CHAPTER I. THE MANUSCRIPT BIBLE. THE external history of the English Bible may be divided into two periods of not very unequal length, the first extending from the beginning of Wycliffe's labours to the publication of Tyndale's New Testament in 1525, the second from that date to the completion of our present received version in 1611. The first of these will be the subject of the present chapter. It has been already said that the 14th century was the first stage in the dissolution of the medieval church. Its character was marked by the corruption of the higher clergy, and the growth of independence in the masses of the people. Both facts favoured an appeal from custom and tradition to the written and unchanging Word. Moreover the last great progressive effort for the restoration of the Church-the establishment of the mendicant orders-had failed, but not before the people had been roused by the appeals which were addressed to them. Touched by a feeling of anxious suspense men turned with intense longing to the Bible, and in the first instance naturally to the Psalter, which has been in every age the fresh spring of hope in times of Chap. i. 1. External Two History. periods: (1) 1380-1525; (2) 1525-1611. (1) First Manuscript period. translations. Chap. i. The beginning of Wycliffe's translation. NEW TES- trial. Of this no less than three English versions in prose, dating from the first half of the 14th century, have been preserved'. But the work of translation did not long stop here. The years from 1345 to 1349 were full of calamities-pestilence and famine and warwhich seemed to men already deeply stirred by the sight of spiritual evils to portend the end of the world. Other commotions followed not long afterwards which shewed the wide-spread disorganization of society. France there was the terrible rising of the Jacquerie (1358); in Italy the momentary triumph and fall of Rienzi (1347-1354); a great schism (1378-1417) divided the forces of the Church; and Adrianople became (1360) the capital of a Turkish Empire in Europe built on the ruins of a Christian power. In In the meantime the general belief that some awful crisis was at hand found expression in England in the Tract on the Last Age of the Church (1356), which has been commonly though wrongly attributed to Wycliffe ; and Wycliffe himself must have been influenced by a like expectation when he chose the Apocalypse as the subject of his first labours on the Bible. His translation of the Apocalypse was soon followed by a translation of the Gospels with a commentary, and at a later time by versions of the remaining books of the New Testament with a fresh rendering of the Apocalypse, so that a complete English New Testament was finished about 1380. To this a version of the Old Testament was soon added, which appears to have been undertaken by a friend of Wycliffe's, Nicholas de Hereford. The original manuscript of Nicholas is still preserved in the Bodleian, and offers a curious memorial of his fortunes. For 1 Of these the most important is that by Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole. Chap. i. having incurred the displeasure of his superiors, he was cited to appear in London in 1382, to answer for his opinions. He was excommunicated, and left England shortly afterward, breaking off his translation in the middle of Baruch (iii. 20), where the manuscript ends abruptly. The work was afterwards completed, as it is OLD TES supposed, by Wycliffe, who thus before he died in 1384 had the joy of seeing his hope fulfilled and the Scriptures circulated in various forms among his countrymen. Like the earlier Saxon translations, Wycliffe's translation was made from the Latin Vulgate, and from the text commonly current in the 14th century, which was far from pure. It was also so exactly literal that in many places the meaning was obscure. The followers of Wycliffe were not blind to these defects, and within a few years after his death a complete revision of the Bible was undertaken by John Purvey, who had already become notorious for his opinions, and had shared in the disgrace of Nicholas de Hereford1. Purvey has left, in a general Prologue, an interesting account of the method on which he proceeded in his revision, which is marked by singular sagacity and judgment. He had, as will be seen, clear conceptions of the duties of the critic and of the translator, and the comparison of his work with Wycliffe's shews that he was not unable to carry out the design which he formed. After enumerating several obvious motives for undertaking his task, he continues: 'For these reasons and 'other, with common charity to save all men in our 'realm, which God will have saved, a simple creature [so he calls himself] hath translated the Bible out of 1 Purvey's copy is still preserved at Dublin. The Latin MSS. which Purvey used exhibit many different readings from Wycliffe's, but they are not different in character. Both TAMENT. From the Latin Vulgate. Revised by Purvey, c. 1388. Purvey's account of his work. Chap. i. 6 'Latin into English. First this simple creature had 1 The collation of manuscripts must have been very partial and scanty. Thus in 1 John ii. 14 all the copies of Purvey's translation read 'brithren,' i.e. fratres for patres, a blunder of which I can find no trace in Bentley's collations of English MSS. of the Vulgate. The clause is omitted by Wycliffe, as by many Latin MSS. |