Bishops’ Bible

From Textus Receptus

Revision as of 20:32, 26 February 2010

The 1568 Bishops' Bible was a revision of the Great Bible made under the direction of Archbishop Matthew Parker. Laurence Vance asserted that one of the rules given the translators of the Bishops’ Bible was the following:

“First, to follow the common English Translation used in the Churches the Great Bible and not to recede from it but where it varieth manifestly from the Hebrew or Greek original” (Brief History, p. 20; Dore, Old Bibles, p. 273).

Edward F. Hills confirmed that the Bishops’ Bible came from “the English prelates under the direction of Archbishop Parker” (KJV Defended, p. 214). MacCulloch noted that “Matthew Parker had conformed outwardly to the traditional Catholic Church under Queen Mary” (Reformation, p. 282).

Kenneth Bradstreet claimed that “Parker had been ordained in the Roman Catholic Church and was still quite Romish if not popish” (KJV in History, p. 53). Parker is said to have translated the following portions of the Bishops’ Bible:

Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Mark, 2 Corinthians to Hebrews. Along with Parker, its revisers or translators are said to have included: Edmund Grindal (Bishop of London), Edwin Sandys (Bishop of Worcester), Richard Cox (Bishop of Ely), William Alley (Bishop of Exeter), Richard Davies (Bishop of St. Davids), Gabriel Goodman (Dean of Westminster), Andrew Pierson or Pearson (Canon of Canterbury), Robert Horne (Bishop of Winchester), Andrew Perne (Canon or Dean of Ely), John Parkhurst (Bishop of Norwich), Thomas Bentham (Bishop of Linchfield and Coventry), Edmund Scambler (Bishop of Peterborough), Nicholas Bullingham (Bishop of Lincoln), William Barlow (Bishop of Chichester), and Thomas Bickley (Parker’s chaplain and afterwards Bishop of Chichester) or Thomas Becon [one of which replaced Edmund Guest (Bishop of Rochester) as translator of the Psalms]. It may be that Hugh Jones (Bishop of Llandaff) completed the work stated by Nicholas Bullingham. Concerning these translators, David Norton maintained that “many of the Bishops were still close to Roman Catholicism in spirit” (History, p. 37). The Church of England doctrinal views of the translators of the Bishops’ Bible were similar to the views of many of the translators of the KJV. David Daniell observed: “Matthew Parker proposed, and completed, the Bishops’ Bible as a means of blocking the advance of Geneva into churches” (Bible in English, p. 342).

The Bishops' Bible is sometimes called "Matthew Parker's Bible." Christopher Anderson asserted that Matthew Parker “had slipped his paternal arms, empaled with those of Christ Church, Canterbury, into an initial letter T at the genealogical table in the Old Testament, and at the preface to the New” (Annals of the English Bible, II, p. 333). The Bishops’ Bible was published with an engraved portrait of Queen Elizabeth on its title page and of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, at the beginning of the book of Joshua and of William Cecil, the baron of Burghley, at the beginning of the book of Psalms. It included 143 woodcuts and maps. It included a preface by Parker, but it also kept Cranmer’s preface to some Great Bible editions. The title of the fourth O. T. in the 1568 Bishops’ Bible was given in Latin as “Numeri” while the title of the fifth book was “Deuteronomium.” Ezra is identified as “the first book of Esdras” while the next book is identified as “the book of Nehemias, or second book of Esdras.” The book before “the book of the Prophet Isay” has the title “The Ballet of Ballets of Solomon, called in Latin, Canticum Canticorum.” After Daniel, it has “Osee.” After Amos, it has “Abdias.” After Nahum, it has “Habacuc,” then “Sophonia,” and then “Aggeus.” In the N. T., it has titles such as “The Gospel of Saint Matthew” and “the Epistle of the Apostle Saint Paul to the Romans.” In an article entitled “The Bible in the British Museum,” the Quarterly Review maintained that “the notes [of the Bishops’ Bible] are for the most part, where they are not adopted from the Geneva Bible, very commonplace, and in many cases absolutely silly, e.g. Genesis 21:7: ’It is the duty of the mother, if she may, to nurse her child” (Vol. 178, January-April, 1894, p. 169).