The New King James Version, as the name implies, is not a completely new translation, but a conservative and careful revision of that most influential Bible translation in any modern language, the Authorized or King James Version. What is not nearly so well known is that the King James Bible itself was not a new version, even when it appeared in 1611. That translation, too, was a conservative and careful revision of several English Bibles produced and revised between 1526 and 1610. Many Christians know little of how much blood,1 sweat, and tears went into the great English Bible tradition that we enjoy. The story is worth telling.
Even though the first complete English Bible had very little effect on the Tyndale—King James/New King James continuum, for completeness we would like to start with that “morning star of the Reformation,” John Wycliffe.
The First Wycliffe Translator (1382)
The Wycliffe Bible Translators are known around the world for their much-needed and splendid work of putting God’s Word into the minority languages and dialects of the world—not only in the Third World, but also in the native tongues of North, Central, and South America. The organization is named after the scholarly Oxford don who can truly be called the first “Wycliffe” translator—John Wycliffe himself (1320?–1384). Wycliffe translated his New Testament very literally from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Greek. Thus it was a translation of a translation, and naturally lost some precision in the process. Nevertheless, it was a landmark in Bible translation nearly a century before the invention of printing. The entire Bible was later finished with the help of other scholars, such as William Hereford. Many copies were made by hand, but it was dangerous to possess even a page of this manuscript because of ecclesiastical opposition to God’s Word in the language of the people.
The King James tradition retains only a few Wycliffe renderings, since the seventeenth-century translators were not revising his translation, but rather the Tyndale and later Bibles until 1610. Three interesting Wycliffe renderings are: “the sword of the ghost,” “a good knight of Jesus Christ,” and “the helm of helth” (the helmet of salvation).
Treasures from Tyndale
Cuthbert Tonstall, bishop of London, was hosting a bonfire in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. What was that cleric burning? Bibles! Indeed, they were the first printed New Testaments in English (1526), translated by William Tyndale. We suspect that the bishop would have liked to have cast Tyndale into the flames too. But that came later. The prelate had two goals: to buy up and burn Tyndale’s New Testament, and to squelch the movement towards biblical reform.
Tonstall succeeded fairly well in his first goal—only two or three copies of Tyndale’s first edition exist today.2 Ironically, the money that the bishop spent on the first edition helped to finance an improved edition. (Later editions are a part of all major English Bibles, even if sometimes used only for the purpose of correcting details.) And of course the bishop’s second objective was a failure. Biblical reform did go forward, in answer to godly Tyndale’s dying prayer.
Since Tyndale is such an important figure in the KJV/NKJV story, we would like to give the highlights of his remarkable ministry.
Tyndale’s Translating Ministry
William Tyndale (1494?–1536) was from a well-to-do family and received his B.A. degree from Oxford in 1512. His M.S. degree was conferred in 1515. Tyndale then left Oxford for Cambridge where he spent about seven years. At Cambridge he was inspired to study Greek and theology. He was also influenced by John Colet’s literal method of interpreting Scripture in opposition to the allegorical method used by the church. It was evidently the influence of Erasmus of Rotterdam that impressed Tyndale with a great urgency to translate God’s Word into the language of his own people. Erasmus had published a Greek New Testament in 1516 that became a basis of Luther’s Bible on the Continent. Tyndale’s desire was no doubt enhanced by the appearance of Luther’s German translation in 1522.
Once, while debating, a certain learned man told him, “We were better to be without God’s laws than the pope’s.” Tyndale answered, “I defy the pope and all his laws; if God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.”3
Tyndale determined to translate from the original Greek and Hebrew, and for this task he was eminently qualified. He was fluent, not only in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, but also in Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German.
As we have seen, the bishop of London opposed Tyndale’s idea of an authorized English Bible, and it soon became apparent that there was no possibility of making his translation in England. So, in 1524, Tyndale sailed for Germany where he translated his New Testament in the safety of Lutheran Wittenburg. He would never again see the shores of his native England.
Unlike modern scholars Tyndale had very few technical helps, such as grammars, lexicons, and other scholarly works. He had no Greek manuscripts, and his only Greek New Testament was the third edition of Erasmus’ work. Tyndale’s rendering was independent and refreshingly original, based neither on Wycliffe nor on any other work. It was a Bible intended for the people, not for scholars.
When his work on the New Testament was nearing completion, Tyndale moved to Cologne to print the first edition. His enemies halted the printing, but he was able to escape to Worms with a supply of the first ten sheets (eighty pages) which he published separately in 1525. These pages contain Tyndale’s Prologue and most of Matthew’s Gospel. The only surviving copy is in the British Museum.
In the spring of 1526, the first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament (6,000 copies) came off the press—the first complete English New Testament ever printed. Most of these were smuggled into England. But in October 1526, as we have seen, the bishop of London ordered all copies of Tyndale’s New Testament destroyed.
Old Testament Work (1530)
During the next four years Tyndale evidently learned Hebrew from Jewish rabbis in Germany and began translating the Old Testament. At Marburg, on January 17, 1530, he published his first Old Testament work, the Pentateuch. As with the New Testament, Tyndale had few scholarly resource materials for translating from Hebrew. His Hebrew text was probably the recently printed second Bomberg edition of the Rabbinic Bible (1525).
Soon after publishing the Pentateuch, Tyndale moved to the safe sanctuary afforded foreign merchants within the walls of the free city of Antwerp. In 1531 he published the Book of Jonah, and in 1534 he produced a second edition of the Pentateuch. He continued to translate the Old Testament, but no more of it was published during his lifetime.
Tyndale’s Revised New Testament (1535, 1536)
In addition to his work on the Old Testament, Tyndale worked extensively on improving the New Testament. In November of 1534 he published his first revised edition and in 1535 the second revised edition of the New Testament. This was his final work of publication.
Tyndale’s Martyrdom (1536)
In late May of 1535, Tyndale was lured outside the safety of the walls of the free city by a false friend and betrayed to officers. He was then taken prisoner to the Castle of Vilford, where he remained until his death, there continuing his translation of the Old Testament to the end of 1 and 2 Chronicles. Although he was unable to finish the Old Testament, Tyndale evidently translated portions of other Old Testament books.
In August of 1536, Tyndale was sentenced to die the death of a heretic—strangulation and burning at the stake. The infamous sentence was carried out on October 6, 1536, after the saintly martyr cried out his last prayer, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”
Tyndale’s dying prayer was soon answered. Before the end of 1537 the first volume of the English Bible ever printed in England (Tyndale’s translation with a few changes) came off the presses of the king’s own printer, and was made available to the common people of England. Now it was indeed possible for a plowboy to read and know God’s Word in his native tongue!
Tyndale’s Biblical Legacy
The debt that lovers of the Bible owe to Tyndale can scarcely be overstated. R. Demaus, a biographer of the translator, writes:
The English New Testament, as we now have it, is, in its substance, the unchanged language of Tyndale’s first version. The English Bible has been subjected to repeated revisions; the scholarship of generations, better provided than Tyndale was with critical apparatus, has been brought to bear upon it; writers, by no means overly-friendly to the original translator, have had it in their power to disparage and displace his work; yet, in spite of all these influences, that Book to which all Englishmen turn as the source, and the guide, and the stay of their spiritual life, is still substantially the translation of Tyndale. And most emphatically may it be said of those passages of the New Testament which are most intimately associated with our deepest religious emotions, that it is the actual unchanged words of the original translator which are treasured up in our hearts, and are so potent in impressing the soul.4
Comparing Tyndale’s Work
Since Tyndale’s work is so very foundational to our traditions, we feel it is worth giving a selection of his New Testament (John 14:1–11) compared with the 1611 KJV and the NKJV. Fully ninety percent of the King James New Testament is Tyndale’s wording. For the sake of historical interest we retain the sixteenth-century spelling in Tyndale’s column and the seventeenth-century spelling in the King James column. For convenience we have added the verse numbers to Tyndale’s text.
Tyndale’s Contribution to English
What Luther’s Bible did for German, what Calvin’s Institutes and Commentaries did for French to a lesser degree, Tyndale’s Bible did for the English tongue. Demaus explains:
Even as a literary work the issue of Tyndale’s translation forms an important era in our history. At a time when the English language was still unformed; when it had not as yet been the vehicle of any great literary undertaking; when men of learning still looked upon it as an imperfect instrument, fit only for commonplace purposes, Tyndale showed that its capacity was unbounded; that in simplicity, majesty, strength, musical flow, ability to relate gracefully and perspicuously, to touch the feelings, to awe by its solemnity, to express the highest truths in the clearest words, it yields to no other language ancient or modern…in thus holding up before the nation, in a book which has become sanctified by the reverence of ten generations, a model of the highest literary excellence, simple, honest, and manly; free alike from the pedantry of the verbal scholar, and the affected point and force of the mere man of letters, he has exercised a permanent influence of the most beneficial kind over the literary taste of the English people.6
From Tyndale to King James
Some people incorrectly say that the Authorized Version assumed supremacy because it had no rivals. Indeed, several complete Protestant Bibles and one Roman Catholic Bible appeared between 1534 and 1610. Most of these used Tyndale’s base to a greater or lesser degree. Besides the Coverdale Bible (1534), there was the Matthew Bible (1537), the Taverner Bible (1539), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops’ Bible (1568), and the Roman Catholic Douai-Rheims Bible (1609–10). Each Bible had some good features and phrases that are still current in the KJV/NKJV tradition.
These revisions were due partly to the expedience of making the work acceptable to king and clergy. Until modern times all English Bibles after Tyndale, including the KJV, were revisions of previous editions. An important feature of each revision was a restyling of the language, conforming to current literary usage.
The Coverdale Bible (1534)
Miles Coverdale (1488?–1569) has the distinction of producing the first complete printed Bible in the English language. He was ordained a priest about 1526 and became an Augustinian friar. Educated at Cambridge, he came under the influence of the Protestant Reformation but was endangered in the church by his new ideas. So he left the Augustinian order and fled for safety to the Continent, where he lived from 1528 to 1535.
He spent some time in Hamburg helping Tyndale with his work, and again later in Antwerp as a proofreader. Led to produce his own English Bible, Coverdale modified Tyndale’s New Testament and Pentateuch with only minor revisions. But Tyndale’s translation of Joshua through Chronicles was not available, so he translated the rest of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha from the Latin, also using available German versions.
Because the Coverdale Bible appeared on the scene at an opportune time, it was not opposed. Nobody noticed that it contained the “heretic” Tyndale’s work, and it was an immediate success with the people. The second edition (1537), under license of the king, seems a direct answer to Tyndale’s dying prayer.
Although Coverdale’s Bible was not translated entirely from the original languages, he did make some significant contributions. Besides editing the first complete English Bible, Coverdale restored such old ecclesiastical words as church7 and bishop. He was the first to separate the Apocrypha from the Old Testament, contrary to their arrangement in the Latin Vulgate.8
Coverdale’s English, especially in the Psalms, is musical and beautifully phrased. His Psalter appeared in the Book of Common Prayer for centuries after the KJV had been adopted by the Church of England.
Matthew’s Bible (1537)
Tyndale had given John Rogers his unfinished manuscripts of the Old Testament. With these manuscripts plus Coverdale’s first edition, Rogers produced his Bible under the fictitious name of Thomas Matthew in order to confuse the Roman Catholic Inquisition. He revised Tyndale’s translation of Genesis through Chronicles, plus Jonah, and Tyndale’s 1535 New Testament. For the rest of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha he revised Coverdale’s translation.
Because Protestant Archbishop Cranmer liked Matthew’s Bible, he requested that it be licensed by the king. As a result Matthew’s Bible, with a foreword by Cranmer, was published in England in 1537 under license of the king—a second answer to Tyndale’s prayer.
Returning to England for the publication of his Bible, Rogers experienced success until persecution once again sprang up under “Bloody” Mary Tudor. In 1555 he became the first martyr to be burned at Smithfield during her reign.
The Taverner Bible (1539)
One of the lesser-known Bibles from this era is the work of Richard Taverner. His Bible was a revision of Matthew’s Bible. Although it had little effect on later English Bibles, it is worth mentioning for the sake of completeness. Taverner, a layman, was a very competent Greek scholar. His contribution in translating the Greek New Testament was bringing greater accuracy to the English text. This was especially true regarding the definite article, an important item in Greek grammar. One phrase that the King James and New King James owe to this scholarly layman is in Hebrews 1:3 where the Son is called “the express image” of God’s person.
The Great Bible (1539)
In 1536 Cranmer again petitioned King Henry VIII to authorize the production of an English Bible suitable for use in the churches. While anticipating such authorization, Thomas Cromwell, then Vicar General to the king, had Coverdale produce a revision of Matthew’s Bible with an Old Testament more faithful to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek originals—as well as to several Latin translations. The reformers were disappointed, however, that there was so much Latin influence in this work.
The first edition came out in 1539, in large folio with black letters, without notes. Its name, The Great Bible, was partly due to its large size (11 × 16½ inches) and partly due to its fine workmanship. When the Inquisition tried to halt the work, the finished pages had to be smuggled into England from France, where they were printed.
Thomas Cromwell had prepared the way for the Great Bible in 1538 by issuing an injunction that before a specified day each church should have “one boke of the whole Bible, in the largest volume, in Englyshe, sett up in summe convenyent place within the churche that ye have cure of, whereat your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and reat yt.” This made the Great Bible the only English version authorized to be used in the churches. These Bibles were often chained to the lecterns to prevent their removal.
The Great Bible became very popular, even though its sponsor, Thomas Cromwell, lost favor with the king and was executed in 1540. It went through seven editions in two years and remained dominant for almost thirty years.
The latter years of Henry VIII were characterized by an anti-Protestant reaction. The reformers were not in the royal favor, and the king restricted the use of the English Bible. Except for the Great Bible, English Bibles and Testaments were burned in 1546. Ultimately Rogers, like Cranmer, was martyred. Miles Coverdale narrowly escaped by fleeing England.
The Geneva Bible (1560)
Many Puritans and Calvinists were not fully satisfied with the Great Bible. During the anti-Protestant persecution under “Bloody” Mary, many of these people fled to Geneva, where John Calvin was teaching, and settled there. Some of these exiles undertook to revise thoroughly the Great Bible in order to correct the faults they found in it. The New Testament (1557), a revision of Tyndale’s work, was translated by William Whittingham, who was related to Calvin by marriage. The complete Bible was issued in 1560. Whittingham was also a principal contributor to the Old Testament, which was a revision of the 1550 edition of the Great Bible. Others who contributed were John Knox and Miles Coverdale. The project was supervised by John Calvin and Theodore Beza. All of these revisers were competent Hebrew scholars.
The Bible was printed in clear Roman type, with italics used for words supplied by the translators. Marginal comments with notes, maps, tables, and illustrations were also a prominent feature of this handy-sized Bible. For the first time in any English Bible, verse divisions and numbers were used, following the system introduced by Robert Stephanus. The books of the Apocrypha were separated from the Old Testament, with an introduction clearly stating that they were not canonical.
So successful was the Geneva Bible that it completely overshadowed the Great Bible, which was not printed after 1569. The Geneva translation underwent over 140 editions, the last one in 1644. It retained popularity over the Bishops’ Bible and even over the KJV for a generation. Scottish families made this version their household Bible.
The Bishops’ Bible (1568)
The superior quality of the Geneva Bible made further use of the Great Bible awkward, if not impossible. Although fully accepted in Scotland and quite popular with the English people, the Geneva Bible was unacceptable to the clergy because of its strong Calvinistic notes. To resolve the problem, Archbishop Matthew Parker proposed that the Great Bible be revised. Parker himself was made editor-in-chief of the revision. He appointed a committee of bishops to do the work with the help of other scholars, thus making the Bishops’ Bible the first version to be produced by a committee. The bishops were instructed to avoid “bitter notes,” and to select refined words in good taste. For example, “wantons and buggerers” (Geneva) became “weaklings and abusers of self with mankind” (1 Corinthians 6:9). A similar guideline was followed by the NKJV translators (see Chapter 8, “Something Blue”).
The work was completed in seven years and issued in 1568. Because of the variety of contributors and a lack of coordination, the Bishops’ Bible was of uneven merit. Even though it was the least successful of the English versions, it still underwent nineteen editions, the last in 1606. Throughout the translation’s forty-year lifespan it was overshadowed by the Geneva Bible and finally replaced by the KJV.
The Douai Bible (1609–10)
If the Anglican bishops were unhappy with the Geneva Bible, the Roman Catholic bishops were appalled. The hierarchy opposed translating the Scriptures into the language of the common people, but the Catholic laity’s interest in the Geneva Bible was so great that the bishops decided they had better produce an English Bible for Roman Catholics.
Gregory Martin led a team of scholarly English Jesuits in exile at the Seminary of Douai, France, to do the work. The New Testament was printed at Rheims in 1582, and the complete Bible was printed at Douai in 1609–10. It is generally known as the Douai Version. Although reference was made to Greek, Hebrew, and existing English Bibles, the Douai is really a translation of a translation. It contained many anti-Protestant notes. The Douai Version shows obvious dependence on Tyndale, but its English style is frequently unclear, obscure, and much too “Latin.” For example, “The Lord is my Shepherd” (Psalm 23:1, literal Hebrew) comes out “Our Lord ruleth me” (Dominus regit me, Latin). Such words as azymes and prepuces (foreskins) sound odd in a Bible. However, the KJV translators were open-minded enough to use several good Douai readings, and some of the Latin-type words went on to become standard English.
The Douai Bible remained the Bible of English-speaking Roman Catholics until recent times. Its form has been changed by successive revisions, making it much closer to the KJV in phraseology and style.
These varied Bibles, nearly all heavily indebted to the work of Tyndale, laid a firm foundation for the King James or Authorized Version. Each made some contribution in vocabulary, style, phraseology, format, or marginal helps.
In our next chapter we shall consider the construction of the monumental 1611 version itself.
Notes
1. This is literally true. Such translators as Tyndale and Rogers were martyred for their efforts.
2. One is at the Baptist Library in Bristol, England, and one (ironically) at St. Paul’s, where the bonfire was held. (Perhaps some Bible-lover rescued a copy from the flames and slipped it into the Cathedral Library!)
3. W. B. Forbush, ed., Fox’s Book of Martyrs, p. 178.
4. R. Demaus, William Tyndale: A Biography, revised by Richard Lovett, pp. 133–34.
5. The first clause is missing in the first edition—probably a printer’s error. Notice also, in verse 1, that the translator has added an introductory clause.
6. Demaus, Tyndale, p. 137.
7. Tyndale used congregation.
8. This practice has been followed in all English Protestant Bibles ever since, if the Apocrypha is included at all.