WE have seen that the “Great Bible,” which is connected with Cranmer’s name, was the one appointed to be set in the churches in Elizabeth’s reign, as it had been in that of her father and her brother. Many, however, especially when the version made by the Genevan exiles came into use, objected to the Great Bible as not being a good translation. The result was the publication in 1568, of the “Bishops’ Book,” so called because, of the fifteen translators who were engaged about it, the greater number were bishops. The good Archbishop Parker, an aged man, who had lived through all the troubles of the Reformation times, superintended this work.
“I trust”―so one of the translators wrote to him while the work was in progress― “your grace is well forward with the Bible by this time. I perceive the greatest burden will lie upon your neck, touching care and travail. I could wish that such usual words as we English people be acquainted with might still remain in their form and sound, so far forth as the Hebrew will well bear; ink-horn terms to be avoided.”
This was good advice, for it would have been a sad mistake to have allowed words to remain in the English Bible which, though quite familiar to bishops and learned men, could only needlessly puzzle the minds of simple people; and this good advice was followed, so that as a rule simple, homely words were used rather than what the writer called “ink-horn terms.”
The Bishops’ Book contained portraits of the queen, and of two of her favorite lords. Elizabeth’s portrait was surrounded by the arms of England, France, Ireland, and Wales, and beneath it were the words, in Latin― “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” There are tables of genealogy, and “The Sum of the Scripture,” a list of the various books; also a little record of the goodness of God in preserving His word in spite of the efforts which had been made “to decree the translating of the Scripture to be so perilous a thing that it could scarcely be hoped that it should be well performed.”
The Bishops’ Book took the place of Cranmer’s Bible as that authorized to be read in churches, but it is not considered, by those who can best judge, that this translation, which was the work of so many learned men, is so faithful as the little volume which was prepared amid many difficulties by the exiles at Geneva, and which long kept its place in the homes and hearts of the English people.
The Rheimish version, or as it is generally called the Douay Bible, which is still used by Roman Catholics, had been published six years before, at Rheims. It is a translation made not from the Greek, but from the Vulgate, or common Latin Bible; and from the notion that the language of the church was the only language fitted to express sacred things, so many Latin words were retained that it can hardly properly be called an English Bible. It is also full of marginal notes, setting forth the doctrines taught by the Church of Rome.
Although during the first ten years of Elizabeth’s reign no laws had been made against the Romanists, yet many priests had thought it well to leave England, and it was for these priests that a college had been established at Douay, in the Netherlands, by an Englishman, generally called “Cardinal” Allen. This school was afterward removed to Rheims, and there the translation was made by three scholars, the chief of them a priest named Gregory Martin.
The translators were anxious to show plainly in their preface that they did not publish this English version from any thought that “the Holy Scriptures should be always in the mother tongue, or that they ought or were ordained of God to be read indifferently by all, or could be easily understood of everyone that readeth or heareth them in a known language.” On the contrary, they believed that free access to the Scriptures had been often, “through man’s malice and infirmity, pernicious and much hurtful to many,” and they go on to say that the translation has not been made by them because “we generally and absolutely deemed it more convenient in itself, and more agreeable to God’s word and honor, or edification of the faithful, to have the Scriptures turned into vulgar tongues than to be kept and studied only in the ecclesiastical learned languages. Not for these, nor any such like causes, do we translate this sacred book, but upon special consideration of the present time, state, and condition of our country, unto which divers things are either necessary, or profitable, or medicinable now, that otherwise, in the peace of the church, were neither much requisite nor perchance wholly tolerable.”
Finding fault with all the Protestant versions, especially on account of the great liberty taken in translating into every-day speech “words ecclesiastical,” they thus explain further their reasons for the work they had undertaken: ― “We, therefore, having compassion to see our beloved countrymen, with extreme danger to their souls, to use only such profane translations.... much also moved thereto by the desires of many devout persons, have set forth for you, benign readers, the New Testament to begin withal, trusting that it may give occasion to you, after diligently perusing thereof, to lay away at least such of their impure versions as ye have been forced to occupy.”
Thus we see the reason given by those who made the Douay translation, for undertaking the work, was that it had become impossible, from the Scriptures being so often printed in English, to keep them out of the hands of the common people, therefore they were obliged to provide for those who were not Protestants, but still wished to read God’s word, a Bible of their own. The Old Testament was not published until the next reign. It has been said of the Douay Bible, that it is “a translation that has need to be translated”; so carefully has the conviction expressed by the translators that many words were too sacred to be put into familiar language been carried out.
The Bishops’ Book had been used in all the churches throughout the land for many years. Elizabeth had passed away, and her Scottish cousin had come to take her place, when the fresh translation of the Scriptures, which is now the “authorized version,” was made.
After all the ceremonies connected with welcoming and crowning the new king were over, James made a proclamation appointing a meeting to be held for the hearing and settling of certain “things pretended to be amiss in the church.”
The Puritans, some of whom were descendants of those who had been exiles for the faith which they would not deny, and who had brought back with them from their places of exile a fierce hatred of anything in religion which they conceived to be popish, had taken an early opportunity of presenting a petition to the king.
This paper was signed by a thousand clergymen, who prayed for reform in the matter of ceremonies. James, in reply, said that a conference to consider their petition, and the religious question generally, should be held in his presence at Hampton Court, the splendid palace built, a hundred years before, by the great Cardinal Wolsey.
In the course of this conference, which was held in January, 1604, Dr. Rainolds, a learned man of the Puritan party, after mentioning some passages which he considered wrongly rendered in the Bishops’ Book, proposed to the king that a new translation should be made.
“Stay,” interrupted the Bishop of London; “if every man’s humor be followed, then shall there be no end of translating.”
The proposal, however, found favor with the king. James, who was very jealous of the dignity of his office, especially disliked the Genevan Bible, on account of the marginal notes, in some of which he thought he saw an implied disrespect to kings, and that “divine right” by which they reigned, in which he was himself so sincere a believer.
Since coming to England he had learned, to his annoyance, that this version, although not the one read in the churches, was that which held its place in the homes and hearts of the English people. He, therefore, lent a ready ear to Dr. Rainold’s proposition, and sent a letter to the Archbishop, saying that he had appointed fifty-four (the number was afterward reduced to forty-seven) learned men to undertake the work. It was especially provided that this version should be without notes or comments, except such as might be necessary for the explanation of such Hebrew or Greek words as could not easily have their exact or full meaning given in the text, and that this translation, when completed, was to be the one used in all the churches in England. This was the origin of our “authorized version,” which, as you may see, if you turn to the beginning of your Bible, was “translated by his majesty’s special command, and appointed to be read in the churches.”