ENGLISH VERSIONS
212
ENGLISH VERSIONS
most tliorougli tnitlifulness. No word has lieen alter- ed to court a king's favor, or please bishops, or make out a case for or against a particular opinion. He is working freely, not in tlie fetters of prescribed rules. With the most entire sincerity he could saj', '• I call God to record, against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus to give a reckoning of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against mj' conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in the world, Avhether it be pleasure, honor, or riches, might be given me" (Anderson, i, .349).
IV'. CdVERDALE. — 1. A complete translation of the Bible, different from Tyndale's, bearing the name of Tililes Coverdale, i)rinted probably at Ztirich, appeared in lo35. The undertaking itself, and the choice of Coverdale as the translator, were p:obably due to Cromwell. Tyndale's controversial treatises, and the polemical character of his prefaces and notes, had irri- tated the leading ecclesiastics, and embittered the mind of tlie king himself against him. All that he had writ- ten was publich' condemned. There was no hope of ob- taining the king's sanction to anything that bore his name. But the idea of an English translation began to find favor. The rupture with the see of Rome, the mar- riage with Anne Boleyn, made Henry willing to adopt what was urged upon him as the surest wa}' of break- ing forever the spell of the pope's authority. The bish- ops even began to think of the thing as possible. It was talked of in Convocation. They would take it in hand themselves. The work did not, however, make much progress. The great preliminarj' question wheth- er " venerable" words, such as hostia, penance, pascha, holocaust, and the like, should be retained, was still unsettled (Anderson, i, 414). Not till "the day after doomsdaj'" (the words are Cranmer's) were the Eng- lish people likely to get their English Bilile from the bishops (ih. i, 577). Cromwell, it is probable, thought it better to lose no further time, and to strike while the iron was hot. A divine whom he had patronized, though not, like Tyndale, feeling himself called to that special work {Pvpf. to f'overdale's Bible'), was Avilling to undertake it. To him accordingly it was intrust- ed. There was no stigma attached to his name, and, though a sincere Reformer, neither at that time nor afterwards did he occupy a sufficiently prominent po- sition to become an object of special persecution.
2. The work which was thus executed was done, as might be expected, in a very different fashion from Tyndale's. Of tlie two men, one liad made this the great object of his life ; the other, in his own language, "sought it not, neither desired it," but accepted it as a task assigned him. One prepared himself for the work by long j'ears of labor in Greek and Hebrew ; the other is content to make a translation at second hand " out of the Douche (Luther's German Version) and the Latine." The one aims at a rendering which shall be the truest and most exact possible ; the oth- er loses himself in weak commonplace as to the ad- vantage of using many English words for one and the same word in the original, and in practice oscillates between "penance" and "re])entance," "love" and "charity," "priests" and "elders," as though one set of words were as true and adequate as the other {Pref- ace, p. 19). In spite of these weaknesses, however, there is much to esteem in the spirit and temper of Coverdale. He is a second-rate man, laboring as such contentedly, not ambitious to appear other than he is. He tiiinks it a great gain tliat there should be a di- versity of translations. He acknowledges, tliough he dare not name it, the excellence of Tyndale's version, and regrets the misfortune whicli left it incomplete. He states frankly tiiat lie had done his work witli the assistance of that and of five others. The five were probaldy: (1.) Tlie Vulgate; (-2.) Luther's; (.S.) The Genuan Swiss version of Zurich ; (4.) The Latin of Pagniiius ; (5.) Tj-ndalc's. Others, liowever, have con- jectured a German translation of the Vulgate earlier
than Luther's, and a Dutch version from Luther (Whit- aker, Hist, and C'rit. Inquirij, p. 4','). If the language of his dedication to the king, whom he compares to Moses, David, and Josiah, seems to be somewhat ful- some in its flattery, it is, at least, hardly more offensive than that of tlie Dedication of the A. V., and there was more to palliate it.
3. An inspection of Coverdale's version serves to show the intiiience of the authorities he followed. The proper names of the O. T. appear for the most part in their Latin form, " Elias," "Eliseus," "Ochozias;" sometimes, as in '' Esaj'" and " Jeremy," in that which was familiar in spoken English. Some points of cor- respondence with Luther's version are not without in- terest. Thus "Cush," which in Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the A.V. is uniformly rendered "Ethiopia," is in Coverdale " Morians' land" (Psa. Ixviii, 31 ; Actsviii, 27, etc.), after the " Mohrenlande"' of Luther, and ap- pears in this form accordingly in the P.-B. version of the Psalms. The proper name Eabshakch passes, as in Luther, into the "chief butler" (2 Kings xviii, 17 ; Isa. xxxvi, 11). In making the sons of David "priests" (2 Sam. viii, 18) he followed brth his au- thorities. 'E/T/cr/coTTo/ are "bishops" in Acts xx, 28 ("overseers" in A. V.). "Shiloh," in the prophecy of Gen. xlix, 10, becomes " the worthy," after Luther's "der Held." "They houghed oxen" takes the place of "thejr digged down a wall," in Gen. xlix, G. The singular word " Lamia" is taken from the Vulg., as the English rendering oi Ziiin ("wild beasts," A.V.) in Isa. xxxiv. 14. The " tabernacle of witness," where the A.V. has "con^regation," shows the same influ- ence. In spite of Tyndale, the Vulg. "jilena gratiii," in Luke i, 28, leads to "full of grace ;" wldle we have, on the other hand, " congregation" throughout the N. T. for iKKXijiria, and "love" instead of "charity" in 1 Cor. xiii. It was the result of the same indecision that his language as to the Apocrypha lacks the sharp- ness of that of the more zealous reformers. "Ba- ruch" is placed with the canonical liooks, after "Lam- entations." Of the rest he says that they are " jilaced apart," as "not held by ecclesiastical doctors in the same repute" as the other Scriptures, but this is onl)' because there are "dark .sayings" which seem to differ from the "open Scripture." He has no wish that thej- should be "despised or little set by." "Pa- tience and studj' would show that the two were agreed."