P041 Whittingham's New Testament.

P041 Whittingham’s New Testament. In 1558 on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he returned to England, and in 1563 was made Dean of Durham, which position he held until his death in 1579. He was a man of great learning and ability, and strongly devoted to the Protestant cause.

Whittingham’s Testament was the only one published during the reign of Mary, and necessity compelled its publication in a foreign land. During the reign of Edward (1547-1553) the restrictions which Henry had placed on Bible reading in the latter part of his reign were all removed.

Cotton enumerates fifteen editions of the Bible and thirty-two of the New Testament, besides numerous fragments of Scripture which were published during the reign of Edward VI. But Mary prohibited the printing and circulating of the Scriptures.

Many Protestants, some of them very eminent, who saw the storm of persecution coming, escaped to various continental towns.(1)

Among these was Whittingham, and it was during his voluntary exile, and while he was pastor of the English Church in Geneva, that he prepared this Testament. This has sometimes been called the Genevan Testament, and has been represented as a part of the Genevan Bible, published in 1560. This, however, is an error. The Testament in the Genevan Bible was not Whittingham’s, his being an independent work.

After the issue of the Genevan Bible no edition of Whittingham’s Testament was published. The Testament issued in 1560 and properly called the Genevan Testament was taken from the Genevan Bible.

Whittingham’s Testament was a revision of other translations, especially of Tyndale’s, collated with the Great Bible.

It had a large number of marginal notes, explanatory of the text. It was the first English Testament in which Italic type was used to designate words not rendered from the originals.

Sebastian Munster, in his Latin version of the Old Testament, published in 1534, is said to have been the first to employ this device.

Theodore Beza, also, made use of it in his Latin New Testament of 1556. Whittingham was, also, the first to break up the text into verses, and to use numerals to distinguish them. Before this our English Bibles had in the margin capital letters from A to G, to facilitate the finding of passages.

------------ (FN1)Eadie, vol. ii, p. 3, places the number of these refugees at eight hundred.

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