[Sidenote: English Bible]
None of the other vernacular versions, not even the French translation of Lefèvre and Olivetan can compare with the German save one, the English. How William Tyndale began and how Coverdale completed the work in 1535, has been told on another page. Many revisions followed: the Great Bible of 1539, the Geneva Bible of 1560 and the Bishops' Bible of 1568. Then came the Catholic, or Douai version of 1582, the only one completely differing from the others, with its foundation on the Vulgate and its numerous barbarisms: "parasceue" for "preparation," "feast of Azymes" for "feast of unleavened bread," "imposing of hands," "what to me and thee, woman" (John ii, 4), "penance," "chalice," "host," "against the spirituals of wickedness in the celestials" (Ephesians vi, 12), "supersubstantial bread" in the Lord's prayer, "he exinanited himself" (Philippians ii, 7).
We are accustomed to speak of the Authorized Version {571} of 1610 as if it were a new product of the literary genius of Shakespeare's age. In fact, it was a mere revision, and a rather light one, of previous work. Its rare perfection of form is due to the labors of many men manipulating and polishing the same material. Like the Homeric poems, like the Greek gospels themselves probably, the greatest English classic is the product of the genius of a race and not of one man.
Even from the very beginning it was such to some extent. Tyndale could hardly have known Wyclif's version, which was never printed and was rare in manuscript, but his use of certain words, such as "mote," "beam," and "strait gate," also found in the earlier version, prove that he was already working in a literary tradition, one generation handing down to another certain Scriptural phrases first heard in the mouths of the Lollards.
Both Tyndale and Coverdale borrowed largely from the German interpreters, as was acknowledged on the title-page and in the prologue to the Bible of 1535. Thus Tyndale copied not only most of the marginal notes of Luther's Bible, but also such Teutonisms as, "this is once bone of my bone," "they offered unto field-devils" (Luther, "Felt-teuffem"), "Blessed is the room-maker, Gad" (Luther, "Raum-macher"). The English translators also followed the German in using "elder" frequently for "priest," "congregation" for "church," and "love" for "charity." By counting every instance of this and similar renderings, Sir Thomas More claimed to have found one thousand errors in the New Testament alone.
[Sidenote: Popularity of Bible]
The astounding popularity of the Bible, chiefly but not only in Protestant countries, is witnessed by a myriad voices. Probably in all Christian countries in every age it has been the most read book, but in the sixteenth century it added to an unequaled reputation {572} for infallibility the zest of a new discovery. Edward VI demanding the Bible at his coronation, Elizabeth passionately kissing it at hers, were but types of the time. That joyous princess of the Renaissance, Isabella d'Este, ordered a new translation of the Psalms for her own perusal. Margaret of Navarre, in the Introduction to her frivolous Heptameron, expresses the pious hope that all present have read the Scripture. Hundreds of editions of the German and English translations were called for. The people, wrote an Englishman in 1539, "have now in every church and place, almost every man, the Bible and New Testament in their mother tongue, instead of the old fabulous and fantastical books of the Table Round . . . and such other whose impure filth and vain fabulosity the light of God hath abolished there utterly." In Protestant lands it became almost a matter of good form to own the Bible, and reading it has been called, not ineptly, "the opus operatum of the Evangelicals." Even the Catholics bore witness to the demand, which they tried to check. While they admonished the laity that it was unnecessary and dangerous to taste of this tree of knowledge, while they even curtailed the reading of the Scripture by the clergy, they were forced to supply vernacular versions of their own.
[Sidenote: Bibliolatry]
Along with unbounded popularity the Bible then enjoyed a much higher reputation for infallibility than it bears today. The one point on which all Protestant churches were agreed was the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture. The Word, said Calvin, flowed from the very mouth of God himself; it was the sole foundation of faith and the one fountain of all wisdom. "What Christ says must be true whether I or any other man can understand it," preached Luther. "Scripture is fully to be believed," wrote an English theologian, "as a thing necessary to salvation, though {573} the thing contained in Scripture pertain not merely to the faith, as that Aaron had a beard." The Swiss and the Anabaptists added their voices to this chorus of bibliolatry.
[Sidenote: Abeunt studia in mores]