|
The
thorough Calvinism of the Geneva Bible (not so much displayed in the
translation, which was acknowledged to be an excellent one, but in the
marginal notes), offended the high-church party of the Church of
England, to which almost all of its bishops subscribed. They associated
Calvinism with Presbyterianism, which sought to replace government of
the church by bishops (Episcopalian) with government by lay elders.
However, they were aware that the Great Bible of 1539 —which was the
only version then legally authorized for use in Anglican worship—was
severely deficient; in that much of the Old Testament was translated
from the Latin Vulgate, rather than from the original Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Greek. In an attempt to replace the objectionable Geneva
translation, they circulated one of their own, which became known as the
Bishops' Bible.
The
promoter of the exercise, and the leading figure in translating was
Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was at his instigation that
the various sections translated by Parker and his fellow bishops were
followed by their initials in the early editions. For instance, at the
end of the book of Deuteronomy, we find the initials "W.E.",
which, according to a letter Parker wrote to Sir William Cecil, stands
for William Alley, Bishop of Exeter. Parker tells Cecil that this system
was "to make [the translators] more diligent, as answerable for
their doings." Unhappily, Parker failed to commission anyone to act
as supervisory editor for the work completed by the various
translators—and was too busy to do so himself, and accordingly
translation practice varies greatly from book to book. Hence, in most of
the Hebrew Bible (as is standard in English Versions) the tetragrammaton
YHWH is represented by "the Lord", and the Hebrew
"Elohim" is represented by "God". But in the Psalms
the practice is the opposite way around. The books that Parker himself
worked on are fairly sparingly edited from the text of the Great Bible,
while those undertaken by Grindal of London emerged much closer to the
Geneva text.
The
bishops deputed to revise the Apocrypha appear to have delivered very
little, as the text in these books reproduce that of the Great Bible
broadly the same. As the Apocrypha of the Great Bible was translated
from the Latin Vulgate, the Bishops' Bible cannot strictly claim to have
been entirely translated from the original tongues.
The
Bishops' Bible was first published in 1568, but was then re-issued in an
extensively revised form in 1572. In the revision a number of switches
were made to the New Testament in the direction of more
"ecclesiastical" language (e.g. introducing the term
"charity" into I Corinthians 13), but otherwise to correct the
text more in line with that found in the Geneva Bible; and in the Old
Testament, the Psalms from the Great Bible were printed alongside those
in the new translation—which had proved impossible to sing. From 1577
the new psalm translation was dropped altogether; while further
incremental changes were made to the text of the New Testament in
subsequent editions. The Bible had the authority of the royal warrant,
and was the second version appointed to be read aloud in church services
(cf. Great Bible, King James Bible). It failed to displace the Geneva
Bible as a domestic Bible to be read at home, but that was not its
intended purpose. The intention was for it to be used in church as what
would today be termed a pulpit Bible. The version was more grandiloquent
than the Geneva Bible. The first edition was exceptionally large and
included 124 full-page illustrations. The second and subsequent editions
were rather smaller, around the same size as the first printing of the
King James Bible, and mostly lacked illustrations other than
frontispieces and maps. The text lacked most of the notes and
cross-references in the Geneva Bible, which contained much controversial
theology, but which were helpful to people among whom the Bible was just
beginning to circulate in the vernacular. The last edition of the
complete Bible was issued in 1602, but the New Testament was reissued
until at least 1617. William Fulke published several parallel editions
up to 1633, with the New Testament of the Bishops' Bible alongside the
Rheims New Testament, specifically to controvert the latter's polemical
annotations. The Bishops' Bible or its New Testament went through over
50 editions, whereas the Geneva Bible was reprinted more than 150 times. |
