulgate Bible
1516: Desiderius Erasmus – publishes Greek/Latin parallel New Testament
1522: Martin Luther – translates New Testament into German; the full Bible by 1534
1526: William Tyndale – first printed English translation (from the Latin Vulgate) of the New Testament
1535: Myles Coverdale – first printed English translation of the full Bible (incorporating Tyndale’s NT)
1537: “Matthew’s Bible” – based on Tyndale & Coverdale; includes marginal notes & commentary
1539: “Great Bible” – first English Bible authorized for pulpit use throughout England
1560: “Geneva Bible” – first English Bible with verse numbers (in addition to chapter numbers)
1568: “Bishops’ Bible” – basis of the later “King James Bible”
1582: “Rheims New Testament” & 1609: “Douay Old Testament” – first English translations approved for Catholics; together called the “Douay-Rheims Bible”
1611: “King James Bible” – a.k.a. the “Authorized Version”; a revision of the “Bishop’s Bible”; ultimately based on the “Great Bible” and on Tyndale’s New Testament
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GraceSofia said:
Ah, just dawned on me that maybe it depends on whether people are meaning the *complete *Bible, or the NT, or various books.
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I had been thinking along those lines. Particularly that he was the “first” to translate the “entire Bible” into the language after the Norman Conquest. Its exceedingly rare for someone to translate the entire Bible by themself, the results are usually not as good as if a team of translators divides up the work. Then some dropped the “entire”. Since Wycliff was hand copied though, pre press, I don’t think the press issue is connected here.

Its very possible the difference in the educated versus uneducated understandings too. But when the KJV and The Great Bible prefaces speak of something which today is virtually unknown I just don’t think that knowledge vanishes accidentally.

I’ve pondered US protestantism and notice that all of the reference works we’d cite all come from 1800’s US onward. That to me is very odd when we have 500 years of protestant scholarship in English. When Latin went overboard a lot of knowledge became locked away. But then I think that a lot of knowledge went overboard after 1776 when we, as a nation, went through an anti England phase that caused us to use English scholars less than before. Another part of that probably comes from the fact that much of the US protestant groups viewed Anglicans as ‘being virtually Catholics’.

Just wondered if anyone had examined this evolution of thought.
 
GraceSofia said:
Karl Keating, in Catholicism and Fundamentalism p, 83, wrote that even John Foxe, author of the decidedly anti-Catholic Book of Martyrs (1563), denied that Wycliffe wrote the first English Bible.

Foxe wrote, “If histories be well examined we shall find both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures was by sundry men translated into our country tongue.” ~Hugh Pope, English Versions of the Bible, 63.
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What I would like to find is the particular citation for that comment of Foxe. Which book/writing he said it in. Its been a long time since I have read Foxe and frankly don’t relish the though of having to wade through those works again.
 
bitznbitez said:
What I would like to find is the particular citation for that comment of Foxe. Which book/writing he said it in. Its been a long time since I have read Foxe and frankly don’t relish the though of having to wade through those works again.
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If you live near a good library, you could ask them to bring you English Versions of the Bible, Hugh Pope, St. Louis: Herder, 1952 and see what else is in there.

Or you could use your “search on this page” for a word function in one of the online versions:

ccel.org/f/foxe/martyrs/home.html

Have fun. :hammering:
Just wondered if anyone had examined this evolution of thought.
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You’d think. Or maybe it would be a good thesis topic for somebody.
 
GraceSofia said:
Interesting question. I would venture to guess that it started in the last hundred years and then spread like wildfire thanks to the internet. 😃 You might find the myth in the writing of the anti-Catholic Loraine Boettner.

Karl Keating, in Catholicism and Fundamentalism p, 83, wrote that even John Foxe, author of the decidedly anti-Catholic Book of Martyrs (1563), denied that Wycliffe wrote the first English Bible.

Foxe wrote, “If histories be well examined we shall find both before the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures was by sundry men translated into our country tongue.” ~Hugh Pope, English Versions of the Bible, 63.
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One thing the quote from Foxe PROVES: The myth was already in existence. He was already trying to counter the myth with historical evidence. But I believe the myth was relatively recent in Foxe’s own time. The animosity between Protestant and Catholic in England in mid 16th century England was building up quickly.
 
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