The Bishops' Bible

From Textus Receptus

1380 Wyclif's Bible
1526 Tyndale Bible
1535 Coverdale Bible
1537 The Matthew Bible
1539 Taverner's Bible
1539 The Great Bible
1560 The Geneva Bible
1568 The Bishops' Bible
1610 Douay-Rheims Bible
1611 King James Version
1833 Websters Bible
1881 Revised Version
1898 Young's Literal Translation
1952 Revised Standard Version
1971 King James II Version of the Bible
1971 New American Standard Bible
1973 New International Version
1982 New King James Version
1991 21st Century King James Version
1999 Modern King James Version
1999 American King James Version
2000 Updated King James Version
2001 English Standard Version
2001 Holy Scriptures Version
2005 New Cambridge Paragraph Bible
2005 Today's New International Version
2006 Authorized Version Update
2006 AV7 (New Authorized Version)
2014 Modern English Version
2016 King James Version 2016 Edition
2023 King James Version 2023 Edition buy the revised and updated printed 2023 Edition New Testament here

The Bishops' Bible was an English translation of the Bible produced under the authority of the established Church of England in 1568. It was substantially revised in 1572, and this revised edition was to be prescribed as the base text for the Authorized King James Version of 1611.

History

In this edition, Elizabeth is flanked by allegorical virtues of Faith and Charity. Elizabeth therefore represents Hope. Beneath the portrait is a Latin text from Romans 1:16

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."^[1] 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,^[2] 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,^[2] but the New Testament was reissued until at least 1617.^[2] William Fulke published several parallel editions up to 1633,^[2] 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.

Legacy

Though not formally dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, the Bishops' Bible includes a portrait of the queen on its title page. The 1569 quarto edition shows Elizabeth accompanied by female personifications of Justice, Mercy, Fortitude, and Prudence.

The translators of the King James Version were instructed to take the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible as their basis, although several other existing translations were taken into account. After it was published in 1611, the King James Version soon took the Bishops' Bible's place as the de facto standard of the Church of England. Later judgments of the Bishops' Bible have not been favorable; David Daniell, in his important edition of William Tyndale's New Testament, states that the Bishops' Bible "was, and is, not loved. Where it reprints Geneva it is acceptable, but most of the original work is incompetent, both in its scholarship and its verbosity".^[3]

Unlike Tyndale's translations and the Geneva Bible, the Bishops' Bible has rarely been reprinted. The most available reprinting of its New Testament portion (minus its marginal notes) can be found in the fourth column of the New Testament Octapla edited by Luther Weigle, chairman of the translation committee that produced the Revised Standard Version.^[4]

The Bishops' Bible is also known as the "Treacle Bible" because of its translation of Jeremiah 8:22 which reads "Is there not treacle at Gilead?", a rendering also found in several earlier versions as well. In the Authorized Version of 1611, "treacle" was changed to "balm".

References

1. Pollard, Alfred W. (2003). The Holy Bible: 1611 Edition, King James Version.. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson. pp. 22–3. ISBN 1-56563-160-9.
2. Herbert, A. S. (1968). Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525–1961. New York: American Bible Society. pp. 125–480. ISBN 564-00130-9.
3. Daniell, David (1989). Tyndale's New Testament. New Haven: Yale. ISBN 0-300-04419-4.
4. Weigle, Luther A. (1962). The New Testament Octapla: Eight English Versions of the New Testament in the Tyndale-King James Tradition. NY: Thomas Nelson.

External links

Studylight Version of the Bishops Bible Text.;From Studylight, An incomplete Version, lacking in the Apocrypha, which existed in the original, but in the original spelling.
Bishops Bible on StudyBible.info — Includes the Apocrypha.
Online version of Sir Frederic G. Kenyon’s article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 1909
Bishops' Bible Scan
bishop-bible.com

The King James Version 2023 Edition New Testament is now complete and in print format here.

Internal Links

Old Testament - New Testament KJV 1900

New Testament KJV 2016

Scrivener's 1894 Textus Receptus

2016 Urdu New Testament (TR Based)

Russian Synodal Version (TR Based)

Reina Valera Gómez Spanish (TR Based)

Marginal Notes in the 1611 Authorized Version

Ephesians 3:9

Why We Should Not Passover Easter 1, 2, & 3

Will Kinney

List of TR/KJV based foreign bibles

List of New Testament minuscules

List of New Testament lectionaries

List of New Testament Papyri

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