Against the Current of Change

The Tyndale Bible

What kind of stamina and character would it require to take the most revered, authoritative and regulated book in all of Europe and modify it so that it was in a lower, common everyday language, the same one used by commoners, everyday untaught peasants and servants. This was William Tyndale's work as one of the pioneers to the translation of the Latin Bible into English. What struck me as amazing as I was shuffling slowly through the large display cases filled with different Bible translations was the effort, undying patience and pure boldness required to defy all authority in pursuit of what you believe to be a higher cause. The Exhibit of the King James Bible in the library was quite the collection which showed the history and progression of each Bible into English, usually accompanied by a martyr.

Joseph Smith reading the family Bible

As a brief history, William Tyndale was a very well educated individual, known for his ability to speak languages such as Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and German. He studied at Oxford and during his time he would sputter off his wild opinions in the realms of religion. At one famous encounter John Foxe wrote in Foxe's Book of Martyrs that a man told William, "We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's", to which came the vehement response, "I defy the Pope, and all his law's; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!"

Life and Legacy of the King James Bible

What do hard core drugs, stolen diamonds, and the Bible have in common? Smuggling! That's just one of cool facts I learned when I visited the Life and Legacy of the King James Bible exhibit in the library last Saturday. Besides featuring genuine Bibles dating back to the pre-Renissance era, the exhibit gave a brief history of how the King James version of the Bible came into existence as well as provided an interactive section where vistors could compare different versions of the Bible. Since Catherine's post on the exhibit focused mainly on her experience with examining the fonts of the different Bibles, I wanted to focus my visit (and my post) more on the history of the King James Bible itself and the process through which it came to be. 

The coming about of the King James Bible was an evolutionary process, nearly 1600 years in the making. Its creation stemmed from the desires of  John Wycliffe to provide the Bible to the masses. He wanted the book to be published in more than just Latin. As it contained several "inerrant truths," Wycliffe wanted the common man to be able to acess, read, and understand the Bible (lib.byu.edu). Thus, a miraculous spin of events began which eventually led to the coming forth of the King James Bible.

The Bible Exhibit

I went down to BYU's special collections exhibit "The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible" and noticed some things by looking at the different editions of the Bible.

The font the Bible is printed in has become more legible over time.  This occurred in correlation with the with the Bible being printed.  As more people had access to Bible's and gained the ability to read, the beauty of the Bible became less important than the words themselves.

The shapes of letters has changed over the last 500 years.  We no longer use elongated "s"s which are easy to confuse with "f"s.  Also, "u"s were shaped like "v"s, so the word fun would look like fvn.

The spelling of words became more standard as printed material became more popular.  "The Great Bible," which was handwritten, has the full title "The Byble in Englishe that is the Olde and New Testament, after the translacion appointed to bee read in the churches."  The Geneva Bible published in 1594 contains the message "translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke and conferred with the best translations in diuers languages."  By the time the King James Bible was first printed, most of the spellings of words was more like what we see today.  The full title of the King James Bible is the King James Bible (The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments.

Interesting fact: Robert Barker, who had a monopoly on the printing of the King James Bible, continued to print the Geneva Bible while printing the King James Bible because the Geneva Bible still brought in a lot of revenue.

The printing of the Bible was highly influential, as it led to the average person having greater access to the word of God.  Poets and prose writers was often alluded to the book which continues to be the most read book in the world.