Bible, English versions. 1. PRE-REFORMATION VERSIONS. There were Anglo-Saxon interlinear glosses of the Gospels and Psalms and translations of portions of the Bible, sometimes abridged. From
c.1250 Middle English metrical versions of certain Books, especially Gen., Exod., and the Psalter, were made. In the 14th cent. several anonymous translations of NT Books appeared, apparently under the influence of J.
Wycliffe. The Council of Oxford in 1407 prohibited the making of any fresh translations of the whole or part of the Bible.
2. THE REFORMATION PERIOD. The first translations made directly from the original languages were the work of W.
Tyndale (q.v.). His NT was printed on the Continent in 1526; it was followed by the
Pentateuch (1529–30), Jonah (1531), and revisions of Gen. and the NT. In 1534 Canterbury
Convocation petitioned
Henry VIII that the whole Bible might be translated into English, and in 1535 Miles
Coverdale (q.v.) published a complete Bible dedicated to the King. He based his rendering on Tyndale's version where available; the other OT Books he translated from the German of M.
Luther and others. His Psalter has remained in use in the BCP version of the Psalms. In 1537 ‘
Matthew's Bible’ appeared, with the King's authorization. This consisted of Tyndale's Pentateuch, a version of Josh.-2 Chron. made from the Hebrew, probably by Tyndale and not previously published, Tyndale's NT of 1535, and the rest in Coverdale's version. Further revisions of the whole Bible followed: the ‘
Great Bible’ of 1539, the ‘
Geneva Bible’ of 1560 (which used verse divisions), the ‘
Bishops' Bible’ of 1568, and for RCs the
Douai-Reims Bible (qq.v.).
3. THE AUTHORIZED VERSION. At the Hampton Court Conference (1604) J.
Rainolds suggested that there should be a new translation of the Bible, and
James I ordered the work. The 54 revisers were instructed to take the Bishops' Bible as their basis, to retain ecclesiastical terms (‘Baptism’ for ‘Washing’), and to exclude marginal notes unless needed to explain Hebrew or Greek words. The result of their work, published in 1611, was a version of great felicity which became the only familiar form of the Bible for generations of English-speaking people. In the USA it is known as the ‘ King James Version’.
4. THE REVISED VERSION and
AMERICAN STANDARD VERSION. The growth of Biblical scholarship as well as changes in English usage led to increasing dissatisfaction with the AV in the 19th cent. In 1870 the Convocation of Canterbury took the matter up and a committee of revisers was appointed. They were instructed to introduce as few alterations into the text of the AV as possible consistent with faithfulness and to limit the expression of such alterations to the language of the AV and earlier versions. The NT was published in 1881, the OT in 1885, and the
Apocrypha in 1895. The
American Standard Version, published in 1901, incorporated into the text of the RV those renderings favoured by the American scholars who had co-operated (by correspondence).
5. MODERN TRANSLATIONS. In the last 100 years, there have been a number of private translations of the NT or the whole Bible, aimed increasingly at making the Bible intelligible to the common man. These have included the NT of R. F. Weymouth (1903); the NT (1913) and OT (1924) of J.
Moffatt; the NT (1945) and OT (1948–9) of R. A.
Knox;
The New Testament in Modern English (1958; revised 1973) of J. B. Phillips and two versions in non-ecclesiastical English: the
Good News Bible: Today's English Version, published by the American and other Bible Societies (NT, 1966; whole Bible, 1976), and
The Living Bible, paraphrased by K. N. Taylor (1971). The most important Biblical translations, however, have been corporate ventures. The
Revised Standard Version (NT, 1946; OT, 1952; Apocrypha, 1957) is a revision of the
American Standard Version undertaken by a committee representing the major Protestant Churches of N. America. The revisers took account of current scholarship and changes in language to produce a more accurate version and one free from archaisms, but preserving a dignity suitable for public worship. The RSV is widely used not only in America but in Britain and other English-speaking countries. In 1965 the NT, and in 1966 the whole Bible (in Vulgate order) appeared in a ‘Catholic edition’ bearing the
imprimatur. In what became known as the ‘Common Bible’ (1973), designed to appeal to RCs, Protestants and Orthodox, the RSV text was rearranged. A revision of the RSV, the
New Revised Standard Version, appeared in 1989. This is a direct descendant of the AV and retains much of its solemnity. The
New English Bible (NT, 1961; whole Bible, 1970) was designed as a new translation of the Bible into contemporary English, to be made from the original languages; it was made under the direction of a Joint Committee of the non-RC Churches of the British Isles, established in 1947 on the initiative of the Church of Scotland. It won only limited acceptance and in 1974 a revision was undertaken by a panel which included RCs. The
Revised English Bible (1989) is a radical revision of the NEB and is generally more conservative in its treatment of the original text. The
Jerusalem Bible (1966) is an English parallel of
La Bible de Jérusalem, a French rendering of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts made by the
Dominicans of the École Biblique in Jerusalem and published in France (1948–54). The English text was made with reference to the original languages and accompanied by revised notes. It follows the Vulgate order but has the traditional (AV/RV) form of Biblical names rather than those of the Douai version (e.g. Hosea, not Osee). Its revision, the
New Jerusalem Bible (1985) makes use of the new edition of
La Bible de Jérusalem (1973). It was the first complete English translation to make serious efforts to use inclusive language. The
New American Bible (1970) was made by members of the Catholic Biblical Association of America; it is widely used by RCs in the USA. The
New International Version (1978) is the work of scholars representing a broad range of evangelical denominations, directed by the New York Bible Society.
