THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 22, Issue 91, 24 November 1911, Page 2

THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

In view of the tercentenary of the Authorised Version of the. Bible (torn-* piled in 1611). which is to be celebrated this year, the appended article by a writer in the "Express,” dee-’ criptive of the origin of the work, will be read with interest. Among the ancient Bibles in the glass cases in., the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society,* there is a large foMo volume, stoutly bound, printed in black letter,’ with ink that has remained for three hundred years. There is the following legend on the title page : The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament and the New ; newly translated out of the Orlginall tongues: with the former translations diligently compared, and revised by His Maieatias Speciall Commandment. Appointed to be read in churches. Imprinted at 1 London by Robert Barker, Printer j to the King’s Most Excellent Maiestie. Anne Dom. 1611. 1 This year the whole of the English-] speaking world will be celebrating.} the tercentenary of the publication j of this book, whose history is bound up as much with the spiritual Ufe.asj with the material progress of the! people. | The contents of these splendid! folios, which cost more than £4O to purchase in the days of the beginning of the printing press, may now be bought for a few pence. Countless millions of copies of that famous book have been printed throughout the centuries, and the martyrs and early scholars who worked patiently at their missals have had their dreams realised beyond their hopes—the Gospels in English may be had for a halfpenny. EARLY, TRANSLATORS.

It was centuries before the yearn* | ings of those who wished to give the Bible to the people were fulfilled.! Vain attempts were made in Anglo-;! Saxon times to render the Latin version of the Bible, only understood] by the learned men and the into the languages of the people. 1 Caedmon, the Venerable Bede, King* Alfred, Aelfic —these were some who! translated or paraphrased portions of the Bible ; but the great efforts did not begin until the fourteenth cen-' tury, when John Wyclifle set to work. But his translation was from the; Latin, which' was in itself a translation from the original Hebrew and: Greek texts. Nevertheless, the copies] made by hand were eagerly sought, for. “Some,” we learn, “gave a* load of hay for a few chapters of St. I James or of St. Paul in English.” Then a hundred years pass. Another translator arises, and in the' interval a goldsmith of Mayence has been perfecting Gutenberg’s printing experiments ; he has even printed a Latin Bible—the first ever printed in Latin,, and the first book to be printed from movable type. It was more Wonderful in those days than the aeroplane is in ours. - j THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS. j

The new translator is William Tindale, who inspired by his old teacher Erasmus, desires that “the boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost." (“Thou” is a learned man with whom) he is arguing.) He is harassed by those who oppose him. He flies to Cologne in 1524, and has 3,000 copies ol the English New Testament printed, only to be betrayed and to escape further up the Rhine to Worms. His translations are denounced and burned outside of St. Paul’s, and finally, he is delivered to his enemies and strangled and burned at the stake. The work does not rest. Another scholar, Miles Coverdale, arises, a Yorkshireman, working in Hamburg; and so in 1595 the first complete translation of the Bible into English is issued, for Tyndale’s had only been the New Testament, and Wycliffe’s Bible was not printed.

Other translators are at work: / there is the Bible of Rogers, other-’ wise Mathews, which was the first to ■ he printed in England. He is burnt j at, the stake at Smithfield in 1555. | Meanwhile the Great' Bible, issued. under the command of Henry VIII., j when Cromwell and Cranmer were it: power, is issued and chained to reading-desks in the village charches, ( so that all may see the Bible in Eng-, lish. It is from this version that the'Psalms we sing to-day axe taken. ! In the Marian persecutions the' translators fied to Switzerland, and; more Bibles were produced in Eng-, lish —the Genevan is the finest ex- ( ample—and under Elizabeth efforts were made, with the result that the Bishops’ Bible was ed. THE AUTHORISED VERSION. Finally, there came the new translation authorised by James 1,, to be the standard Bible in English, in face of so many different translations. Forty-seven scholars were engaged on the work—the best theologians and Hebrew and Greek scholars of the day. The book that they produced, after years of labour, which filled 1,464 large folio pages, is still being produced three hundred years afterwards. t

It is printed in thousands of ways, 1 by fast machinery, set up by linotype, and not by the patient hand-; press from the wood-block letters.; It is the hook from which we have, fixed the English language, our moral' code, and our laws of general equali-, ty and freedom. Truly, a tercentenary worthy of the great celebration that is in store for it, linking the modernity of to-day with the struggles of the ages unlit by learntpa,--»