P043 The Genevan Bible.

P043 The Genevan Bible. The work seems mainly to have devolved, especially in the finishing, on Whittingham, Gilby, and Sampson, all of them able scholars and divines.

They are supposed to have had help from a number of French scholars, among them Calvin and Beza. The work was begun in January, 1558, and in April, 1560, the Bible was published, with the following title:— The Bible | and | Holy Scriptvres | Conteyned in | the Olde and Newe | Testament, | Translated Accor- | ding to the Ebrue and Greeke, and conferred With | the best translations in diuors langages. | With moste profitable Annota- | tions vpon all the hard places, and other things of great | importance as may appeare in the Epistle to the Reader. | At Geneva. | Printed by Rovland Hall. | M.D.LX. | The basis of the Genevan Bible was, in the Old Testament, the Great Bible, and in the New Testament, Tyndale’s translation, with the help of Beza.(1) As the result of the scholarly labor bestowed upon it the Genevan Bible is more correct than any of its predecessors.

It is enriched with notes, many of them original, and some of them translations from the writings of Calvin and of Beza. The greater part of the marginal notes in Whittingham’s Testament were transferred to the Genevan Testament. This was the first English Bible printed in Roman type; the first broken up into verses, after the plan of our present version; the first to use Italics to represent words supplied by the translators; the first to omit the Apocrypha, although it was retained in some of its editions; and the first printed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to whom it was dedicated.

It was also the first Bible ever printed in Scotland, the New Testament being printed in 1576, though not published until the Old Testament was completed, in 1579. The first edition of the Genevan Bible printed in England was in 1576, after which frequent editions were issued.(2)

------------ (FN1)See this subject fully discussed in Westcott, p. 231, et seq.

(FN2)Moulton (p. 157) says,"more than one hundred and thirty editions;" Eadie, (vol. ii, p. 52,) "about one hundred and sixty editions."

These numbers include those printed on the Continent.

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