Friday, October 4, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show *** 

It is October 4th, 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

I had some nice responses to last week's “history of the Bible” part 1 show. It focused on the canon—the “creation” of it—and how the various books were collected. We will get another part later on, but I was delighted to get the opportunity today to jump ahead in the story to the first Bible printed and released on this, the 4th of October in 1535.

You know the King James Bible, but that doesn’t come out until 1611. You may know that the Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible- but that has to wait until 1560. A clever person might say, “Wycliffe,” after all, the translators are called that, and he’s old-timey. Yes- his bible is the first in English- albeit Middle English. But it wasn’t printed because it came out in the 1380s, before the printing press. It did lead to a ban in 1408 on English Bibles, though. If you know the name Tyndale, you know he got into trouble- arrested in 1535 after only completing the  New Testament. Tyndale would burn, but he had met a man, six years prior to his arrest, named Miles Coverdale- and here is the story of the first full Bible printed in English.

Miles Coverdale had been an Augustinian Friar in York. One of his confessors there was Robert Barnes, an Englishman famous for going to Wittenberg and for his friendship with Luther and then his martyrdom. Coverdale began to preach against images and other perceived excesses. This led to his fleeing abroad, where he met Tyndale and assisted him in translation.

After Tyndale’s arrest, Coverdale continued to work on the Old Testament; although not reading Hebrew, he used older English, German, and Latin versions to put together his preferred reading.

The Bible would be printed in the Netherlands with a dedication to the crown- this was the year of Henry’s big break, so he had other things to worry about.

However, in two years the crown would authorize a second edition of the Coverdale Bible in the flurry of Protestant excitement that stayed through the reign of Edward.

The Coverdale Bible would be surpassed, in part because of the diffusion of the knowledge of the original languages, but it set a few examples that were followed in English Protestant Bibles.  

He used the Old Testament order as it was in the Vulgate (if you are a Protestant, this is the “normal” way”) instead of how it was in the Hebrew Scriptures (for instance, you might be used to seeing Malachi as the last book wherein the Hebrew Bible ended with Chronicles.  

As with Luther’s Bible, the Apocrypha is present but placed as an appendix after the Old Testament. Coverdale also followed Luther’s curious New Testament ordering of the books wherein Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation are the last four as they were considered, like the Apocrypha of questionable value (and yes, what Luther thought is debated here- the point is Luther wanted those books bracketed]. While Coverdale’s Bible followed suit, later English Bibles reverted to placing the epistles of Peter and John before Revelation.

Like almost all early Modern Bibles, there are printing errata or dubious translations for which the Bibles are sometimes known. Coverdale’s translation of a “Balm in Gilead” from Jeremiah 8:22 was translated as “a Treacle” in Gilead, delicious, but probably not the best rendering. Psalm 91:5 reads, rather than “you will not fear the terror of the night,” “you will not fear the bugs at night,” which is also not a bad promise.

And if you’ve ever been saying the Lord’s prayer in an ecumenical setting and stumbled over the debts/trespasses translation- blame Coverdale, he changed Tyndale’s trespasses to debts. But I’ll let you decide which you prefer (and that in Matthew and Luke, the word is different, allowing for at least two different ideas of what’s being forgiven).

When Henry decided to allow and mandate a Bible in each parish, that translation, “the Great Bible,” as it was called, was a version of Coverdale’s work. When Thomas Cranmer wrote a forward for that Bible, it became known as “Cranmer’s Bible,” despite being largely the work of Coverdale.

Coverdale was made the Bishop of Exeter under King Edward. He fled the country under Mary's reign and was able to return with Queen Elizabeth's ascension. There, he led a Puritan faction until his death in 1569. Today, we remember the publication of his monumental translation of the Bible on this day in 1535.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary- and lucky us- Romans 8 with a blast of good news:

8 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 4th of October 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man the bugs warn their sleeping children about- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who couldn’t be happier about those Astros…  Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.