In the early Middle Ages, parts of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible were translated from Latin into several of the dialects of Western Europe. These included versions in the Bohemian, Czech, and Italian languages, as well as the Provincial dialect of south eastern France. But none of these compare, is importance with the work of John Wycliffe, pioneering reformer who translated the entire Scared Scripture/Holy Bible from Latin into the English language.

John Wycliffe (c.1330-1384) master of Balliol College, Oxford, was a distinguished scholar and preacher. But he was also a social reformer who wanted to replace the feudal organization of State and Church with a system that emphasized people direct responsibility to God. The constitution of this new order would be the law of God, which Wycliffe equated with the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. Before this could happen, the law of God had to be accessible to the laity as well as the clergy, the unlearned as well as the learned. This called for a Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in English as well as Latin, so Wycliffe and his associates undertook the task of translating the entire Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible from the Latin Vulgate into contemporary English.

There were actually two Wycliffe versions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible - an earlier one, produced between 1380 and 1384 during Wycliffe's lifetime, and a latter version completed in 1395, 11 years after his death.

The earlier version is a thoroughly literal translation. Wycliffe followed the Latin construction without attempting to render the meaning into good English idiom. The translators produced a literal version because it was intended to serve as the law book of the new order. The Latin text of the law book was already established and the English text had to follow it, word for word. About two thirds of this version was produced by one of Wycliffe supporters, Nicholas of Hereford. Wycliffe himself may have done some of the translation work on the remaining portion, the movement with which this English social reformer was associated was condemned by the authorities.

The second version Wycliffe version was the work of his secretary, John Purvey. It was based on the earlier version, but it rendered the text into idiomatic English. Purvey's version became very popular, although its circulation was restricted by Church officials. It was suppressed in 1408 by a document known as the "Constitutions of Oxford" which forbade anyone to translate or even to read any part of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in English without the permission of a bishop or a local council. These constitution remained in force for more than a century.

More than 200 years passed from the time that Wycliffe's second English version was issued (1395) until the historic king James Version was published in 1611. These were fruitful years for new versions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. The stage was set for the monumental king James Bible by five different English translations that were issued during these years.

The years from about 1450 onward brought exciting changes in Western Europe. The revival of interest in classical and scriptural/biblical learning was already under way when it received a stimulus from the migration of Greek scholars to the West after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. With the invention of printing in Germany, the promoters of the new learning found a new technology at their disposal.

Among the first products of the printing press were editions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. the first major work to be printed was the famous Gutenberg edition of the Latin Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, in 1456. The following decades brought printed editions of the Hebrew Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, the Greek New Testament, and the Septuagint. The leaders of the Protestant Reformation were quick to take advantage of this new invention to help advance their efforts in church reform.

Making the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible available in the tongue of the common people was a significant strategy in the Reformers' policy. Rev. Fr. Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation, translated the New Testament from Greek into German in 1552 and the Old Testament from Hebrew into German in the following years. What Martin Luther did for the Germans, William Tyndale did for the people of England.

After completing his studies at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, William Tyndale (c.1495-1536) devoted his time and talents to providing his fellow English men with the Scriptures in their own language. He hoped that Bishop Tunstall of London would sponsor his project of translating the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible but the bishop refused to do so. Tyndale then went to Germany in 1524 to undertake his project. By August of 1525 his English New Testament was complete.

Tyndale began printing his new version at Cologne, but this was interrupted by the city authorities. The printing work was then carried through by Peter Schoeffer in Worms. who produced an edition of 6,000 copies. Soon this new Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was selling in England, although it had been officially banned by the Church.

Tyndale's translation differed in two important respects from the versions of Wycliffe. It was rendered not from the Latin language but from the Greek original, and it circulated in printed form, not as a hand copied manuscript. From the New Testament, Tyndale moved to the Old Testament, issuing an edition of the Pentateuch, then the Book of Jonah, and a revision of Genesis. Later, in 1534, Tyndale issued a revision of his New Testament, justly described as 'altogether Tyndale's noblest monument.'

A further revision of the New Testament appeared in 1535. In the month of May of that year Tyndale was arrested. After an imprisonment of 17 months, he was sentenced to death as a heretic; he was strangled and burned at the stake at Vilvorde, near Brussels, on October 6, 1536. Tyndale started a tradition in the history of the English Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible that has endured to this day. His wording in those portions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible which he translated was retained in the king James Version to a great degree. The latest in the succession of revisions which stand in the Tyndale tradition is the New king James Version. But even those versions that did not set out to adhere to his tradition, such as the New International Version, show his influence.

At the time of Tyndale's death, a printed edition of the English Scripture/Bible, bearing a dedication to king Henry VIII, had been circulating in England for nearly a year. This was the first edition of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible issued by Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) one of Tyndale's friends and associates. This English version reproduced Tyndale's translation of the Pentateuch and the New Testament; the rest of the Old Testament was translated into English from Latin and German versions.

Official policy toward the translation and circulation of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in England changed quickly. When king Henry VIII break with the Roman Catholic Church in Rome in 1534. It had
something to do with it, but deeper factors were also involved. A landmark in the history of the English Scripture/Bible was the royal injunction of September 1538, directing that 'one book of the whole Scripture/Bible of the largest volume in English' should be placed in every parish church in England where the people could have access to it. When this decree was issued, another version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible - Great Bible - was being prepared so this commandment could be followed.

Publication of the Great Bible was delayed because French officials halted its production in Paris, where it was being printed. The printing was then transferred to London, where the Great Bible appeared in 1539. It was essentially a copy of Tyndale's translation. It quickly became the "authorized version" of the English Bible. One part of the Great Bible remained in use long after the version as a whole had been replaced by later and better versions. To this day the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer that is sung in the services of the church of England is the Psalms contained in the Great Bible.

During the reign of Mary Tudor of England (1553-1558) many English reformers sought refuge in other parts of Europe because of her policy of persecution. One community of English refugees settled in Geneva, Switzerland, where John Knox was pastor of the English congregation and where John Calvin dominated theological study. many of these English refugees were fine scholars, and they began work on a new English version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. A preliminary edition of the New Testament (Whittingham's New Testament) was published in 1557. This was the first edition of any part of the English Bible to have text divided into verses. The whole Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible appeared in 1560.

This 'Geneva Bible' was the first English Bible to be translated in its entirety from the original scriptural/biblical languages. Widely recognized as the best English version Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible that had yet appeared, it quickly became the accepted version in Scotland. In England it also attained instant popularity among the people, although it was not accepted by church officials. after the publication of the king James Version in 1611, the Geneva Bible remained popular. This was the Scripture/Bible which the Pilgrims took with them to the new world in 1620; to them the king James Version was a compromise and an inferior production. The Geneva Bible was printed until 1644 and was still found in use many years later.

The rival version to the Geneva Bible sponsored by church leaders in England was published in 1568. It was called the Bishops' Bible because all the translators were either bishops at the time or became bishops later. It was a good translation, based throughout on the original languages; but it was not as sound in scholarship as the Geneva Bible.

Shortly after James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England as James I (1603) he convened a conference to settle matters under dispute in the church of England. The only important result of this conference was an approval to begin work on the king James Version of the English Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. A group of 47 scholars, divided into six teams, was appointed to undertake the work of preparing the new version. Three teams worked on the Old Testament; two were responsible for the New Testament; and one worked on the Apocrypha. They used the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Scripture/Bible as the basis of their revision, but they had access to many other versions and helps, as well as the texts in the original scriptural/biblical languages. When the six groups had completed their task, the final draft was reviewed by a committee of 12. The king James Version was published in 1611.

The new revision won wide acceptance among the people of the English speaking world. Non sectarian in tone and approach, it did not favor one shade of theological or ecclesiastical opinion over another. The translators had an almost instinctive sense of good English style.; the prose rhythms of the version gave it a secure place in the popular memory. Never was a version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible more admirably suited for reading aloud in public.

Although there was some resistance to the king James Version at first, it quickly made a place for itself. For more than three centuries, it has remained 'The Scripture/Bible' throughout the English speaking world.

A generation before the appearance of the king James Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, an English version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible for Roman Catholics was undertaken by the faculty of the English College at Douai, France. Unlike the Geneva Bible, which was translated from the original languages, the Douai or Douay Scripture/Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate. The translator of the Douai Scripture/Bible was Gregory Martin, formerly an Oxford scholar, who translated two chapters a day until the project was finished. Each section was then revised by two of his colleagues. The New Testament portion of this version was issued in 1582 and the Old testament in 1609-1610.

The Douai Scripture/Bible was scholarly and accurate, but the English style and vocabularly were modeled on Latin usage. It would not have become popular among the Catholic laity if it had not been for the work of Richard Challoner (1691-1781) who revised it thoroughly between 1749 and 1772. What has generally been called the Douai Scripture/Bible since Challoner's day is in fact the Douai Scripture/Bible as revised by Richard Challoner. In several respects it was a new version. Until 1945 this Douai revision by Challoner remained the only version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible officially sanctioned for English speaking Catholics.

During the 18th century and the earlier part of the 19th century, several private attempts were made at revising the king James Version. The reasons for revision included the outdated English of the king James Version, the progress made by the scholars in understanding the original languages of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, and the availability of better texts in the original scriptural/biblical languages, especially the Greek text of the New Testament.

One of the most influential private revision was Henry Alford's New Testament (1869) In the preface to this translation, Alford expressed the hope that his work would be replaced soon by an official revision of the king James Version. This hope was fulfilled in 1870 when the church of England initiated plans for a revision. Two groups of revisers were appointed, one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. Representatives of British churches other than the church of England were included on these committees. Before long, parallel companies of revisers were set up in the United States. At first these groups worked under the hope that one version might be produced for both England and the United States. But this was not to be. The American scholars, conservative as they were in their procedure, could not be bound by the stricter conservatism of their British counterparts. The three installments of the British revision (RV) appeared in 1881, in 1885, and in 1894. The American revision, or American Standard Version (ASV) was released in 1901, but did not include the Apocrypha.

The RV and ASV were solid works of scholarship. The Old Testament revisers had a much better grasp of Hebrew than the original translators of the king James Version. The new Testament revision was based on a much more accurate Greek text than had been available in 1611. Although the RV and ASV were suitable Scripture/Bible study, they did not gain popular acceptance, mainly because their translators paid little attention to style and rhythm as they rendered the scriptural/biblical languages into English.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -