Do RCs Know About the Bible That Changed the World?
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Transcript of Do RCs Know About the Bible That Changed the World?
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Do RC s K n ow about
the Bible that changedthe wor ld?
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The Geneva Bible was the first full-length Bible to be published in the English language. Its
original compilers and publishers produced 144 separate editions between 1560 and 1644 AD,
beyond which time King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud forbade its printing in
England. The Geneva Bible virtually disappeared until modern times . The Geneva Bible is
now available in a hardcover edition published in 2006 by Tolle Lege Press.[1]
It was the Geneva Bible (rather than the King James Bible) that was preferred by the Puritans whocolonized New England, and the Pilgrims brought the Geneva Bible with them on the
Mayflower . One reason the Puritans preferred the Geneva Bible was due to its thorough
annotations.
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Contents
1 History
1.1 Tyndales New Testament
1.2 Bloody Mary
1.3 The First Edition
1.4 Later Editions
1.5 Modern Editions
2 Review
2.1 The Text
2.1.1 Distinction from the Authorized Version
2.2 The Marginal Notes2.2.1 Literalism
2.2.2 Eschatology
2.2.3 Anti-Catholic sentiment
2.2.4 Royal authority and its limits
3 References
4 External Links
5 See Also
History
Tyndales New Testament
The Roman Catholic Church had spread throughout the territory that was once part of the Western
Roman Empire. Yet the Church reserved for its own clergy the right to own the written text of the
Bible and no European monarch permitted any of his subjects actually to possess a copy of the
Bible printed in any language other than Latin.[2]
In 1526, William Tyndale began his first efforts to translate the Bible into English. For this
defiance of the royal edicts then in force, the authorities pursued him. He fled to Germany , where
he met Martin Luther , and from there to Belgium. There he produced a mechanically printed
edition of the New Testament, and his friends smuggled 6,000 copies of it into England.
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Authorities in Belgium hunted him, arrested him, and imprisoned him in Vilvoorde, and on
March 6, 1536, he was executed.[2]
Tyndales New Testament did not reach the common man in England. It did, however, influence
the English clergy and might have been an impetus behind the Reformation in England.[2]
Significantly, Anne Boleyn was executed in the same year as was Tyndale and subsequent to this,
King Henry VIII began his sweeping purge of the monasteries in his realm.
Bloody Mary
In 1553, Queen Mary I acceded to the throne upon the death of her half-brother, Edward VI. This
Catholic queen quickly earned the nickname Bloody M ary by her ruthless persecution of the
English Reformers and her execution of 300 of them. Another 800 Reformers fled to the continent,
where they gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, then known as John Calvins Protestant Rome.[3]
There they set about creating an English-language version of the entire Bible, and one that would
have no ties to any monarch, whether in England or elsewhere in Europe . Among the men
involved in this project were William Whittingham, Miles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman,
Anthony Gilby, John Knox, and Thomas Sampson.[2]
The First Edition
The Geneva translators avoided the Latin Bible version, or Vulgate, and sought access to the
oldest and most authentic Hebrew and Greek manuscripts they could find . Their research
benefited, ironically, from the Fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, an event that had forced many
Christian clerics to flee the fallen city of Constantinople with their manuscripts in hand.
In 1557, Whittingham produced a revised edition of Tyndales original New Testament. Then in
1560 the reformers produced the first edition of the Geneva Bible. This they dedicated to
Queen Elizabeth I , who by then had succeeded to the throne after the death of her sister, Bloody
Mary. Under Elizabeth s patronage, the Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice not merely
for clergy but also for laity .[2]
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Later Editions
From the beginning, the Geneva Bible was a study Bible, richly annotated and illustrated. The
1599 edition had the most extensive annotations of any of the Geneva Bibles, and a table of
interpretations of (mainly Old Testament) proper names.
The Geneva Bible was highly popular in England, and indeed the Jamestown
expeditionaries carried it to America in 1607. Likewise, the Pilgrims carried it with them to
the Netherlands, where they had fled, and then to what later became their Plymouth colony
(in modern Massachusetts) in 1620 .
In 1604, shortly after his own accession to the throne, King James I commissioned his own
version of the Bible, that would later come to be known as The Bishops Bible or, more
commonly, the Authorized Version. James motive for promulgating his own version was simple:
he did not want the people to have in hand a Bible with all the marginal notes that the
Geneva Bible had. The reason was equally simple: those marginal notes might encourage lay
readers not to credit James overriding dogma of the divine right of kings that was central
to his authority.[4]
This version was first published in 1611. A later king (Charles I) would take the first steps
toward suppression of the Geneva Bible toward the end of his reign. In 1644, the Geneva
Bible went out of print and would remain out of print for more than four hundred fifty
years .
Modern Editions
In 2003, L. L. Brown and Company published an edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible.[5] This edition
included the Apocrypha and a metrical rendition of the Book of Psalms originally intended to
encourage their recitation in church.
In January of 2004 a group of concerned American individuals and organizations formed
the 1599 Geneva Bible Restoration Project to restore and republish the richly annotated
1599 edition. Seventeen organizations and 270 individuals and families contributed funds
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Anti-Catholic sentiment
The Geneva editors infused their notes with many attacks against the Roman Catholic
Church hardly a surprise considering the persecution in which the RCC, and Queen Mary I, were
then engaging. The most striking attack against Rome is the handling of the prophecy of the Two
Witnesses in Jerusalem[12] The Bible says, of course, that two men prophesied for 1,260 days in
the court of the Temple of Jerusalem. The Geneva notes say instead that the two witnesses stand
for ministers of the Word of God that are outside of the RCC, and that the 1,260 days are actually
1,260 years that began with the Crucifixion (which they assumed had taken place in AD 33 or 34)
and ended with the accession to the papacy of Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303). Boniface was
famous for issuing a papal bull stating that, to be saved, every man had to be a member of
the RCC and the Geneva notes further accused Boniface of obtaining his office by fraud . The notes on other verses in Revelation go further: they identify the Roman Empire and the
Roman Catholic Church with the Beast of Revelation 13 .[13]
Royal authority and its limits
The Geneva editors, in their notes, spoke of limits on royal authority, and this is probably why
James I specifically ordered a translation of the Bible without annotation . He construed any
limit on royal authority as a challenge to his own authority. For example, the note for Exodus 1:19(KJV) says the following of the Hebrew midwives who disobeyed the Pharaoh in refusing to kill
Hebrew boy- children at birth:[14] Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling
evil.
The very notion that the disobedience of a royal command might be a lawful act would be
anathema to a king who believed that he ruled by divine right and answered only to God and not to
any of his subjects.[4] The footnote for Exodus 1:22 (KJV) would surely have been worse: Wh en
tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage.
The firm belief of the editors of the Tolle Lege edition is that these marginal notes were the catalyst
not only for the furtherance (such as it was) of the reformation in England, but also, and more to
the point, for the political revolutions in the English-speaking world[2] beginning with the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 and continuing with the American Revolution of 1776-83. They hold
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this belief even though the Geneva Bible ceased printing in 1644, long before William and Mary
and more than a century before the American Revolution. Brown[4] points out that the Church of
England retained all of the trappings and hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the
chief difference being that the Archbishop of Canterbury answered no longer to the Pope of Rome
but directly to the British crown.
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References:
http://www.geneva-bible.com/geneva-bible-history.html
http://www.reformed.org/documents/geneva/Geneva.html
http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html
http://greatsite.com/facsimile-reproductions/geneva-1557.html http://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-front.html
http://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-back.html
http://www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/geneva-brochure-picture.html
http://www.geneva-bible.com/geneva-bible-history.htmlhttp://www.geneva-bible.com/geneva-bible-history.htmlhttp://www.reformed.org/documents/geneva/Geneva.htmlhttp://www.reformed.org/documents/geneva/Geneva.htmlhttp://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.htmlhttp://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.htmlhttp://greatsite.com/facsimile-reproductions/geneva-1557.htmlhttp://greatsite.com/facsimile-reproductions/geneva-1557.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-front.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-front.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-back.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-back.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/geneva-brochure-picture.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/geneva-brochure-picture.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bible-leaves/geneva-brochure-picture.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-back.htmlhttp://www.greatsite.com/featured-items-and-events/video-front.htmlhttp://greatsite.com/facsimile-reproductions/geneva-1557.htmlhttp://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.htmlhttp://www.reformed.org/documents/geneva/Geneva.htmlhttp://www.geneva-bible.com/geneva-bible-history.html