FOUR HUNDRETH ANNIVERSARY

Southland Times, Issue 23538, 18 June 1938, Page 8

FOUR HUNDRETH ANNIVERSARY

Henry The Eighth’s

Bible Edict

EMPIRE CELEBRATIONS PLANNED

Celebrations will be held throughout the British Empire tomorrow to commemorate the 400th anniversary of an edict of Henry VIII, by which a copy of the Bible was ordered to be set up in every parish church in England. The celebration is riot intended as a reminder of bygone religious strife, but to emphasize the immense debt which the Anglo-Saxon peoples of today owe to the English Bible in the fields of religion, morality, literature and everyday speech. It is agreed by every authority that no more powerful formative influence than the Bible has operated upon Anglo-Saxon culture in the past four centuries (says The New Zealand Herald). Portions of the Scripture were translated into the common tongue in Britain from the eighth century onward. The Venerable Bede was probably the pioneer. The Lindisfarne Gospels, a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the 10th century, is a precious national possession, and many Saxon gospels and psalters are extant. Such translations were done with the full approval of the Church until John Wycliffe made his famous version of the whole Bible in English at the end of the 14th century. Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, sought to establish the Bible as the supreme spiritual authority in place of the Church, and from that time onward the ecclesiastical authorities became convinced of the danger that Bible-reading would lead to heresy. FIRST ENGLISH VERSIONS This fear was intensified in the tumult of the Reformation, which by one of the accidents of history occurred almost simultaneously with the invention of printing. Both parties in that great religious struggle were as one in believing the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God. The difference between them, as a leading authority, Dr G. G. Coulton, has expressed it, was that the reformers held that Scripture should be interpreted by the individual for his own soul’s sake, whefeas the Church held that it should be interpreted by the Church for the individual’s soul’s sake.

Strange to say, the translation of the Scriptures into English lagged many years behind similar achievements on the Continent. The first German version was published in 1466, some time before Luther brought out his great work. The English pioneer was William Tyndale, who, after failing to obtain sanction for a translation of the New Testament, went to Hamburg and Cologne and completed it in 1526. Its circulation in England was so thoroughly suppressed that only fragmentary copies remain. However, another edition was printed in England in 1534. About the same time, Miles Coverdale completed a version of the whole Bible, and had it printed abroad in 1535. THE GREAT BIBLE King Henry’s repudiation of the Papal authority in 1536 completely changed the state of affairs, and in the following year a version by John Rogers, known as Matthew’s Bible, was allowed to be printed. Through the influence of Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, a revised edition of this, the Great Bible, was published with full authority for its general sale, “until such time as we, the bishops, shall set forth a better translation.” In June 1538 a copy was ordered to be set up in every church. Six were placed in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and it is recorded that persons reading them aloud made so much noise that services were interfered with.

In the later years of Henry’s reign a reaction set in. Tyndale’s and Coverdale’s versions were proscribed by Act of Parliament, another ordinance relating to the Great Bible stating that “no woman (unless she be noble or gentle woman), no artificers, apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, under the degree of yeomen . . . husbandmen or labourers” should read or use any part of the Bible under pain of fine or imprisonment. This prohibition, however, seems to have been very spasmodically enforced. RHEIMS AND DOUAI VERSIONS Under Queen Mary, Cranmer and Rogers were burned at the stake, and Coverdale fled to Geneva, where he published the Bible known by that name. The Bishops’ Bible of 1568, issued with Elizabeth’s authority, preceded the Authorized Version, made under James I in 1611. The English Catholics, meanwhile, were not idle. A college for the training of English priests had been founded in France, and it published at Rheims in 1582 a translation of the New Testament, and at Douai in 1609-10 a version of the Old Testament, both from the Latin Vulgate, “for the more speedy abolishing of false and impious translations put forth by sundry sectes.” There is evidence that the literary style of these translations had some influence on that of the Authorized Version. In a revised form, they are still used by the Church in all English-speaking countries.