(1) NT: Scrivener's Introduttion (o the Criticvm o/the NT, Tol. li. (Ix)ndon, 189-1), tives the fullest account in En^'isb of the Versions of the NT ; 0. H. Gregory's ProUgamena, part ill. to
" See Sanday in Smith's DBt, p. 1240, art. 'Gospels.' t This is worked out fully in the ciiapter In Swete's Introdttc- Hon totheOT in Grrrk whlili deals with this part of the subject, and for theVulifate in liirmr a UMtnre df taVulgalr.m.SUltl.,
sua.
TIechendorf's A'oy. Test. (Leipzig, 1894), rives the fullest list of MSS of the Versions of NT ; Eb. Nestle, binfuhrung in das Gr. A2"-'(Gottingen, 1899, Eug. tr. 1901), is quite the best recent bcok.
(2) OT : The general subject of the Versions of the OT haa not been so fully treated in English as that of the NT. Mention mav be made of Wcllhausen's edition of Bleek's Einleit. in das A't, and Uuhl, Text und Kanon di:s atten Testament (Leiitzig, 1891, Eng. tjr. 1801), and Driver, Notes on the Ueb. Text oj Sam. ISM. LL. J. M. BKBB.
VERSIONS, ENGLISH.— i. The history of the Versions of the English Bible may be said to begin with John Wyclif. Previous to his time there had been various attemjjts to render parts of the Scri[)turcs into Anglo-Saxon and Anglo- Norman, or Middle-English. But these had not only been very fragmentary, but were for the most jiart paraphrases rather than literal trans- lations. \\ ith Wyclif, however, a new era in Bible-translation began, and nothing that concerns him can fail to be of interest.* He was bom about the j"car 1320 in the vicinity of Richmond in York- shire, and when he first comes publicly forward is found filling various important posts in the Uni- versity of Oxford. The bold attitude with regard to the Papal Tribute which he took up in a Tract, led to his being selected as one of the Koyal Com- missioners sent to Bruges in 1374 to treat with the Papal Nuncio regarding the reservation of bene- fices, and from this time may be dated his appear- ance as an ardent eccle.siastical reformer — ' the Morning Star of the Keformation.' For this end he institute<l an order of ' poor priests ' whose duty it was ' faithfully to scatter the seed of God's word,' and it was to aid them in this work that he set about providing them with the Bible in their native tongue. The first book translated was the Apocalypse, which was followed by a translation of the Gospels with a commentary, and soon after by versions of the remaining books of the NT, the whole being completed by 1380. To this was added a translation of the OT principally by one of his friends, Nicolas de Hereford, though Wyclif himself seems to have suiijilied the last books and about one-third of the Apocrypha, so that about the middle of the year 1382 the whole Bible was in the hands of the people ' in their mother tongue.' All this had not been accomplished without difficulty and even danger. Hereford had to flee the country, and Wj'clif's own teach- ing was publicly condemned at a Synod in London in 1382. The hostility, however, would seem to have been confined to a few persons, notably Archbishop Arundel, for the new translation was generally tolerated, and the reformer himself, con- trary to his own expectations, was eventually allowed to retire to his rectory of Lutterworth, where he passed quietly away on the last day of the year 1384.
But the good work was not allowed to stop, and in 1388 one of Wyclif's pupils, now generally identified with John Purvey, is.sued a careful revision of his translation, introduced by a most interesting Prologue, and accompanied by a num- ber of short cojnments or notes. This version quickly took the place of the older one, and was largely circulated amongst all classes of the people notwithstanding its great cost.t Both versions were indeed admirably adapted for pojuilar use, being characterized by great homeliness and direct- ness of diction. And though many of the words and expressions nsed are now of course obsolete or
• See especially Lechler's John Wyciife and his Entjtish Pre- atrii"rn, translated and edited by Loriiner; and cf. 'The Mirth and I'arentAge of Wiclif ' by L. Sergeant in tlie Adunurwn for Maroli l'.!th and 2Hth, 1892. '
t Kornhall and Madden, in the prcparat ion of their ^reat work on The W'lidijjite Verifiorut, ISfiO, were able to examine ' nearly 160 MSS containing the whole or part* of I'urvey's Bible, the majority of whi'-h were written witliio the space of forty years from its being tluislied ' (Preface, p. xxxli f.).
856
VERSIONS, ENGLISH
VKESIONS, ENGLISH
inappropriate, it is wonderful, when the spelling is modernized, how little they difl'er as a whole from our A V. One great blemish they of necessity possess. They are only translations of a trans- lation, being made from the Latin Vul^'ate ; and it was left to another with improved facilities to carry on the work so auspiciously begun, and more than 'any other man to give its character- istic shape to our English Bible' (Westcott, General View of the Eistury of the English Bible-, 1872, p. 24).
ii. That other was William Tindale, and, though there is still consiileralile uncertainty regarding many of the facts of his life, it is now generally agreed that he was born at Slymbridge in Glou- cestershire about the j'ear 14S4,* and that after studj'ing at O.\ford he proceeded to Cambridge in 1515, where the fame of Erasmus' lectures stUl lingered. In 1521 he returned to his native county as chaplain and tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh of Little Sodbury, and while there is credited with the resolution to which Ids whole after-life w^as devoted, saying in controversy with a clerical opponent, ' If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.' In pursuance of this purpose he went up to London two years later, in the hope of executing his task under the patronage of Bishop Tunstall ; but after a year of anxious waiting the conviction forced itself upon him, 'not only that there was no room in my lord of London's palace to translate the NT, but also that there was no place to do it in all England ' (Pref. to Pentateuch).