English Bibles

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Wycliffe’s Bible 1382

Wycliffe’s Bible (1382) [Wycliffe]

Summary of Wycliffe’s Bible 1382

Wycliffe’s Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of, or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translations were the chief inspiration and chief cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the distinctive teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In the early Middle Ages, most Western Christian people encountered the Bible only in the form of oral versions of scriptures, verses and homilies in Latin (other sources were mystery plays, usually conducted in the vernacular, and popular iconography). Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe’s idea was to translate the Bible into the vernacular, saying “it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence”.

Long thought to be the work of Wycliffe himself, it is now generally believed that the Wycliffite translations were the work of several hands. Nicholas of Hereford is known to have translated a part of the text; John Purvey and perhaps John Trevisa are names that have been mentioned as possible authors. The translators worked from the Vulgate, the Latin Bible that was the standard Biblical text of Western Christianity, and the text conforms fully with Catholic teaching. They included in the testaments those works which would later be called deuterocanonical by most Protestants, along with 3 Esdras which is now called 2 Esdras and Paul’s epistle to the Laodiceans.

Although unauthorized, the work was popular. Wycliffite Bible texts are the most common manuscript literature in Middle English. Over 250 manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible survive.




The association between Wycliffe’s Bible and Lollardy caused the kingdom of England and the established Catholic Church in England to undertake a drastic campaign to suppress it. In the early years of the 15th century, Henry IV (De haeretico comburendo), Archbishop Thomas Arundel, and Henry Knighton published criticism and enacted some of the severest religious censorship laws in Europe at that time. Even twenty years after Wycliffe’s death, at the Oxford Convocation of 1408, it was solemnly voted that no new translation of the Bible should be made without prior approval. However, as the text translated in the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and as it contained no heterodox readings, there was in practice no way by which the ecclesiastical authorities could distinguish the banned version; and consequently many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscript English bibles to represent an anonymous earlier orthodox translation. Consequently, manuscripts of the Wycliffe Bible, which when inscribed with a date always purport to precede 1409, the date of the ban, circulated freely and were widely used by clergy and laity. (wikipedia.org)

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Young’s Literal Translation YLT

Young’s Literal Translation [YLT]

Summary of Young’s Literal Translation YLT

Young’s Literal Translation is a translation of the Bible into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by Robert Young, compiler of Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament. Young used the Textus Receptus (TR) and Majority Text (MT) as the basis for his translation. Young produced a “Revised Version” of the translation in 1887, which was based on the Westcott-Hort text that was completed in 1885. After Robert Young died on October 14, 1888, the publisher released a new Revised Edition in 1898.




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Bible in Basic English [BBE]

Bible in Basic English [BBE]

Summary

The Bible In Basic English (also known as BBE) is a translation of the Bible into Basic English. The BBE was translated by Professor S. H. Hooke using the standard 850 Basic English words. 100 words that were helpful to understand poetry were added along with 50 “Bible” words for a total of 1,000 words. This version is effective in communicating the Bible to those with limited education or where English is a second language. The New Testament was released in 1941 and the Old Testament was released in 1949. from wikipedia.org Continue reading

Emphasized Bible [EBR]

Emphasized Bible [EBR]

Summary

Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible (abbreviated EBR to avoid confusion with the REB) is a translation of the Bible that uses various methods, such as “emphatic idiom” and special diacritical marks, to bring out nuances of the underlying Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. It was produced by Joseph Bryant Rotherham, a bible scholar and minister of the Churches of Christ, who described his goal as “placing the reader of the present time in as good a position as that occupied by the reader of the first century for understanding the Apostolic Writings.”

The New Testament Critically Emphasised was first published in 1872. However, great advances occurred in textual criticism during the last half of the 19th century culminating in Brooke Foss Westcott’s and Fenton John Anthony Hort’s Greek text of the New Testament. This led Rotherham to revise his New Testament twice, in 1878 and 1897, to stay abreast of scholarly developments.
The entire Bible with the Old Testament appeared in 1902. Rotherham based his Old Testament translation on Dr. C. D Ginsburg’s comprehensive Masoretico-critical edition of the Hebrew Bible that anticipated readings now widely accepted.




Rotherham’s translation has stayed in print over the years because of the wealth of information it presents. John R Kohlenberger III says in his preface to the 1994 printing, “The Emphasized Bible is one of the most innovative and thoroughly researched translations ever done by a single individual. Its presentation of emphases and grammatical features of the original languages still reward careful study.” Continue reading