ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22432, 20 June 1938, Page 5

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE

TO THIS EDITOR OT THE PRESS. Sir, —In reference to your leader on the commemoration of the placing of the “Great Bible” in the churches, some not •universally known facts on early English translations of the Bible may be of interest. In his prologue to the second edition of the “Great Bible,” Cranmer himself admits that there were many earlier translations into the vernacular: “If the matter should be tried by custom, we might also allege custom for the reading of the Scripture in the vulgar tongue, and prescribe the more ancient custom. For it is not much above one hundred years ago, since Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm, and many hundred years before that, it was translated and read in the Saxon’s tongue . . . and when this language waxed old ... it was again translated into the newer language whereof yet many copies remain and be daily found.” Foxe, whose “Book of Martyrs” shows him to be no Catholic partisan, yet acknowledges the existence of these old Catholic translations: “If histories be well examined the existence we shall find both beore the Conquest and after, as well before John Wickliffe was born as since, the whole body of the Scriptures was, by sundry men translated into our country tongue.”

St. Thomas More in his “Dialogue” [ed. 1530, p. 1381 says; “The whole Bible was long before his [Wyclif’sl days by virtuous and well learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness, well and reverendly read.” Elsewhere he says: “Myself have seen and can show you, Bibles, fair and old, in English, which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese and left in laymans’ hands and womens’.” Of early translations we may name the paraphrases of parts of the Old Testament by Caedmon, c.CBO, the translation of the gospels known to have been made by St. Bede, parts of the Old Testament by King Alfred, a metrical version of at least eight books of the Old Testament by Abbot Aelfnc, who became Archbishop of York in 1023, remains of Anglo-Norman translations of the Psalter and Canticles (before 1200), the “Ormulum,” a metrical paraphrase of the twelfth century, and two versions of the Psalter of the fourteenth. '

No proof has ever been advanced of the statement made by Froude and others that the Catholic Church forbade, or discouraged, the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. In 1408 the Council of Oxford, under Archbishop Arundel, had ordered that translations must not be published, or read “until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Diocesan of the place.” St. Thomas More comments; “I trow that in this law you see nothing unreasonable. For it neither forbiddeth the translations to be read that were already well done of old before Wyclif’s days, nor damneth his boeause it was new. but because it was naught; nor prohibiteth new to be made, but provideth that they shall not be read, if they be made amiss, till they be by good examination amended.”

Cardinal Gasquet has shown—almost to demonstration—that the so-called “Wycliffite” Bibles, of which about 200 copies exist, including that famous one on a velvet cushion in the King’s Library at the British Museum, are really old English Catholic Bibles of a date anterior to Wyciif, and that Wyclif was only the most shadowy of claims to have ever translated more than the Gospels. [“The Pre-Reformation English Bible”; Gasquet.l It must be remembered that practically all who could read at all were able to read Latin in the Middle Ages, and that the mass of the people could not read the Bible, or anything else, in any language. Also, before the invention of printing, the cost of a manuscript Bible was prohibitive. In view of the obvious fact that private reading of the Bible, without any guidance from any authority other than private judgment, has led to the disunion of Christians into hundreds of opposed sects, the contention that such reading has been a bond of unity appears utterly absurd.—Yours, etc., (Rev.) FRANK B. SEWARD. Lincoln, June 18, 1938.