The English Bible

Today the church observes the 507th anniversary of the day Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Although many people believe that the Reformation began with Luther, most of the typical doctrines that we associate with that movement had precedents in mediaeval England and subsequently spread to the European continent. In other words, the doctrines of grace, as recovered by Luther and Calvin and so many others in the 16th century, were already understood and believed by Christians centuries earlier, especially among the Lollards, the Hussites, and the Waldensians.

But of course all of this depended on ordinary Christians being able to read the Bible for themselves in their own languages and thereby to discern its true teachings. Today the English language in particular boasts a huge number of bible translations for every conceivable use and occasion. We speakers of the language are singularly blessed by such an abundance of spiritual riches. But there was once a time when most Christians did not have access to the Bible and had to depend on hearing only sections of it read in the liturgy in a language with which they might not be familiar. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century changed all this, laying the foundations for the Reformation.

I recently read The Making of the English Bible by Benson Bobrick, which covers the era from John Wycliffe (14th century) to the Glorious Revolution (1688). This book is a fascinating account of the numerous efforts to translate the Word of God into English and to disseminate popular knowledge of the Scriptures. Several factors complicated these efforts.

First, English itself was in transition, and a standard dialect of the language lay in the future. Thus any translator of the Bible would have to decide which dialect to use and which was likely to reach the greatest number of potential readers. In Luther's case, his translation of the Bible contributed much to the development of a standard German language. Wycliffe and Tyndale's translations did something similar for English.

Second, church authorities were generally opposed to putting the Bible in the hands of ordinary parishioners for fear that a diversity of private interpretations could disrupt the unity of the church as well as the larger social order.

Third, the complicated and ever-shifting relations between church and king made Bible translation a hazardous enterprise for those committed to it. William Tyndale (c 1490s-1536) paid with his life for his efforts under the mercurial King Henry VIII, who nevertheless eventually approved a vernacular Bible that drew largely on Tyndale's work.

While Bobrick's focus is on the Bible, an ancillary theme runs through his book, namely, how the centuries-long quest to put the Bible in the hands of the people contributed to the rise of representative government and individual liberties. A typical paragraph:

The English Bible fairly marks the divide [between parliamentary England and despotic France]. For despite [Oliver] Cromwell's dictatorship, by and large those who pleaded for the rights of conscience, for free discussion, and for an unrestricted press were those who held to the supreme authority of Scripture in all things. And after James II issued his Declaration of Indulgence, it was the English Nonconformists who held the balance of power and risked their own immediate freedom on behalf of the freedom of the realm. The poet William Wordsworth later suggested that the alliance of his country's revolution with the Bible had spared it the bloodshed of the French (303).

Among the many remarkable tidbits in Bobrick's account we find his assertion that Henry VIII himself, a would-be absolute monarch, inadvertently laid the groundwork for a strong and assertive parliament and eventually representative government.

The centrepiece of Bobrick's book is his account of the making of the Authorized Version of the Bible, better known as the King James Version. James himself, numbered the sixth in Scotland and the first in England, was something of a scholar and bibliophile.

He built up a considerable private library in the classics; owned a host of theological works (including those by Calvin, which he read in Latin); was especially well read in the French poets, such as Ronsard, Du Bellay, and [Clément] Marot; and of course had many writings in English and Scots. Upon receiving an honorary degree from Oxford after he had become King of England, he was given a tour of the Bodleian Library and noted the chains that bound the books to the shelves. 'I could wish, if ever it be my lot to be carried captive,' he remarked on that occasion, 'to be shut up in this prison, to be bound with these chains, and to spend my life with these fellow captives which stand here chained' (210).

In fact, during his adolescence the young prince "made metrical translations of a number of the Psalms," following the examples of Marot, Sternhold, Hopkins, and many others in the decades following the Reformation.

The King assembled an impressive group of scholars who brought their own gifts to the project, culminating in the publication of what would become the standard Protestant version of the Scriptures in the English language until the late 20th century. One of the more interesting participants was a certain Laurence Chaderton, a moderate Puritan and member of the First Cambridge Company, which translated 1 Chronicles through the Song of Songs. He was an able preacher who could keep a congregation with him for hours at a time (233).

Vigorous to the end, Chaderton proved the longest-lived of the translators, surviving through the reigns of four Tudors and two Stuarts into the English Civil War. In extreme old age, he kept to his studies, devoted himself to botany and gardening, and at the age of 105 (when he died) was apparently still able to read 'without spectacles' a copy of the Greek New Testament 'with very small type.'

As English has become a global lingua franca, the English Bible has similarly made its way around the globe. Accordingly, we owe a debt of gratitude to the many devout scholars who have laboured over the centuries to bring God's Word to us so that we might find our own place in its narrative and thereby become heirs of salvation in Jesus Christ. I am personally thankful that Bobrick saw fit to tell the story behind the English Bible in such an engaging manner.