Do RCs Know About the Bible That Changed the World?

8/13/2019 Do RCs Know About the Bible That Changed the World?

1/13

1

Do RC s K n ow about

the Bible that changedthe wor ld?


2/13

2

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.


3/13

3

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.


4/13

4

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]


5/13

5

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


6/13


7/13


8/13

8

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


9/13

9

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.


10/13

10


11/13

11


12/13

12


13/13

13

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

Documents

Do RCs Know About the Bible That Changed the World?