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English Translations of the Scriptures: Bishops

The Bishops' Bible. Archbishop Parker engaged bishops and other learned men to bring out a new translation. They did so in 1568, in large folio. It made what was afterwards called the great English Bible, and commonly the Bishops' Bible. In 1589 it was published in octavo, in small, but fine black letter. In it the chapters were divided into verses, but without any breaks for them. Matthew Parker's Bible. The Bishops' Bible underwent some corrections, and was printed in large folio in 1572, and called Matthew Parker's Bible. The version was used in the churches for 40 years. The Douay Bible. The New Testament was brought out by the Roman Catholics in 1580, and called the Rhenish New Testament. It was condemned by the Queen of England, and copies were seized by her authority and destroyed. In 1609 and 1610 the Old Testament was added, and the whole published at Douay, hence called the Douay Bible. It is this version that is now in use by the Roman Catholic Church.

King James' Bible. The version now in use by Protestant Churches was brought out by King James' authority in 1611. to accomplish the work of revising it.

Fifty-four learned men were employed From death or other cause, 7 of them failed to enter upon it. The remaining 47 were ranged under 6 divisions, and had different portions of the Bible assigned to those divisions. They commenced their task in 1607. After some 3 or 4 years of diligent labor the whole was completed. This version was generally adopted, and the other translations fell into disuse.

The Revised Bible. On may 6, 1870, a Committee of Revision was appointed by the Convocation of Canterbury. It commenced its work on June 30, 1870, and completed it on June 20, 1884. There were 85 sessions, occupying 792 days of

6 hours each. Most of them were of 10 days' duration. The committee at first consisted of 16 members only, but was soon considerably enlarged, and ultimately comprised 79 active members, 52 in England, and 27 in America. Among them were very many of the finest Bible and Greek and Hebrew scholars of the world of all the Protestant denominations. The object of this Anglo-American enterprise was to adapt the King James' version to the present state of the English language, without changing the idiom and vocabulary, and to present a standard of biblical scholarship which has made some considerable advancement since the year 1611. The plan was not to give the Christian world a new version of the Bible, but a careful and conservative revision of the present version. The new Bible was to read like the old, and the sacred associations were not to be disturbed. The American committee was organized in the year 1871 by invitation and with the approval of the British revisers, and commenced its work in the following year. Like the British committee, it was composed of leading scholars selected from different denominations, and divided into two companies. These companies met once a month in their own rooms in the Bible House at New York. Professor Wm. Henry Green, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton 'Theological Seminary was Chairman of the Old Testament company; and of the New Testament company, Ex-President Theodore D. Woolsey, D.D., LL.D., New Haven, was Chairman. The two committees, the British and the American, were virtually one organization, in constant communication with each other, and all corrections, alterations, and changes from the King James' translation were considered and agreed upon, and but one version adopted for Britain and America. The British committee were officered as follows: Old Testament, the Rt. Rev. Edward Harold Brown, D.D., Bishop of Winchester, Chairman; the New Testament, The Rt. Rev. Charles John Elliott, D.D., Bishop of Gloucester, Chairman.. True principles of revision were most scrupulously carried out by the revisers. The utmost care was taken, and the greatest reverence manifested throughout the undertaking. The labor entailed was enormous, every sentence passing through 3 readings. As a general rule the revisers took as their basis the received or Massoretic text, and where this itself presented variations, they selected the best for translation, placing alternative ones in the margin. They could not well do otherwise, because although the ancient versions, as the Greek or Septuagint, often show superior readings of some passages, yet our knowledge is too imperfect to entirely reconstruct the text on the authority of those versions. In some specially difficult cases, where driven to adopt the reading on the authority of one of these versions, the fact was notified in the margin. Many scholars regard even this limited recognition as a most important feature of the Revised Version. Only by careful study can one arrive at a right appreciation of the revision. In several instances the slightest possible change has redeemed a whole passage from obscurity and rendered it intelligible. Grammatical errors were carefully rectified, and the Hebrew tenses which are most difficult to render in English, made intelligible by a few judicious alterations. The old division into verses was abolished, paragraphs used in their stead, headings of chapters omitted, and page headlines removed. The great advances that have been made in the knowledge of Hebrew and Oriental languages greatly facilitated the revisers' work. In consequence of their imperfect knowledge of these, the translators of the authorized version misrepresented several important passages, the meanings of which are now quite clear. This revised version was published in 1885, the revised New Testament alone having been published 4 years previously.