Early English Translations

EARLY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

1. Caedmon (680).
As the church grew in England, Latin continued to be the language used in all of the church services, in spite of the fact that the common people spoke Anglo-Saxon. Therefore when the common people went to church, they never understood what was being said. Onto this scene came Caedmon. He was a singer and he found a monk who agreed to translate certain portions of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon.

Caedmon traveled through England singing, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” in Anglo-Saxon. It was the first time that many of the people in his day had ever heard the Scriptures in their own language.

2. Aldhelm (640-709).
Aldhelm was a bishop in southern England who was also a Latin scholar. Caedmon's work so impressed him that he decided to translate the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon. He accomplished this work, using the Vulgate as his source text.

3. Bede (673-735).
Bede is one of the most famous historians of the Middle Ages. His “Ecclesiastical History of the English People” has long been a major source of information about the early church in England. As a believer, he decided that the people needed a translation of one of the Gospel Accounts in their own language. He began to translate the Gospel of John. According to tradition, he finished dictating his translation to a scribe as he lay on his deathbed.

4. Alfred the Great (849-899).
Alfred became the King of England at a time when the Danes were on the verge of overrunning England. During his reign, he repulsed the Danes and then went on to built up a military system of fortifications that would keep out invaders for the next 150 years.

Alfred was a Christian and he mandated that all of the people of England follow him in worshiping Christ. There followed a great revival of Christianity in England. He also began a tremendous program to educate his people. He was a scholar himself and under his reign, both nobles and commoners were taught to read and to write. The primer that was used was an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Bible. In 1066 the Normans invaded England. From this time on, England was ruled by a Norman king and most of the feudal states were under Norman barons. This brought about a tremendous change in the English language so that, after a hundred years, the old translations of the Bible could no longer be understood. Also, with the Normans came a rise in Romanism so that Jerome's Latin Vulgate once again became the official Bible of the English church.

5. John Wyclif (1329-1384).
Wyclif was a leading philosopher at Oxford University who saw the need for the English people to have a Bible in their own language. He took up the task of translating the entire Bible into English. For this, he was branded as a heretic by the Roman Catholic Church. Wyclif is known as the "Morning Star of the Reformation."

Wyclif's translation was in the common speech of the day. For example, he rendered...|
Children|Brats|
Father|Dad|
Chariot|Cart| Here is an example of his translation:

These thingis Jesus spak; and whanne he hadde cast up hise eyen into hevene, he seide: `Fadir, the our cometh; clairfie thi sone, that thi sone clarifie thee; as thou hast yovun to hym power on ech fleische, that al thing that thou hast yovun to hym, he yyve to hem everlastynge liif.'" (John 17:1-2).

Over the next 150 years the English translation continued to change so that once again there was a need for a new translation.

6. William Tyndale (1494-1536).

After studying at Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale came into contact with the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation and determined that the people of England should have the Bible in their own language. However, instead of going back to the Latin Vulgate as Wyclif, Bede and Aldhelm had done, he instead used Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. In doing so, he was the first man to translate the Bible into English directly from the Greek and Hebrew.

Because of fierce persecution, Tyndale was forced to flee England. He moved to Europe where he translated the entire New Testament and part of the Old Testament. It is estimated that between 1525 and 1528 there were 18,000 copies of his translated published and spread abroad.

Tyndale was betrayed and arrested in Antwerp in 1535. He continued his work of translating while in prison until October 1536 when he was convicted of heresy and strangled and his body burned at the stake. It is reported that his last words were a prayer, “Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.” In the years that followed, a number of other English translations were made.

Translation|Date|Description|
The Coverdale Bible|1535|Translated from the Latin Vulgate by Miles Coverdale in 1535 (Coverdale had served as Tyndale's assistant and proofreader at Antwerp).|
The Matthew Bible|1537|Published by John Rogers in 1537. He used the pen name of Thomas Matthew for this work It was a compilation of Tyndale's translation and the Coverdale Bible.|
The Great Bible|1539|This second edition of the Matthew Bible was given this title because of its extreme size. When Oliver Cromwell came to power, he made the Great Bible the official Bible of England.|
The Geneva Bible|1557|Geneva had become a place of refuge for Reformers such as Coverdale and John Knox. It was here that Calvin's brother-in-law, William Whittingham, produced a New Testament which had the distinction of being the first English Bible to be divided into verses. In 1560 the entire Bible was published at Geneva. It was adopted by the Puritans and is the text quoted by William Shakespear in his plays.|
The Rheims-Douai Version|1582|Sponsored by English scholars who were loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. It was translated from the Latin Vulgate (the New Testament in 1582 and finally published together with the Old Testament in 1609).|