Lesson 14: The Vulgar Bible and the Big Picture, Part 2

Kootenai Church

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Apostasy Described Part 3 (Hebrews 10:28-29)

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We're gonna get started, we have about 500 years of church history that we want to cover today. We did 1 ,000 years of church history last

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Sunday and we're gonna slow down a little bit today in terms of the number of years, but we still have a lot of material that we're gonna cover.

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So let's begin with prayer and then we'll get started. Father, we are so grateful to you for your goodness and your provision and for the mercy that is this day, that you've given us this time to be here and you've called us to yourself.

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We thank you for giving us this place to meet and for all who are gathered here. We enjoy such rich blessings from your hand and we thank you for them.

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And we pray that during our time here of study and reflection upon your work through history, that you would help us to understand how it is that you have given us a

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Bible in our own language. And we thank you that you are doing this work of spreading your word throughout the world and you are using your word to call your sheep to yourself.

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We are grateful for that and pray that you would continue to do that work and that you would help us to understand how you have worked through others to make it possible for us to enjoy this blessing.

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Open our eyes to that and bless this time. Keep us alert and fixated upon the truth. We pray in Christ's name, amen.

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All right, so just a little bit of review. We're doing God Wrote a Book and looking at how we got our

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English Bible. For the sake of simplicity and to kind of make it easy for us to understand, we've sort of divided the last 2 ,000 years into three periods of history.

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The first period being the post -apostolic age from Paul to Jerome, covering about 100 AD to 400

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AD. And that is the, we looked at how we got, how we went from Greek dominating the

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English, Greek dominating the language landscape to Latin being the language of the people. And so there was a need for somebody to translate the scriptures from Greek into Latin and Jerome did that.

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And Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate. That was the first major step in getting us a Bible in our own language.

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From the second period was from 400 AD to about 1500 and this is the

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Dark Ages or what we would call the pre -Reformation period of time. And that pre -Reformation period of time was the three key figures,

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John Wycliffe, who's the morning star of the Reformation, Desiderius Erasmus who produced, and Wycliffe started the translation of scriptures into the

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English language and that was the 1300s. And then Desiderius Erasmus, he was the first one to produce a

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Greek New Testament, a New Testament text in the Greek language which he put together from all of the various manuscripts that he had and this, of course, was influential for the work of both

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William Tyndale as well as Martin Luther. When we get to the Reformation, it's kind of as if our, when we get to the

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Reformation, it is as if our train tracks diverge, as it were, they split apart. At the time of the

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Reformation, there were efforts to translate scriptures into all kinds of languages, various different languages, and so we're just focusing right now on the

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English language, keeping in mind that Luther would have used Erasmus' text to produce a German Bible and other people were working on French translations and Spanish translations, et cetera.

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So we're just now kind of focusing in on the English Bible because that is what concerns us, how we got a Bible in our own language.

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And then, of course, the third figure there was William Tyndale. He's known as the father of the English Bible, living from 1494 to 1536, 1536, and he produced an entire

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New Testament in the English language, and that was his life's work, and eventually Tyndale was killed for his efforts at translating the

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Bible into English. So now we are in Roman numeral number three, the post -Reformation era, from Tyndale to you, that is from about 1525 to the present day.

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One correction real quick before I move on. I had somebody email me this last week saying that I had mispronounced two words that caused them a great sense of joy, and so I want to, and then she was gracious enough to send me an audio clip of the proper pronunciation of these two words.

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So I would like to play that for you. All right, Dave, you ready here? Check, check, check. Okay, here we are. Gloucestershire.

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Gloucestershire. Lollards. Lollards. Now you see, that was not just the proper pronunciation, but also in the beautiful accent that makes it sound so nice.

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Did you notice the two words? I said lollards. Yeah, and it's not wooshershire, but it's gloucestershire.

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So here it is again. Gloucestershire. Gloucestershire. Lollards.

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Not lollard. Lollards. There you go. You're welcome.

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So now that the air is clear, another correction. Number three, the post -Reformation era.

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So we're gonna cover today, and this is just hitting some high points here, and Paul Taylor knows a tremendous amount about English history and Wales and Scotland and that whole area, so if I'm making anything wrong here,

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I will surely get a correction from Paul at some point during this. Beginning in the 1500s, there were many efforts taking place concurrently to translate the

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Bible into the English language. Tyndale died in 1536. Remember that date, 1536.

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But by the time that he was finally killed for his efforts at translating the Bible into English, there was public sentiment that was beginning to change, both amongst the people as well as amongst government rulers.

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Tyndale's work opened the door for a flood of Bible translations and translation work and Bible publications, and remember that prior to this, you also had the arrival of the printing press and the invention of the paper mill and the creation of paper, so it made publishing

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Bibles and creating Bibles much easier and much cheaper than it had ever been up to that point. So the first one after Tyndale was known as the

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Coverdale's Bible. It began circulating in 1536, which was the year that Tyndale died.

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It was published by Miles Coverdale, and he translated the Old Testament where Tyndale had left off. Remember, Tyndale completed the

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New Testament translation and he had done parts of the Old Testament, Genesis, Jonah, some of the Psalms, and a couple of other books.

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Well, Miles Coverdale, who was a friend of Tyndale and an associate of Tyndale, he finished the Old Testament, and he was not a scholar like Tyndale was, which is something you would say of almost everybody who has lived throughout church history.

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Do you remember Tyndale was fluent, a master of six different languages besides English, French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and English, and he was fluent in all of those.

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So Coverdale, many of the people who followed Tyndale did not have the intellectual heft that Tyndale had and his abilities with the various languages.

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So the Coverdale's Bible contained Tyndale's New Testament virtually unaltered, and it offered the full translation of the

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Old Testament. This translation was significant because it was the first to circulate without official opposition.

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It was the first translation of the Bible to circulate without official opposition from government leaders or church leaders.

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And in a political stroke of genius, Coverdale dedicated it to Anne Boleyn, who was one of Henry VIII's wives.

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Remember Henry VIII? Henry VIII, I am. Rick, you're shaking your head. Henry VIII, I am,

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I am. I got married to the widow next door. She's been married seven times before, and everyone's been a

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Henry. She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam. I'm her eighth old man, I'm Henry. Henry VIII, I am. Anybody else know that song or just me?

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There's a couple. All of them older folks. That makes me feel horrible, okay. All the young people looking at me like, what?

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I didn't make that up. Okay, so that was the Coverdale's Bible. Then the Matthew's Bible.

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It was published by a man named John Rogers under the pen name of Thomas Matthew. He was a converted chaplain of the

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English house. Tyndale had stayed with Rogers before he was betrayed and then later arrested and executed.

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He took Coverdale's Bible and he improved the translation because Rogers knew Greek and Hebrew, and that's something that Coverdale was not proficient in.

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Coverdale did not know those. This Bible, the Matthew's Bible, contained Tyndale's New Testament virtually unaltered, and it was the first Bible published with the king's permission.

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Likewise, it contained a dedication to the king. If you want the king to not oppose and maybe even circulate what you've published, dedicate it to the king.

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So there's a lot of political maneuvering going on, right? Dedicate it to the king's wife, dedicate it to the king. Hopefully it will be well received.

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There's a little bit of that going on there. His name was not

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James. We will get to King James here in just a second. Pace yourself, Rick, pace yourself. Henry VIII ran his eyes over Coverdale's Bible and Tyndale's name did not appear on it, and the bishops assured him, his bishops assured him, that they could find no error in it, so Henry gave his consent to it.

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Henry then ordered that the Matthew's Bible contained the note on the bottom of the cover page, quote, set forth with the king's most gracious license.

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And then on September 5th of 1538, Henry ordered every church in England to display, quote, one book of the whole

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Bible of the largest volume in English. And the king commissioned Coverdale to revise

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Matthew's Bible so that a single recognized edition could be publicly displayed. And this, of course, led to the great

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Bible of 1539, which we'll get to in just a moment. The king ordered that a copy be displayed in every parish in the land under penalty of a fine of four times the cost of the

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Bible for every month of delay. So he went from the king, the ruler, hunting down Tyndale and executing him in 1536.

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Two years later, two years after Tyndale's death, the king was circulating the New Testament in the kingdom and ordering that every parish in the land publicly display a copy of the

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English Bible so that everybody could read it and see it. In November 14th of 1539,

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Henry sent to all the printers and sellers of books royal encouragement for, quote, the free and liberal use of the

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Bible in our own maternal English tongue, close quote. So you remember what

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Tyndale's prayer was when he died? Lord, open the king of England's eyes, remember that?

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Two years later, the king of England is ordering that every parish publicly display an

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English translation of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. So that led to the Great Bible of 1539.

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Having commissioned a revision of Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible was produced, and this was the one that was ordered to be displayed in every parish and ordered to be read in all the services.

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By 1540, so this is four years after Tyndale died for translating the Bible into English, by 1540,

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Bibles were circulating freely with the king's endorsement. So we went from having the first Bible produced, the

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Coverdale Bible, the first Bible produced without opposition, without official opposition, to having the first Bible actually mandated to be displayed amongst the people in every parish in the land, in a matter of four years after Tyndale's death.

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By 1539, King Henry had received so many complaints because people gathered around the Bible and read it aloud during the

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Mass. Remember, everybody didn't have a Bible in their own hands in those days.

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It might be that the only Bible that you had in your town was in the parish, and it was publicly displayed there, so people would come in for the

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Mass, and you would have people going forward, and they would be reading the Scripture out loud to people because there was such a hunger and thirst for the

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Word of God, and this would cause, of course, many disturbances. The priest is up there trying to do his magic with the

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Mass, and people are coming up right at the front of the chamber and reading Scripture aloud to people, and they had a hard time dissuading people from doing that and quieting the people down because they hungered so much for Scripture.

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So the Great Bible became known as the Chained Bible because it was chained to the pulpit to discourage theft.

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You only had one Bible in your town. Now, here's a question. If you had to steal a Bible to have a copy of Scripture in your home, would it be sin to do it?

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I'm not even gonna answer that question, but apparently other people said yes, so they chained the Bible to the pulpit in many of these parishes, and so the

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Great Bible became known as the Chained Bible. Henry died in 1547, but at the end of his life, he turned against the

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Reformation movement, and then he ordered the destruction of translations by Tyndale and Coverdale. He ordered the death of anyone caught with him in his possession, but by that time, it was of no effect because the

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Bible was everywhere. So even his efforts at the end to reverse what he had done earlier in his life ended up coming to nothing because the

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Bible had been so widely distributed by that point. Next up is the Geneva Bible.

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This requires a little bit of historical context to understand this.

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Edward VI tried to offer alternative translations after the death of Henry VIII.

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Now, Henry VI ruled from 1547 to 1553, very short period of time, six years, and he wanted to produce alternate translations, something other than the

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Coverdale and the Great Bible. Mary I, who took over after Edward VI, she reigned from 1553 to 1558, she persecuted

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Protestants, and she tried to return England to Roman Catholicism. She's the one that is called

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Bloody Mary. She burned at the stake John Rogers, burned 300 other people who remained faithful to the

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Reformation, and her persecution of the Protestant faith and Protestant peoples ended up causing a mass exodus of linguistic scholars who fled

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England with their Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and Latin manuscripts in hand, and they landed in Geneva.

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What was going on in Geneva at the time? Anybody know who's a famous pastor in Geneva about this period of time?

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John Calvin was there, and John Calvin obviously was very sympathetic to the Reformed doctrines, so all of these scholars went to a place where there was a pastor and a city very favorable to the

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Reformation and to their theological convictions, so these linguistic scholars, with their manuscripts in hand, showed up in Geneva and found sanctuary there under the teaching of John Calvin.

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They published the Geneva Bible in 1557, they printed the New Testament, in 1560, they printed the

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Old Testament, and here are a couple of the strengths of the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible used Tyndale as their basis and revised his work for the better.

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They also used Theodore Bayes' Latin version of the scriptures as a reference. They had the latest

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Greek text of Robert Esteen, who was printed in 1550, and I remember Erasmus had produced a Greek text of the

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New Testament, and later on, Robert Esteen, Esteen, Estein, Esteen, he had produced a

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Greek text of the New Testament as well in 1550, and so they had the latest available manuscripts to them, and they produced a

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Bible that was very readable and very accurate, and here are a couple of notable features. It quickly became the first, the number one

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Bible, and was so for 50 years. The Geneva Bible just dominated the landscape. It contained study notes that reflected strongly a

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Reformed Protestant theology of Calvin. In fact, I think that the Geneva Bible was the first Bible to include the text of scripture along with study notes.

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You and I are used to having study notes next to our Bibles. The Geneva Bible was the first one to do that. It was the

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Bible, this was the Bible that was used by later Reformers, Puritans, and Pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620.

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It was used by Shakespeare. During Shakespeare's lifetime, there were 142 different editions of the

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Geneva Bible that were printed. That shows you its popularity. In fact, its popularity is seen in the fact that it was still being printed in 1644, which was 33 years after the

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King James hit the market. It was that popular, the Geneva Bible was. Oliver Cromwell used the

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Geneva Bible for his army in 1643, and 200 years later, after Oliver Cromwell, it was distributed to federal soldiers in the

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American Civil War. The translation, more than any other, built up the

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Reformation efforts in the land of England, and strengthened the Reformation in England.

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About a half a million copies were printed in England among a population of only six million people. That means that there was one

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Geneva Bible for every 12 people in England at that time. Geneva Bible was the first Bible to use verse divisions.

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It was the first to use italics for words that were not in the original, but that were added for clarification.

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Now, you kinda take that stuff for granted in your modern translations, right? The Geneva Bible's the first one to do that. It was the first one to contain cross -references in the margin.

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Summaries were included at the beginning and at the beginning of each new chapter, and it was the first full translation of the

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Old Testament directly from Hebrew. It contained maps illustrating the Holy Land and even locating the

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Garden of Eden. I'm waiting for a response to that. Do we know where the

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Garden of Eden was? We can't know why, why? Or can't know where, why? Because the world was flooded and the whole topography of the entire planet has been changed.

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But the Geneva Bible contained, I don't know if they were old earthers in those days. I doubt it, but they tried to locate it in the

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Garden of Eden. Sometimes it is referred to as, the Geneva Bible this is, sometimes it's referred to as the breeches

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Bible, because Genesis 321 is rendered, quote, the Lord God made breeches of skin for Adam and his wife, close quote.

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Do you know what breeches are? We call them breeches, right. Right, pants. And so it's sometimes called the breeches

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Bible. Now, while the Geneva Bible was being produced, in the meantime, Catholics were busy producing their own translation, which is the

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Bishop's Bible of 1568. This is letter F. The Bishop's Bible was commissioned by Elizabeth I in England as an answer to the

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Geneva Bible. Elizabeth succeeded Bloody Mary and she reversed back toward Protestantism.

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The Geneva Bible was not as popular with the English clergy, since it was far more Protestant. The Geneva Bible was not popular with the

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English clergy because it was far more Protestant. And so there was an effort made to produce the Bishop's Bible as sort of an answer to that.

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Although it was a good revision of the Great Bible, which remember was the Coverdale, Matthew's Bible revision combination.

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Although it was a great revision of that, it did not match the readability of the Geneva Bible. Translators of the

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Bishop Bible were outclassed by the greater ability, the translation ability of the Geneva Bible translators.

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And it was unfortunately the Bishop's Bible and not the Geneva Bible that formed the basis for the next major revision, which was to enter the stage.

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Does anybody know what that next major Bible translation was? Rick? The King James. But before we get to that, the

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Rhymes -Douay Bible of 1582. Now just in case I pronounced that wrong, Paul, how would you say that? Rhymes -Douay?

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Reams? Did I get Douay right? Okay, Reams -Douay.

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So the zeal, some of these places overseas, you gotta get the people who came from overseas to answer the question.

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The zeal of the people over the Protestant Bible translations forced the Roman Catholic Church to try and produce their own translations.

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So just think of this as an effort by Rome to counter the Geneva Bible and the

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Protestant versions with their own Bible. An edition of the New Testament was produced in 1582 at the

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English College of Reams, and an edition of the Old Testament was produced in 1609 and 1610 at the

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College of Douay. The Reams -Douay translation was the first Roman Catholic edition of the English Bible.

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It was produced as a reaction against the Protestant Reformation, and it was not produced from Greek and Hebrew text, but from, does anybody remember from last week?

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The Vulgate, because the Roman Catholic Church will not authorize any translation that doesn't come from the Latin Vulgate. They're not interested in the

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Greek and Hebrew, it's the Latin Vulgate, Jerome's Latin Vulgate that is their standard. So the Reams -Douay translation was the first Roman Catholic edition of the

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Bible, but it didn't come from the Greek and Hebrew text, it came from the Latin Vulgate. One of the principles of the translation for the

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Reams -Douay translation was if the Latin contradicts the Greek, you go with the Latin. Not the original

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Greek text. Letter H, the King James Version, or the authorized version of 1611.

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Now here's a little bit of the historical context. See, we're moving through history now, we're taking smaller steps, but we're still moving through history at quite a pace here.

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James I has succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, and he called a church conference to discuss the problems in the church and the issues of religious tolerance.

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Why do we have all of these fights going on between Protestants and Catholics? Not being theologically educated, I don't think

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King James understood what some of those theological issues were, but he didn't like the fact that everybody's fighting over these doctrinal issues.

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So, like Rodney King, he was just saying, can't we all just get along? The only result, this was known as the

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Hampton Court Conference, and the only result of that meeting that was worth noting was a resolution at the end, and it kind of served as a postscript to the meeting itself that read this, quote, that a translation be made of the whole

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Bible as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek, that is as close or true to the original Hebrew and Greek, and this to be set out and pointed without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches in England at the time of divine service, close quote.

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So, James wanted a Bible translation that would be accurate to Hebrew and Greek. In other words, he wanted it to be translated from those manuscripts and not the

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Latin Vulgate. He wanted a translation without any marginal notes in it. Why do you think King James didn't want the marginal notes like the

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Geneva Bible had? It's too reformed. He didn't want the reformed doctrines working their way in there.

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He's trying to strike a middle road between Protestants and Catholics, and to do so, you have to get rid of any notations in the text.

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And then third, he wanted it and only it, that is this translation that he was commissioning or requesting to be only available in all of the

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English services. This translation, even though it is known as the King James translation, was no more a work of James I than Coverdale's Bible was a work of Henry VIII.

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In other words, King James wasn't there overseeing the translation of the text. King James did not do that. It's known as the authorized version because of this commission from James I, even though it was never officially authorized by either the king or the parliament.

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The process of translation is very interesting. James I laid down some of the main requirements that he wanted that were to be followed.

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First, as I already mentioned, there were to be no study notes. James was the son of Mary, the Queen of the Scots, and so the notes of the

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Geneva Bible for him were way too Protestant. So he wanted those taken out. Yes. No, not

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Bloody Mary. Mary, different Mary. It's like the New Testament. There's so many Marys, it's hard to keep them all straight. So not

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Bloody Mary. James wanted to get rid of all the notes because he was very sympathetic towards Roman Catholicism.

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The translators began in 1607 and they set out not to do a new translation, but to revise the

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Bishop's Bible. 48 choice scholars in Greek and Hebrew were divided into six groups, two groups each at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge.

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Each group was assigned books to translate and the work of each group was reviewed by the other groups. Delegates from each group smoothed out the difficult spots in the translation, so thus the translation was really the product of no individual group, but a product of the reviewers as a whole.

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So they divided them up and assigned books and then the review translation, the review committee then took all of that and started to smooth out some of the differences.

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And this is why, because it was translated by various different groups, this is why sometimes in some books you have a particular

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Hebrew or Greek word translated one way and then the exact same word in a similar context translated entirely differently in another place.

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We'll talk about some of the translation issues here in just a moment. The translators tried to steer a middle course between Protestantism and Catholicism and whether they were successful or not is a matter of debate.

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So after two years and nine months of translation and work, in 1611 the King James Version officially rolled off the presses.

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Now it was greeted with the same type of response that are typically greet new translation of Scripture.

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Critics felt that there was no need for a new translation. They would say we have the Latin Vulgate, why do we need another translation?

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Or we have the Coverdale Bible or we have the Geneva Bible, why do we need yet another translation? Or they would say if the

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Geneva Bible's good enough for Paul and the apostles, it was good enough for us. That's kind of the attitude. Now keep in mind that these are the same things that King James only advocates will say today of the

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King James Bible. If we have the King James and it's served us well for 500 years, why is it that we would need a whole nother

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Bible? Why do we need another Bible translation? The translators included a preface to the authorized 1611

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Version which answered the critics and sought to justify their efforts in producing yet another translation.

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The new translations have always been met with these objections. For instance, Augustine objected to Jerome's translation of the

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Latin Vulgate. Rome objected to Wycliffe's efforts to translate into English. Critics objected to Tyndale's work.

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Every translation has faced this criticism, even the King James translation. And today, the people who object to any further modern

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Bible translations will use the same arguments that were used against the King James in that day. Like every version before it, the

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King James had its critics. Many had been used to the Geneva Bible. Dr. Hugh Broughton, recognized

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Greek and Hebrew scholar of the time, he was not asked to be on the translation committee because he was working on a revision of the

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Geneva Bible. And Broughton hated the King James translation and he told the King so, saying this, quote, the cockles of the seashore and the leaves of the forest and the grains of poppy may as well be numbered as the gross errors of this

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Bible, close quote. So it had its critics, the King James translation did, and for some legitimate reasons because it's not a perfect translation.

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So let's get into that, the good and the bad of the King James translation. And we'll get into this a little bit more as terms of the philosophy of translation when we get together in two weeks.

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No, two weeks from now is Easter Sunday. There's no Sunday school that day, breakfast instead.

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On April 11th, when we get back in here, we have one more lesson to do in this. We'll talk about modern translations.

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Here are some of the bad with the King James translations. In some ways, the King James version was a step back from the

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Geneva Bible because it had Roman Catholic sympathies and some word choices reflect that.

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For instance, the Geneva Bible will use the word acknowledge where the King James uses the word confess. Acknowledge or confess.

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Now you can see how the idea of confessing your sin or confessing something kind of plays into the

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Roman Catholic idea or doctrine of confession. The Geneva Bible would use the word love, the

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King James used the word charity. Why is that significant? The word charity has the idea of doing acts of good work or of giving something to charity or doing charity.

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Kind of communicates the idea of doing something, something over and above love. The Geneva Bible would translate a word congregation and the

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King James would translate it as church. So there are issues of Roman Catholic theology that played into the translation of some words in the

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King James translation. Another example is John 10, verse 16. And other sheep

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I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.

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That's the King James translation. Well, the Geneva Bible had used the word flock and Tyndale had used the word flock.

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Why the difference between fold and flock in John 10? Anybody wanna guess why that's a significant?

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This is gonna seem so insignificant to you and I, but keep in mind, in the midst of the controversy between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, when wars were being waged over these issues, these theologies, these were significant issues of discussion at the time.

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Why is fold more Roman Catholic than flock? What's that?

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Fold is people? It goes back to what you said here, the idea of a sheep fold was a structure.

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It was a visible structure. You communicate, you use the word flock and it has to do with just, it's people.

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The people is the flock. Those are individual peoples, but in ancient times, sheep would be gathered into folds, which were structures where the sheep were kept.

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Well, Roman Catholicism was sympathetic to the idea of there being one visible structure that contained

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God's people. And what was that one visible structure? The Roman Catholic Church. That was the one structure.

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So that gives you an idea of how sometimes the word choices themselves were very sympathetic in the

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King James toward Roman Catholicism. Here are some good points with the

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King James translation. Despite the attacks, the King James surpassed the Geneva Bible in popularity and became the main

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English translation for the next 350 years. So despite those attacks, it did become a standard in many ways for the next three centuries.

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In all fairness, it is a solid translation. It is influenced by Greek and Hebrew texts. The text is for sceptics. And so the

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King James translation is not an evil translation. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying the King James is evil, that it's corrupt, that it's wicked, that if you read it for your devotional time, that you're gonna end up a

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Roman Catholic. There are all kinds of independent fundamentalist Baptists who believe the King James, thank you,

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Josh, that believe the King James version is the inspired translation, the second inspired translation, who would also disparage the modern -day

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Pope as the Antichrist. So just because you like the King James does not make you Roman Catholic.

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Doesn't mean that you're going to hell. It doesn't mean any of that. Okay, so there are some good elements to the King James translation.

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The translators did not see themselves as producing the last and greatest translation. And in their introduction to the revision of their translation, in answering their critics, they were open to the fact that their translation would be revised and improved over time as more manuscripts would be discovered and as the understanding of ancient languages would continue to develop and we would learn more about ancient languages and cultures.

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In other words, the translators of the King James did not see themselves as issuing a new inspiration of a divine text.

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They saw themselves as offering what they believed to be a very good solid translation and one that they were open to having revised over time.

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They completely foresaw as a possibility and a likelihood and as a good thing, modern translations that would come after the

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King James. It had some issues. There were some poor wordings of the King James and some of them continue even through till today.

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For instance, in Matthew 27, verse 44, it translates the word revile, the thief who reviled

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Jesus, as, quote, cast the same in his teeth, close quote. Revile or cast the same in his teeth.

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Do you think that there's a better translation of that phrase than that? And yet it's persistent over all of this time?

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In Romans 5 .22, Romans 5 .3, Romans 5 .11, the same word appears as rejoice, as glory, and as joy.

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In other words, the same word in the same context having the same meanings translated three different ways in the King James. Now, considering what they set out to do, which was to produce a middle -of -the -road

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English translation and to revise the Bishop's Bible using the Greek and Hebrew text, and considering the resources that they had, which was limited original texts that they had on hand, they had limited original texts as well as a far more limited understanding of ancient languages than we have today, they did a very outstanding job of producing a readable, glorious -sounding, high and lofty translation of the

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English Bible. The King James is a good translation in that way. The King James was the first complete

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Bible to be printed on our continent in 1871. And through the course of the various printings of the

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King James, there have been some printing errors. For instance, Matthew 26 .36 in one printing read then cometh

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Judas instead of then cometh Jesus. One printing deleted the word not from the seventh commandment, so it read thou shalt commit adultery.

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And that printing was titled the Wicked Bible. There were other printing errors including this, the deletion of no from no more see at Revelation 21 .1,

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the unrighteous inheriting the kingdom at 1 Corinthians 6 .9 instead of the unrighteous not inheriting the kingdom.

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Printers have persecuted rather than princes have persecuted at Psalm 119 .161, the use of sin on more rather than sin no more at John 5 .14,

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the parable of the vinegar rather than the parable of the vineyard at Luke 20, Philip denying Jesus rather than Peter at Luke 22 .34,

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the use of lions instead of loins at 1 Kings 8 .19, the use of the fishes shall stand rather than fishers at Ezekiel 47 .10,

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the switching of wife for life at Luke 14 .26, and the switching of camels for damsels with reference to Rebecca at Genesis 24 .61.

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Those are various printing errors. On page, I don't know what page it is, but towards the end of the lesson, in fact the last page of this lesson, you can see a writing out there of the

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English of the 1611 translation. You can see how much more difficult that is to read.

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That's the 1611 text that you have in front of you. Now, King James Only advocates will say that which was published in the 1611, the authorized translation, that is

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God's word, and if you don't have this, and these are radical King James Only advocates, they'll say if you don't have that, you don't have

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God's word in your own language. That's the claim that they will make. I want you to know that I do not know, nor have

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I heard of any single 1611 King James Only advocate who reads the 1611

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King James translation of the scriptures. They don't, because for many of them, it would be almost unreadable.

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The King James translation went through a number of revisions. Revisions came out in 1612, 1613, 1616, 1629, 1638, 1659.

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Revisions were made by Whitby in 1703, by Wells in 1718 to 1724, by Mace in 1729, by Winston in 1745, and by Blaney in 1769.

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In fact, most modern King James translations of the scriptures come from what is known as the

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Blaney translation or the Blaney revision of 1769. So the 1611 Only advocates, they're actually reading a 1769 translation of the

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King James Bible. Since the King James of 1611, there have been discovered thousands of New Testament Greek texts, including the

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Codex Alexandrius. You remember when we talked about the big manuscript families that have been found?

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There have been thousands of Greek texts that have been discovered since the 1611 King James translation was made, including

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Codex Alexandrius from 400 AD. It contains the best copy of the Book of Revelation that we have in existence.

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And you remember, Desiderius Erasmus, when he produced his

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Greek translation, or sorry, his Greek text, this was, of course, after Jerome, when

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Erasmus produced his Greek text, the only copy that he had of Revelation was missing the last page. So you remember what he did.

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He translated from Jerome's Latin Vulgate back into Greek and in the process made up a whole bunch of Greek words that are still in the

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Textus Receptus. Well, since that time, we have discovered all kinds of very good, solid manuscripts of the

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Book of Revelation. The Codex Alexandrius was made available in the

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West in 1629, so it wasn't even discovered and made available until 15 years after the

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King James version came out. Then there was Codex Sinaiticus. That dated back to 350

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AD. It's the earliest copy of the New Testament that we have, and it wasn't discovered until 1844. Then there was

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Codex Vaticanus from the fourth century. It was sought after, but was never published until 1891.

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So those three massive manuscript collections, those big codexes, which account for a huge number of our ancient texts of the

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Scriptures, the New Testament, those were discovered, in some cases, hundreds of years after the translation of the

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King James Bible. Now, what do King James -only advocates do with the fact that we have discovered all of these great manuscripts, these great manuscript collections from the past?

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What do they do with that? They have to undermine the manuscripts that we have discovered since then. So what they will say is that any collection or any bringing together of those

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Greek manuscripts in the production of, say, a Greek New Testament or a Greek text today has been affected by Westcott and Hort.

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And there's all kinds of garbage accusations that are made against Westcott and Hort in an attempt to undermine any kind of Greek text that has been published since Erasmus' Greek text.

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And of course, we have discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1900s. So since the translation of the

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King James, we have discovered thousands of fragments, partial copies, lectionaries, Latin manuscripts, quotations from other ancient documents.

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And we have today a greater understanding of the use of Greek and Hebrew in ancient languages than they ever had at the time that King James authorized the translation.

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And since 1885, there has been a proliferation of translations and paraphrases. So we start off with, at the time of Tyndale, with Tyndale providing his

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English translation of the New Testament and portions of the Old Testament. And then this created, really, an explosion of new attempts to translate scriptures into English.

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And we've covered a number of those. Since the time of the publication of the King James translation, actually since 1885, we have seen another explosion of English translations in our own language.

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And I think, what did I say at the beginning of this lesson? Let me go back. There are, by some counts, 350 different translations of the

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Bible in English, 350 different English translations. Are there any questions?

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So we have covered, just one second. So we have covered from, remember, we have three periods of time. Post -apostolic period of time, from Paul to Jerome.

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That's from Greek to Latin. Then we go from the time of Jerome to the time of the Reformation, Tyndale. And really, that is going from the

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Latin into the English, translating that into the English. And then we go from Tyndale to our modern day, which

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Tyndale, the father of the English Bible, he is the one that sort of started all of that. And due to him and his work, you can see how

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God has given to us today a wealth of literature that we have in our own language, having scripture in our own language. All right, so those are the three periods of time.

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Yes. Roughly define the difference between translation, revision, and version.

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I will do that next time. That is the last lesson that we do. So I'll put that off till then, because we are, we're gonna talk about, in that last lesson, we're gonna talk about the different philosophies of translation, and we're gonna talk about how some

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Bible translations are trying to hold us far to one side of the spectrum, and other translations go far on the other side of the spectrum, and where various translations fall into that spectrum of translation and paraphrase, and dynamic equivalency and formal equivalency, and some of that.

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So we'll cover the difference between those things next time. Paul. What did

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I get wrong? No, oh man, okay. Oh yeah, thank you for that, yep.

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So Paul just pointed out, for those who might be listening, Paul just pointed out that those, that translation committee authorized by King James had two committees doing the

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Old Testament, one committee doing the New Testament, and one committee dedicated to translating the Apocrypha. Yes.

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Yeah, I'll answer this quickly, and we'll talk about more about this the next time. I read from the pulpit in the

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New American Standard, the NASB, the 95, 1995 update. The why for that is a little bit more of a complex question, and I'll try and tackle that next time.

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Basically, because the ESV was not yet produced, and because the Legacy Bible had not yet been produced when

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I started that back in 1998, or no, 2000, no, it was 2002 I made that transition, from New King James to NASB.

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And I wish that the LSB, I would switch over and start using the LSB, the Legacy Standard Bible, which is the update to the

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NASB. I would start using that, except that most people here bring the NASB to church with them, because that's what

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I preach out of, and they like to follow along with it. So I'm not gonna ask everybody to change now. It's just easier for us to stay.

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Someday when the new pastor takes over, he'll do the LSB, and we can all change together and start the next era. Yes, Ken.

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Yeah, there was news last week. Jerusalem, was that Jerusalem Post article that you sent me,

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Peter? Jerusalem Post article published. They are discovering caves under the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, or caves out in the Dead Sea, where there are skeletons buried, as well as more fragments of more manuscripts.

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And the work on the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered back in the mid -1900s has not yet been completed.

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In terms of unrolling them, and photographing them, and scanning them, and studying them, that work still has not been done, and yet they are just discovering more and more manuscripts.

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Yeah, Peter. Yes, correct, they're discovering more copies, yeah.

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Not discovering more like different books that should be in the Bible, anything like that. They're discovering more copies of those ancient manuscripts.

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Any other questions? Yes. In the

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Puritans who came over here in the early 1600s would have carried the Geneva Bible with them. Yes.

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Yeah, the Geneva Bible, by the time they would have left, would have been already widespread at that time, because it was 1620 when they sailed.

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So you're talking about, by that time, the Geneva Bible was still being printed, and still popular, especially amongst

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Protestants, and that's who came over here from amongst the original Puritans. So they would have had the Geneva Bible.

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The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to set shores on our continent. The King James was the first full

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Bible to be printed on our continent. Any questions? More?

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Okay, so where Calvin fits in is he is, obviously, a theological successor to Martin Luther, but he is in Geneva, and pastoring a church there, and doing a work in Geneva.

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So Calvin would have been there around the time that the mass exodus of scholars, with their manuscripts, left

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England under the persecution of Bloody Mary. They left England and came back over to Geneva, where they found, really, a sanctuary city that they could do their translation work.

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And, of course, you have Protestants there who are landing in Geneva with John Calvin, who really is the intellectual, and theological, and preaching mind of the

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Reformation at the time. His influence was widespread, so his ability to use English scholars, and Greek, and Hebrew in Geneva to produce the

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Geneva Bible for the Reformation efforts in Geneva, as well as all over Europe, was just by the providence of God.

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I mean, he used the persecution under Bloody Mary to produce the Geneva Bible, which was a massive accomplishment.

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So you can see the hand of divine providence there in moving those people around. Yeah, so that's where Calvin fits into that.

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Calvin is not the one producing the Geneva Bible. Calvin is the one providing the theological framework under which those people could work, and the political sanctuary for them to get that work done, to accomplish that.

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And, of course, the publication of the Geneva Bible just lit a fire under the Reformation efforts all over Europe. Any other questions?

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All right. I hope that by the end of this, now that we've kind of gone through the whole, we've talked about how

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God wrote a book, right? We began with a theology of it. We talked about the process of textual transmission, copious mistakes and errors, and textual criticism.

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We talked about some of those, and now we've just gone through, in two weeks, a whole history of the last 2 ,000 years of how you got a

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Bible in your own language. I hope you have an appreciation for the providence and the sovereignty of God, and how he works in history to produce things like this.

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The Bible that you hold in your hand, remember, cost men their lives to make that possible.

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People sacrificed greatly so that we could have a translation of scripture in our own language. And you can see how

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God worked through history, through Tyndale, and then through the publication of a Greek text in Desiderius Erasmus.

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Probably wasn't even a believer, but he produced a Greek text, and then through, or sorry, Wycliffe, and then Erasmus, and then

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Tyndale. And then how God moved all of those people, put those pieces into place, and then created a printing press, and paper mills at the time, so that there could be mass publication of these things.

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Just his hand in history, it's difficult to see in the moment, when you're William Tyndale being strangled and burned at the stake, it's difficult sometimes to see what the fruit of your work is gonna be, isn't it?

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But looking back on it, you can see what God did through all of that. In the midst of suffering, it's never easy to understand what the purpose of that is gonna be.

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But sometimes the story of that suffering has to be told 400 years later, through the blessing, the untold blessing that comes to us as a result of what those men did.

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So I hope that that's one thing you can kind of learn from that survey of church history. If there are no other questions or comments, we will pray.

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Just one quick update. Next week, Jess will be teaching Sunday school. The Sunday after that is Resurrection Sunday, so there's no

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Sunday school. We have breakfast here, and if you plan on coming to that breakfast, pancakes, ham, and scrambled eggs, then please make sure that you sign up on the sheet out there, so we know how many people to prepare for.

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And then the week after that, we will finish up. God wrote a book, and then I'll be done teaching Sunday school for the foreseeable future, thankfully.

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So let's pray. Lord, we are grateful for how you have worked in history. You have worked through other people's sufferings, through their sacrifice, through their skills and their talents, through persecution even, to accomplish this great work of giving us a

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Bible in our own tongue. So thank you for that. That is such a blessing, and we thank you for those men.

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And we pray that we would have that perspective upon your word, that we would cherish it that we would love it. If you have gone through such efforts and expended such work to make this happen, we just would pray that we would be good stewards of this gift we have been given, and we would see it as the treasure and value that it is.

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Keep our hearts submissive to it, and loving you through it. We ask your blessing upon our worship service and the preaching that is to follow in the name of Christ, our