Geneva Bible.html



The Geneva Bible is one of the earliest translations of the Bible into the English language, predating the King James translation by 51 years. It was the primary bible of the 16th century protestant movement and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower, was used by many English Dissenters, and by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers at the time of the English Civil War.

Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Bishops' Bible, the translation authorised by the Church of England under Elizabeth I. In the words of Cleland Boyd McAfee, "it drove the Great Bible off the field by sheer power of excellence".¹

History

During the time when England was ruled by Queen Mary I, who persecuted Protestants, a number of Protestant scholars fled to Geneva in Switzerland, which was then ruled as a republic in which John Calvin and Theodore Beza provided the primary spiritual and theological leadership. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who supervised the translation in collaboration with Myles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman, Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, and William Cole—several of whom became prominent figures in the proto-Puritan nonconformist faction of the Vestments controversy. Whittingham was directly responsible for the New Testament, which was complete and published in 1557², while Gilby oversaw the Old.

The first full edition of this Bible, with a further revised New Testament, appeared in 1560², but it was not printed in England until 1575 (New Testament²) and 1576 (Bible²). Over 150 editions were issued; the last probably in 1644². The first Bible printed in Scotland was a Geneva Bible in 1579². In fact, the involvement of Knox and Calvin in the creation of the Geneva Bible made it especially appealing in Scotland, where a law was passed in 1579 requiring every household of sufficient means to buy a copy³.

Some editions from 1576 onwards² included Tomson's revisions of the New Testament. Some editions from 1599 onwards² used a new "Junius" version of the Revelation, in which the notes were translated from a new Latin commentary by Junius on Revelation.

Like most English translations of the time, the Geneva Bible was translated from scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament and Hebrew scriptures that comprise the Christian Old Testament. The English rendering was substantially based on the earlier translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale. (80-90% of the language in the Genevan New Testament is from Tyndale.) However, the Geneva Bible was the first English version in which all of the Old Testament was translated directly from the Hebrew (cf. Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible).

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The annotations which are an important part of the Geneva Bible were Calvinistic and Puritan in character, and as such they were disliked by the ruling conservative Protestants of the Church of England, as well as King James I, who commissioned the "Authorized Version" or King James Bible to replace it. The Geneva Bible had also motivated the production of the Bishops' Bible under Elizabeth I, for the same reason, and later the Douay-Rheims edition by the recusant Catholic community. The Geneva Bible remained popular among Puritans and remained in widespread use until after the English Civil War. The Geneva notes were surprisingly included in a few editions of the King James version, even as late as 1715².

It has been stated by some^who? that the Geneva Bible was the Bible present at the signing of the U. S. Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, because it was the Bible that the Puritans brought with them to America. However, the U. S. Library of Congress and the Independence National Historical Park both state that they do not know what version/translation of the Bible was present at these signings (Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania being the location of both of the signings).

Format

Geneva Bible

The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to use verse numbers based on the work of Stephanus (Robert Estienne of Paris). It also had an elaborate system of commentary in marginal glosses. This annotation was done by Laurence Tomson, who translated (for the 1560 Geneva Bible) L'Oiseleur's notes on the Gospels, which themselves came from Camerarius. In 1576 Tomson added L'Oiseleur's notes for the Epistles, which came from Beza's Greek and Latin edition of the Bible (1565 and later). Beginning in 1599 Franciscus Junius' notes on Revelation were added, replacing the original notes deriving from John Bale and Heinrich Bullinger. Bale's The Image of both churches had a great impact on these notes as well as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Both the Junius and Bullinger-Bale annotations are explicitly anti-Roman Catholic and representative of much popular Protestant apocalypticism during the Reformation.

The 1560 Geneva Bible was printed in Roman type—the style of type regularly used today—but many editions used the older black-letter ("Gothic") type. Of the various later English Bible translations, the next to use Roman type was the Douay-Rheims Bible of 1582 (New Testament) and 1609–10 (Old Testament).

The Geneva Bible was also issued in more convenient and affordable sizes than earlier versions. The 1560 Bible was in quarto format (218 × 139 mm type area), but pocketable octavo editions were also issued, and a few large folio editions. The New Testament was issued at various times in sizes from quarto down to 32º (the smallest, 70×39 mm type area ²). In the late sixteenth century it is likely that the Geneva New Testament cost less than a week's wages even for the lowest-paid labourers.

The 1560 Geneva Bible contained a number of study aids, including woodcut illustrations, maps and explanatory 'tables', i.e. indexes of names and topics, in addition to the (in)famous marginal notes. Each book was preceded by an 'argument' or introduction, and each chapter by a list of contents giving verse numbers. Smaller-format editions might be unillustrated and lack the marginal notes, but some large folio editions had additional illustrations, such as one showing Adam and Eve, where Adam wears a typical Elizabethan beard and moustache.

Sample

To compare the Geneva Bible with the King James, here is Revelation 6:12-17 in both versions (with spelling modernized). The differences have been italicized in the King James extract:

The title page of the 1560 edition of the Geneva Bible; the illustration depicts the Israelites before the Red Sea.

The two versions are very similar to each other. Examination of the differences shows that the earlier Geneva version is often more direct and modern in style than the later King James, e.g.

“and the moon was like blood” (Geneva) versus “and the moon became as blood” (King James)

“as a fig tree casteth her green figs” (Geneva) versus “even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs” (King James)

See also

• Editio Regia

References

External links

Facsimiles

• A Digital Facsimile of the 1560 Geneva Bible at The DCL.

Text

• Geneva Bible Footnotes
• Geneva Bible online
• Geneva Bible Text (links to a commercial site)
• Modern Spelling Geneva Bible with Footnotes for the Gospels

Articles

• The Geneva Bible of 1560: article by Bruce Metzger originally printed in Theology Today
• Online version of Sir Frederic G. Kenyon’s article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 1909

Editions Currently in Print

• 1560 First Edition: Facsimile Reproduction
• 1560 First Edition Reduced size Facsimile Reproduction by Hendrickson
• 1599 Edition: 2 volume Facsimile Reprint of the 1599 edition
• 1599 Edition: Modern Spelling and Typesetting from The 1599 Geneva Bible Restoration Project (no illustrations)