Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

Taken from Got Question.

Who was the King James that the King James Version of the Bible is named after?

Answer:

The King James Version of the Bible is also called the Authorized Version, because the translation was authorized by King James I of England. The preface of the KJV dedicates the work “To the most High and Mighty Prince James, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c.” Prior to ruling England, James was King James VI of Scotland. It was not until 1603, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth I, that the kingdoms of Scotland and England were united and James became King James I of England, the first of the Stuart line.

Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to her son James in 1566 in Scotland. In June 1567 the Protestant lords rebelled against their queen. They arrested and imprisoned Mary in Loch Leven Castle, where she was forced to abdicate the throne of Scotland. James was thus only a year old when he became James VI, King of Scotland, in 1567. In spite of his mother’s Catholic faith, James was brought up in the Protestant religion. He was educated by men who had empathy for the Presbyterian Church.

King Henry IV of France called James “the wisest fool in Christendom.” Although intelligent and well educated, James was unpopular, and he made many enemies, especially in Parliament. James was seen as uncouth, and there is evidence that he was bisexual. He often wrote against the power of the pope and against Catholicism’s meddling in affairs of state. In his opposition to the pope’s power, James promoted the divine right of kings—the idea that kings are accountable to God and no one else. In 1605, a group of Catholics attempted to assassinate James and his wife and son and to blow up Parliament; however, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. That incident is remembered today as Guy Fawkes Day.

James had his successes, too. He approved the design for the flag of Great Britain; he was a patron of the arts, and William Shakespeare was a sponsored playwright (Macbeth was written in James’s honor). Trade with India was expanded during James’s reign, and in 1607 England’s first permanent colony in the New World was established in Virginia—a colony named Jamestown, in the king’s honor. James was married to Anne of Denmark, and their son Charles later ruled England as King Charles I. James died in 1625 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The creation of the King James Version of the Bible:

The Scottish Reformation was completed before the English Reformation. The Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians wanted a new Bible that would get as far away as possible from the structure of the Bishops’ Bible of the Anglican Church, and the idea of a new translation of the Bible was first proposed at a religious conference in Aberdour, Fife. King James was in favor of a new translation. He didn’t care for Tyndale’s translation of Matthew 16:18, which said Christ would build His “congregation” on Peter (James much preferred “church” from ekklesia). The only other alternative at the time was the 1560s Geneva Bible, but King James objected to a “treasonable annotation” on Matthew 2:20 that suggested that kings are tyrants.

In 1604 King James convened the Hampton Court Conference and authorized the start of a new translation of the Bible into English. The objective was to have one standard version of the Bible to be used across all English-speaking parishes. The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, taken from a cross-section of Jacobean England. Many of them were highly skilled in ancient languages. The King James Authorized Version of the Bible was finished in 1611, just 85 years after the first translation of the New Testament into English appeared (Tyndale, 1526).

What is The Bishops’ Bible?

Answer:

The Bishops’ Bible was an English translation of the Bible produced under the authority of the established Church of England in 1568, whose bishops were offended by the Geneva Bible, the notes of which were decidedly Calvinistic in tone. Since the Great Bible, the only authorized version in use in the Anglican Church, was considered deficient because it was translated from the Latin Vulgate, a new translation was authorized by the Anglican bishops and came to be known as the “Bishops’” Bible. The first edition was exceptionally large and included 124 full-page illustrations. It was substantially revised in 1572, and this revised edition was to be prescribed as the base text for the Authorized King James Version of 1611, which became the standard for the Church of England.

Along with the Great Bible and the King James Version, the Bishops’ Bible was authorized to be read in church, although the Geneva Bible remained the favorite of the people for reading at home. The text of the revised 1572 version carefully excluded the offending Calvinistic notes and cross-references. The wisdom of the common people is evident from the fact that the Bishops’ Bible went through more than fifty revisions, while the Geneva Bible was reprinted intact more than 150 times.

The Bishops’ Bible – Translation method
Under the direction of Queen Elizabeth I, who had no love for the Puritans and their Calvinistic doctrine, the archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, himself a scholar, took on the task of coming up with an alternative to the Geneva Bible. Portions of the text were assigned to various revisers, the majority of whom were bishops. In spite of their prejudice against the Geneva Bible because of its blatant advocacy of lay elders and church leaders—as opposed to the clergy-led paradigm embraced by the Anglican hierarchy—the Geneva Bible was the basis for the Bishops’ Bible, although the offending anti-episcopal notes were removed. No doubt this is partly why the Bishops’ Bible never achieved the support among the common people enjoyed by the Geneva Bible.

The Bishops’ Bible – Pros and Cons
Because there was lax supervisory editing for the work completed by the various translators, translation practice varies greatly from book to book. Some used the Geneva Bible as their base text; some used the Great Bible, resulting in translational inconsistencies. For example, in most of the Old Testament the tetragrammaton YHWH is represented by “the Lord”, and the Hebrew Elohim is represented by “God.” But in the Psalms the practice is the opposite way around. Describing the translation, one commentator remarked that where the Bishops’ Bible reprints the Geneva Bible it is acceptable, but most of the original work is incompetent, both in its scholarship and its verbosity. Unlike Tyndale’s translations and the Geneva Bible, the Bishops’ Bible has rarely been reprinted and the archaic language makes it all but unusable for the modern reader.

The Bishops’ Bible – Sample Verses
John 1:1, 14 – “In the begynnyng was the worde, & the worde was with God: and that worde was God.” “And the same word became fleshe, and dwelt among vs (and we sawe the glory of it, as the glory of the only begotten sonne of the father) full of grace and trueth.”

John 3:16 – “For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in hym, shoulde not perishe, but haue euerlastyng lyfe.”

John 8:58 – “Iesus sayde vnto them: Ueryly, veryly I saye vnto you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace are ye made safe through fayth, and that not of your selues, it is the gyft of God: Not of workes, lest any man shoulde boast hym selfe.”

Titus 2:13 – “Lokyng for that blessed hope and appearyng of the glorie of the great God, and our sauiour Iesus Christe,”

What is the Tyndale Bible?

Answer:

William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 1536) was a 16th-century Protestant reformer and scholar who was influenced by the work of Erasmus and Martin Luther. Like Luther, Tyndale was convinced that the way to God was through His Word and that Scripture should be available even to common people. Facing the same opposition from the Catholic Church as Luther, Tyndale declared, “I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!” Tyndale’s translations were condemned by both the Catholic Church and the king of England. Following the publication of Tyndale’s New Testament, Catholic Cardinal Wolsey condemned Tyndale as a heretic and Tyndale was first mentioned in open court as a heretic in January 1529. After years of working on his translation in exile, he was finally apprehended and tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and condemned to death, and he was burned at the stake. The martyr’s last words, spoken in a loud and fervent voice, were “Lord! Open the king of England’s eyes.”

Tyndale’s Bible is credited with being the first English translation to come directly from Hebrew and Greek texts and the first English biblical translation that was mass-produced as a result of new advances in the art of printing. In 1522, Tyndale illegally acquired a copy of Martin Luther’s New Testament in German. Imitating Luther’s work, but in English, the first recorded complete edition of his New Testament was published in 1526, with revisions following in 1534 and 1536. Since Tyndale’s death in 1536, his work has been revised and reprinted numerous times.

Tyndale Bible – Translation method
Tyndale used a number of sources when carrying out his translations of both the New and Old Testaments. When translating the New Testament, Tyndale used Erasmus’s Greek and Latin New Testament, as well as Luther’s German version and the Vulgate. The sources Tyndale used for his translation of the Pentateuch, however, are not known for sure.

Tyndale Bible – Sample Verses
John 1:1, 14 – “In the beginnynge was the worde and the worde was with God: and the worde was God.”

John 3:16 – “For God so loveth the worlde yt he hath geven his only sonne that none that beleve in him shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe.”

John 8:58 – “Iesus sayd vnto them: Verely verely I saye vnto you: yer Abraham was I am.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 – “For by grace are ye made safe thorowe fayth and that not of youre selves. For it is the gyfte of God and commeth not of workes lest eny man shuld bost him silfe.”

Titus 2:13 – “lokinge for that blessed hope and glorious apperenge of ye myghty god and of oure savioure Iesu Christ”

Who was William Tyndale?

Answer:

William Tyndale (c. 1494—1536) was an English Reformer who is sometimes called the “Captain of the Army of Reformers” due to his pioneering work to advance the truth of God in the face of much resistance. A scholar fluent in eight languages, Tyndale is best known today for his English translation of the Bible.

Tyndale was influenced by the works of John Wycliffe, Desiderius Erasmus, and Martin Luther. Like Wycliffe and Luther, Tyndale was convinced that the way to God was through His Word. The problem in Wycliffe’s time had been that the Bible was available only in Latin, a language most people could not read. Wycliffe remedied that problem by translating the Bible into English, using the Latin Vulgate as his source. Wycliffe’s Bible was promptly banned in England, and many copies of it were destroyed.

One hundred, fifty years later, Luther and Tyndale began their reforms. These men, like Wycliffe before them, believed that Scripture should be available to everyone. To that end, Luther made a German translation of the Bible, and Tyndale began to translate the New Testament into English—but, for these translations, they bypassed the Vulgate and used Erasmus’s Greek and Hebrew texts as their source.

For his work on the English Bible, Tyndale drew the ire of the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and other powerful entities. The established church taught that they alone were the conservators and interpreters of God’s Word and that the laity had no business reading it for themselves. Tyndale worked tirelessly to make the Bible accessible to all, even if the church opposed him. Tyndale famously said, “I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the scriptures than you!”

Tyndale was forced to flee England, where English-language Bibles were illegal, and he found a short-lived haven in Cologne, Germany, in 1524. Officials of the Holy Roman Empire raided Tyndale’s printing press in Cologne in 1525, and Tyndale fled to Worms, where he continued his work. Taking advantage of Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable-type press, Tyndale succeeded in printing 6,000 copies of the entire New Testament in 1526. Revisions followed in later years. Tyndale eventually moved to Antwerp, Holland, where, in 1530, he published his translation of the first five books of the Old Testament.

Tyndale’s new English Bibles had to be smuggled into England. But the Church of England waged war against them. The Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, preached against Tyndale’s Bibles and publicly burned them at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, tried to buy up all the copies of Tyndale’s New Testament in order to have them burned.

Tyndale produced other works, as well. He is the author of the books The Parable of Wicked Mammon and The Obedience of a Christian Man—the latter work spoken of favorably by Queen Anne Boleyn. Later, Tyndale published The Practice of Prelates, in which he condemned divorce—even for kings—incurring the wrath of King Henry VIII (who was divorced). Tyndale thus became an enemy of the state as well as an enemy of the established church.

In 1535 Tyndale was betrayed by Henry Phillips, who had feigned a friendship with him. Tyndale was imprisoned near Brussels, Belgium, for nearly a year and a half for the crime of producing a Bible in the vernacular. Then, on October 6, 1536, Tyndale was led outside to a stake where he was strangled and burned alive. His last words were reported to be “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

Tyndale’s dying prayer was answered. By 1539 every parish in England was required to have a copy of the Bible in English and to make it available to every parishioner. Over the next seventy years, two million copies of the Bible were sold in England. And when the translators of the King James Version produced their Bible in 1611, they relied heavily on Tyndale’s wording. In fact, about 90 percent of the phrasing of the KJV matches Tyndale’s.

Tyndale’s legacy is the Bible he gave to the English-speaking people. His translation, the first in English to come directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, was also the first English translation to be mass-produced as a result of advances in the art of printing. Tyndale and others like him, who “did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11), helped pave the way for our having a Bible today.