Bible Translations

The history of the English Bible is the history of the movement of the Bible from its possession and use by clergy alone to the hands of the laity. It is also the history of the formation of the English language from a mixture of French, Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon. Even though Christianity reached England in the 3d century, the Bible remained in Latin and almost exclusively in the hands of the clergy for a thousand years.

Between the 7th and 14th centuries, portions of the Bible were translated into English, and some rough paraphrases appeared for instructing parishioners. In literary circles, poetic translations of favourite passages were made. Interest in translation from Latin to English grew rapidly in the 14th century, and in 1382 the first complete English Bible appeared in manuscript. It was the work of the English reformer John Wycliffe, whose goal was to give the Bible to the people.

Translations of the Reformation Period

In 1525 the English reformer William Tyndale translated the New Testament from the Greek text, copies of which were printed in Germany and smuggled into England. Tyndale’s translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew text was only partly completed. His simple prose and popular idiom established a style in English translation that was continued in the Authorized Version of 1611 (the King James Version) and eventually in the Revised Standard Version of 1946–52.

In 1535 the English reformer Miles Coverdale published an English translation based on German and Latin versions in addition to Tyndale’s. This was not only the first complete English Bible to appear in printed form, but unlike its predecessors, it was an approved translation that had been requested by the Canterbury Convocation. Shortly thereafter, the English reformer and editor John Rogers (1500?–55) produced a slightly revised edition of Tyndale’s Bible. This appeared in 1537 and was called Matthew’s Bible.

In 1538 the English scholar Richard Taverner (1505?–75) issued another revision. At about the same time, Oliver Cromwell commissioned Coverdale to produce a new Bible, which appeared in six editions between 1539 and 1568. This Bible, called the Great Bible, in its final revision in 1568 by scholars and bishops of the Anglican church was known as the Bishops’ Bible. The Bishops’ Bible was designed to replace not only the Great Bible, which was primarily a pulpit Bible, but also a translation for the laity, produced in Geneva in 1560 by English Protestants in exile, called the Geneva Bible. The Bishops’ Bible was the second authorized Bible.

The Douay and Other Roman Catholic Versions

The Douay or Douay-Rheims (spelled also Douai-Reims) Bible, completed between 1582 and 1609, was commonly used by Roman Catholics in English-speaking countries until the 1900s, when it was considerably revised by the English bishop Richard Challoner. The Douay Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, primarily by two English exiles in France, William Allen (1532–94) and Gregory Martin (1540?–82). During the 19th and 20th centuries, the Douay and Challoner Bibles were replaced with other translations by Roman Catholics. In the U.S., one of the most widely used is the New American Bible of 1970, the first complete Bible to be translated from Hebrew and Greek by American Roman Catholics.

The King James Version and Its Revisions

In 1604 King James I commissioned a new revision of the English Bible; it was completed in 1611. Following Tyndale primarily, this Authorized Version, also known as the King James Version, was widely acclaimed for its beauty and simplicity of style. In the years that followed, the Authorized Version underwent several revisions, the most notable being the English Revised Version (1881–85), the American Standard Version (1901), and the revision of the American Standard Version undertaken by the International Council of Religious Education, representing 40 Protestant denominations in the U.S. and Canada. This Revised Standard Version (RSV) appeared between 1946 and 1952. Widely accepted by Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic Christians, it provided the basis for the first ecumenical English Bible. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, 1989) eliminated much archaic and ambiguous usage. The New King James Bible, with contemporary American vocabulary, was published in 1982.

Other Modern Translations

In the first half of the 20th century many modern speech translations, mostly by individuals, appeared: Weymouth (1903); Goodspeed and Smith (1923–27); Moffatt (1924–26); Phillips (1947); and others. Since 1960, major translation projects have been underway to produce English Bibles that are not revisions of the Tyndale–King James–RSV tradition. The more significant among these are the following: the Jerusalem Bible (1966), an English translation of the work of French Dominicans (1956); Today’s English Version (1966–76) in idiomatic English by the American Bible Society; the New English Bible (1970) and a revised edition, The Revised English Bible (1989), originally commissioned in 1946 by the Church of Scotland and designed to be neither stilted nor colloquial; the New International Bible (1973–79), a revision by conservative American Protestants similar to the New American Standard Version; and the Living Bible (1962–71), not a translation but a paraphrase into the modern American idiom. The latter was designed by its author, Kenneth Taylor (1917– ), to make the Bible interesting and to propagate "a rigid evangelical position." The multivolume Anchor Bible (1964– ), an international and interfaith project, offers modern readers an exact translation, with extended exegesis (exposition).

Jewish translations of the Hebrew Bible into English have been appearing for two centuries. A new translation, the New Jewish Version, sponsored by the Jewish Publication Society of America, was published in three segments in 1962, 1974, and 1983.

The continuing flow of new translations testifies to the changing nature of language, the discovery of new manuscript evidence, and most of all the abiding desire to read and to understand the Bible. F.B.C.

Bible for Today's Family: New Testament: Contemporary English Version. American Bible Society, 1992. A new translation of the New Testament in clear, simple language with a strictly limited vocabulary that avoids religious jargon.

Edwards, Anne and Steen, Shirley. A Child's Bible. Paulist, 1978; 1987. Rewritten for the young reader.

Good News Bible: With Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha; The Bible in Today's English Version. Collins, 2d ed., 1992. Bible translated into contemporary American English.

The Harper Collins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Harper Collins, 1993. The NRSV is a revision of the Revised Standard Version with particular attention to inclusive language.

Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments. Authorized King James Version. Oxford, 1948. The best-known English version; first published 1611.

Holy Bible: The New King James Version. Nelson, 1982. Keeps most of the wording of the King James Version while updating usage.

The Holy Scriptures. 3v. Jewish Publication Society, 1962-82. Translation of The Torah, The Prophets, The Writings.

The New American Bible. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1987. The new, standard Roman Catholic version.

New International Version Bible. Zondervan, 1973; 1978. Holman, 1993. A conservative, easy-to-understand version.

The New Jerusalem Bible. Doubleday, text, 1985; notes, rev., 1990. Revision of The Jerusalem Bible, based on a French Catholic project to translate the Bible from the original languages.

Revised English Bible, with Apocrypha. Oxford, Cambridge, 1989. Revision of The New English Bible in a modern British idiom, translated by paragraph rather than by verse.

Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society, 1995. A new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text.

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"Never forget, gentlemen, he [Whateley] said, to his astonished hearers, as he held up a copy of the Authorized Version of the Bible, never forget that this is not the Bible, then, after a moment’s pause, he continued, This, gentlemen, is only a translation of the Bible."

(To a meeting of his diocesan clergy, in H. Solly These Eighty Years (1893) vol. 2, ch. Richard Whately 1787 863 English philosopher and theologian; Archbishop of Dublin from 1831)