While Henry VIII was
known for his excesses and liberalities the development of the Bible in English
had reached a new height. The Great
Bible saw 3 revisions and updates and most noted was that it was “approved” to
read by the king himself. Yet, Henry began
to see that enabling the “common folk” to read the scripture on their own also
began to empower them. An era of tension
began to arise, but was quelled beneath the desire for spiritual freedom. Henry was the new self-appointed “Divine
Head” of the Church of England.
Considering itself neither Protestant nor Catholic, it was still at the
time considered an enemy of the church in Rome and therefore heretical and
therefore by default thrown into the Protestant category. This however did not stop Henry, nor the
burgeoning development of the English Bible. By age 55 Henry’s health
deteriorated and he died. In 1547 his son Edward (Known as Edward VI) assumed
the throne at age 9. As such he could not exercise actual power and Henry’s
will designated that should this be so there was to be appointed a council of
16 Regents that would rule until Edward
turned 18 years old. Although Henry had
severed the link between the Church of England and Rome, he never permitted the
renunciation of Catholic doctrine or ceremony. It was during Edward's reign
that Protestantism was established for the first time in England with reforms
that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and Mass along with the
imposition of compulsory services in English. When his sickness was discovered he and his
Council drew up a "Devise for the Succession," attempting to prevent
the country returning to Catholicism. Edward named his cousin Lady Jane Grey as
his heir and excluded his half sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. However, this was
disputed following Edward's death and Jane Grey was queen for only nine days
before Edward's half-sister, Mary, was proclaimed Queen. She was the only surviving child born of the
ill-fated marriage of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, was
raised Catholic and is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism. She had always rejected the break with Rome
instituted by her father and the establishment of Protestantism by Edward VI.
She and her husband Prince Phillip of Spain wanted England to reconcile with
Rome. Philip persuaded Parliament to repeal the Protestant religious laws
passed by Mary's father, thus returning the English church to Roman
jurisdiction. With this, began a reign
of tyranny which continued until her death and exacerbated anti-Catholic and
anti-Spanish feeling among the English people. The victims of the persecutions
became lauded as martyrs and many went into exile.
During Mary’s reign, a
number of Protestant scholars fled from England to Geneva in Switzerland, which
was then ruled as a republic in which John Calvin and Theodore Beza provided
the primary spiritual and theological leadership. Among these scholars was
William Whittingham, who supervised the Geneva Bible, in collaboration with Miles
Coverdale, Christopher Goodman, Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, and William
Cole. Whittingham was directly responsible for the New Testament, which was complete
and published in 1557, while Gilby oversaw the Old Testament. The Geneva Bible
was translated from scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament and the
Hebrew Scriptures of the day. The English rendering was substantially based on
the earlier translations by Tyndale and Coverdale (more than 80 percent of the
language in the Geneva Bible is from Tyndale). However, the Geneva Bible was
the first English version in which all of the Old Testament was translated
directly from the Hebrew. It was the
first Bible to be mechanically printed and was issued in more convenient and
affordable sizes than earlier versions. The 1560 Bible Geneva New Testament
cost less than a week's wages even for the lowest-paid laborers. It contained a number of study aids produced
by Reformation Leaders of the day and therefore is predominantly Calvinist and
Puritan in character. It included woodcut illustrations, maps and explanatory
'tables', i.e. indexes of names and topics, in addition to the famous marginal
notes that had never been seen previous.
Each book was preceded by an introduction and each chapter by a list of contents
giving verse numbers. This preceded the King James Version by 51 years and was
the Bible that came to America on the Mayflower. It was a pivotal Bible of the
Reformation Period and allowed the common man to advance against what was
considered to be “abuses of the church (Catholic – JH).” The side notes and marginal notes were highly
Calvanistic and in the view of King James I very demeaning to the power of the English monarchy. This
led to the development of yet another version that shall be explored in coming
articles, the King James “authorized” version. In the meantime, the Catholics
launch their own volley in the midst of the fervor of “Protestantism,” The
Douay-Rhemes Bible.
Jim
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