BIBLE PRINTING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 303, 5 October 1935, Page 8

BIBLE PRINTING

A HAZARDOUS UNDERTAKING.

POUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO. • Four hundred years, ago, on October 4, 1535, was finished and printed the first complete translation of the Bible into English. Uninteresting though his career may be, Miles C'overdale will always be honoured for this translation. It was printed somewhere on the Continent, probably in Zurich. The first edition is, of course, highly prized by collectors and museums, and, while it is not a relatively uncommon book, no perfect example is known to exist.

The present four - hundredth anniversary of the Coverdale Bible is celebrated in a Bulletin of the John By lands Library (Manchester) by a monograph on Coverdalo and the English Biibles published during his lifetime, from 1488 to 1568. Its author is the librarian, Henry Guppy, who is also the editor of the Bulletin. This is a vastly entertaining as well as authoritative account, worth the attention -of anyone who wants an intelligent understanding of the nature and history of early English Bibles. The textual merit of most of the editions is considered and their bibliographical problems analysed. More than that, this is an heroic narrative, dealing with the struggles and privations of the adventurers who took part in their publication and the plots and counter-manoeuvres of the opposing forces in the Reformation. The story begins, properly, with that of the martyr William Tindale, to whom we owe the first printed New Testament in English. Dr. Guppy points out that the English, who were to be distinguished in after years tor their zeal in printing and circulating the Scriptures, were late in entering the field. They were still nourishing their faith on manuscript copies long after Bibles had been printed in the vernacular in many European countries. Germany had a translation in

3465, Italy in 1471, France in 1474, the Low Countries in 1477, and Bohemia in Little is known of Tindale s caily years. He was a student at Oxford and Cambridge and later a pnest in the Church. Translating the Bible was forbidden by law, and he sought permission in vain. In exasperation he told one of his clerical opponents, it God spare my life, ere many years 1 will cause a hoy that driveth the plow shall know more of the bciipturs than thou doet.” He made good his word. He went to Germany and visited Luther, and in 1525 Peter Queutell printed his English version of the New Testament at Cologne. A second edition was issued the same year at Worms bv Peter tSchoeffer. Only a fragment‘of the first survives, consisting of 31 leaves .rescued from a binding, now in the British Museum. Of the second there are hsuf two examp es, both imperfect, in the Baptist College at Bristol and in St. Paul s Cathedral. But in its day it proved-- a sens. - tion. It has been estimated that at the time of his death, in 1536, at least 50,000 copies of Tindale’s New Testament had been printed, and the ban on its possession was m effect: ae, pi ° ably because of' its diminutive Size. The Tide Turns. Early in. 1526 the first copies of Tindale’s New Testament reached England, Henry and Wblsey did everything in their power to prevent the invasion.' (But the enterprise of the merchants proved more than a match for them, and in spite of all warnings and precautions the books were conveyed to England, packed m tne heart of bales of cotton and other merchandise. There they veie in veighed against, proscribed, and denounced as replete with heresies, and steps were taken to extirpate them. With the next few years rapid changes occurred which affected the fortunes of the English Bible. M oisey was dismissed, the Great Seal given to More, and Oranmer received his

first public appointment. lb® ■ tvin ß married Anne Boleyn, abolished papal authority, and made himself “Supreme Head of the Church of England. In 1535 Fisher and More were executed for denying his supremacy. The same year the Cbverdale Bible was published, with the dedication to Henry as “defendour of the faytli. This Miles Ooverdale, who was actively engaged in the dangerous occupation of editing Bibles during t middle decades of the sixteenth century, unlike so many of Ins shortlived contemporaries in the reform movement, managed to survive o a ripe old age, and he died in bed in .his eighty-first year. His was not a very robust nature, and he leaned on stronger men all his life,, being supported hy successive patrons, Barney Cromwell, Cranmer, and Grindal. When trouble came, he became an obscure figure, leaving the business of martyrdom to hardier men. But he was a popular preacher, a eadei m the advancement of reformed ideas, and a pious and good man.