Table of Contents
Pre-20th Century Bibles
See here for 20th-21st Century versions and translations.
- English Bible history and languages of pre-20th C. Scriptures
- 5th C. Influence of Bede, Caedmon, and King Alfred on development of the Old English language to replace Latin
- 1382. Oxford scholar, father of the Lollards, John Wycliffe was the first to translate Latin into English
- 1525. The first to use the Gutenburg press to reproduce English Bibles, Tyndale's passion drove him to say, "I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the scriptures than you!"
- 1535. King Henry VIII unknowingly gave assent to Tyndale's work disguised in Coverdale's work in the Coverdale and Matthew Bibles, both anti-Catholic.
- 1537. Pseudonym for John Rogers, this was actually Tyndale's Bible sneaked into the black market under the nose of the authorities.
- 1539. Named for its bulk (a.k.a Chained Bible), this was royalty's answer to the need for a good church Bible.
- 1551. Whittingham was the first to use simple lay words in place of Saxonized Latin words and to break the text into verses.
- 1560. The Bible of the Protestant Reformation, the Puritans and the Pilgrims, it came to America on the Mayflower
- 1568. A disappointingly weak Reformation translation, an amalgam of works, and eschewed by the Queen, whose approval was sought and unrequited.
- 1611. The "Authorized Version" that was never actually authorized. A Catholic Bible accepted and revered by King and Protestants ever since.
- 1817. John Nelson Darby produced his New Translation, based largely on the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
- 1885. The first version to depart from the Textus Receptus other than Darby. Produced in 1885, in which year over three million copies were sold, but never gained the popularity of the King James (Authorized) Version.
American Standard Version, Revised Standard Version and New American Standard Version- 1901. An adaptation of the English Revised Version which is considered superior in its literal rendering of the texts. Delayed for forty years from the time of the English Revised by agreement of American scholars who had worked on the ERV project.
- The Apocrypha refers to deuterocanonical (second canon) books and writings that are not universally accepted on a par with the rest of Scripture. The Apocrypha were translated by Jerome and were generally included in most Bibles up to the mid 1600s and still available in a few Bibles today.