The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-05-29
EVOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH
BIBLE.

Psalms was translated into Anglo Saxon,
and about the same time the Venerable
Bede during his last illness, translated
the Gospel of st. John In the ninth cen
tury King Alfred prefxed to the laws OF
the realm translation of the len Com
mandments, and about a century later
the four Gospels were translated, to all
appearances, for public use in the services
of the Church and among the people.
Then came the Norman invasion, which
was another setback. But all through
the subsequent period, the ancient Brit
ish Church kept struggling for the mas
terry with more or less success, against
the novelties of papal mediaevallsm. Ana
as generation after generation passed by.
we can detect, in almost every one OF
them, the ancient love for the Bible, and
the desire for it's circulation among the
people. At last John Wickliffe felt a
God given responsibility resting upon
him, to translate the New Testament into
the English tongue; while his friend
Nicholas de Hereford undertook the slml-
lar task of translating the Old Testament
They completed their work; SO that WICK
life, who was vicar of Lutterworth, had
the joy of seeing his life S task completed
before he died, in 1884.
Within two generations, or scacrely
more than sixty years after the death Oh
Wickliffe, the printing press was IN,
vented. The first book of any size printed
was Gutenberg's Latin Bible; and by the
time that America was discovered, IN
1899, Bibles were printed in Spanish,
Italian, French, Dutch, German and Bo-
hemian. England had, as yet, only the
manuscript copies of Wickliffe's transla-
ton; and we can without doubt, trace
the backwardness of the English people III
securing new translation to the power
and influence of this Wickliffe version.
But soon another man arose, filled with
the spirit of the vicar Of Lutterworth
himself, in the intense desire to place an
English Bible in the hands of the people.
William Tyndale, like John Wickliffe,
was graduate of Oxford and priest OF
the English Church Tyndale's transia-
ton was printed and circulated in 1925;
and so great was the change of feeling in
England within the ten subsequent years,
that although Tyndale himself was mar
tyred, a convocation of the Church OF
England, under the presidency of Thorn
as Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
had agreed to petition the King that he
would vouchsafe to decree that transla'
ton of the Scriptures into English
should be made by certain honest and
learned men whom the King should nom
mate and that the translation so made
should be delivered to the people by theil
learning And in the same year, or GER.
tainly within the next, Miles Coverdale's
Bible appeared with his own name as the
Bishop of the Church of England on the
title page, and with an open declaration
to King Henry VIII. It is significant
that although Coverdale's Bible was with
out the sanction of the civil authority, il
was never suppressed, showing that there
was no opposition in England, even II
those early days, to translation made
by competent hands and set forth under
the seal of authority.
Events now follow one another in rapid
succession. In 1887 Matthew's or Rogers
Bible appeared; in 1889 Cromwelps Bible
was printed, and in 1910 appeared in si1
su 3cessive editions of the Great Bible
with preface by Cranmer, Archbishop
Of Canterbury, and with the name or
ths title page Of Tunstall. Bishop of Lon.
don, who had before condemned and
burnt that very Bible of Tyndaie upor
About twenty years after appeared ''Tht
Bishops Bible,' which was set forth tt
be used in the cathedrals and churches o.
En- gland by order of convocatiOn. >.
In 1904, or eighty years after Tyndale
King James, yielding to the pressure Of
public religious opinion, responded, after
eighty years of silence, to the old request
of Cranmer and convocation, that "a
Translation of the Scriptures into English
should be made by certain honest ant
learned men whom the King (of Eng
1and) should nominate, and that the
translation SO made should be delivered
to the people for their learning; and ap
pointed a company of learned men II
the Church of England to prepare new
version of the English Bible. They com
pleted their work after seven years of la
Dor, setting forth in 1911, that conmonl.
called Authorized Version which w,
all know so well. In 1870, two hundred
and fifty years afterward, the convocatioI
of Canterbury in England organized
another company of revisers for still
another translation of the Bible, and thi
was finished under the name of the Ere
vised Version'-the New Testament il
1880, and the Old Testament in 1884. Oh
the title page of both these last version
we read that "they were diligently re
vised and compared with the forme
TRANSACTIONS, P" The key to those familia
words is now before us. Looking bacl
over the long period of English Churcl
history. from the Venerable Bede to tn
present time, and embracing an era q
over eleven hundred years, we behold tn
gradual evolution Of the English Bible
as age followed age. With the one exceI
ton, perhaps, of the Geneva Version,
which we omitted to enumerate becaus
it was of Swiss origin, all these success