JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

and James I, reflected the “Anglican Compromise.” The Scotsman
John Knox was the most prominent Briton to take refuge
from the Catholic restoration of Mary, in Geneva, where
he began to study Hebrew. At the time, not only was *Calvin
himself teaching there, but French and Italian Bible-making
was also in progress. English versions of Psalms were issued
from 1557 on, corrected, and finally superseded by the complete
Geneva or “Breeches” Bible (so-called from its rendering
of Gen. 3: 7) of 1560, an elegant and powerful rendering
that retains much of Tyndale’s accomplishment. It was the
first English version in which the poetic sections of the Hebrew
Bible – fully half of the text – were translated directly
from the original. Typographically, additional words which
were idiomatically essential were printed in italic type; the remainder,
in roman instead of the black letter of earlier prints.
It also contained illustrations and, more importantly, helpful
notes which clarify the text at many points. The influence
of David Kimh'i’s commentaries may be observed in the Geneva
Bible, which was reprinted until 1644, in well over one
hundred editions, reflecting its hold on English hearts until
finally overtaken by KJV. It was the Bible of Shakespeare and
the Pilgrims.
The next major translation, the Bishops’ Bible (1568), was
fathered by Archbishop Parker, himself responsible for translating
Genesis, Exodus, and some of the New Testament. It
was intended to offset the pressures of the returned exiles of
Mary’s reign for an English church settlement on Calvinistic
lines and the popularity of their Geneva version from which,
however, the Bishops retained some notes and renderings.
The contributors were enjoined to avoid polemical exegesis,
and were directed to correct the Great Bible, following
Pagninus and Muenster for the Hebrew. This Bible was not
a great success; its importance lies in its forming the basis
of the Authorized Version of 1611, which, in the opinion of
many, would have been better served by taking the Geneva
Bible as its model.
English Catholics who fled to Flanders under Elizabeth I
produced their own New Testament at Rheims (1582), followed
by the Old Testament printed at Douai (1609–10). This version
– characterized by the outspokenly apologetic tone of its
editorial matter – was naturally based on the Latin Vulgate.
THE KING JAMES, OR “AUTHORIZED,” VERSION, 1611. The
incomplete success of the Bishops’ Bible had made James I
sympathetic to pleas from scholars – especially, perhaps, the
Hebraist Hugh *Broughton – for a fresh translation; after its
publication in 1611, printing of the Bishops’ Bible was discontinued,
and thus the King James version became – without any
explicit declaration – the “Authorized” Version, i.e., that “appointed
to be read in churches.” The work of translation was
done by a team of 54, in Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge;
the 47 identified translators including most of the best English
Orientalists (although Broughton was himself too cantankerous
to be included) and Greek scholars. By now there were
much-improved tools of biblical scholarship in the shape of
bible
dictionaries and The Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Biblia Regia)
of 1572, and the team included experts in the cognate Oriental
languages, particularly Syriac and Arabic. In addition, the
translators paid substantial attention to the Latin version of
the Hebrew by the apostate Jew Immanuel *Tremellius (1579),
who had settled in England and taught at Cambridge. Then,
too, the Geneva Bible notes are said to have made James uncomfortable.
The Bishops’ Bible was the basis of the new work;
that of Geneva contributed something in precision, and that
of Rheims, some Latinizing vocabulary, although standard
Anglican ecclesiastical terms were retained. Caution sometimes
relegated the correct translation to the status of a marginal
variant. Further editorial treatment – other than chapter
summaries and headlines – was excluded a priori; the loss
of the Geneva notes is particularly unfortunate. At the same
time, some of the translators’ own notes have survived, and
the full introduction to the translation is immensely illuminating.
As for the language of the work, by 1611, the diction
and grammar were slightly archaic, and although the Geneva
version was far from being superseded – Lancelot *Andrewes,
himself one of King James’ translators, continued to use it in
his sermons, and it is quoted in the introduction to KJV – the
Authorized Version ultimately achieved, and has retained, a
preeminent and quasi-sacrosanct position within the Englishspeaking
world. Of other unofficial English ventures in translation
prior to the late 19th century none achieved widespread
popularity save H. Ainsworth’s Psalms (1612), introduced by
the Pilgrim Fathers to America, and sundry metrical Psalters
such as that of Tate and Brady (1696).
G. Hammond notes that one of the great merits of the
KJV, despite its defects of a tone that is sometimes too lofty
and a tendency to flatten the style, so that the entire Bible
reads as if it were a uniform text, is that in its “care to maintain
verbal equivalence” – that is, to in the main keep key words
in English as they repeat in the Hebrew – it manages to both
echo Hebrew style and create an equivalent in English. It
also, following Tyndale, reproduces the Hebrew copula vav,
usually by “and,” a practice dropped by many modern translations.
1611–1945. Subsequent nonofficial translations have been inspired
partly by doctrinal and sectarian considerations (for
Jewish enterprises), partly by a scholarly desire for improved
accuracy, and partly by the motive of either “improving” the
literary quality of the English (e.g., E. Harwood, New Testament,
1768) or colloquializing it (e.g., D. Mace, New Testament,
1729). A Revised Version of the Bible was published in
Britain in 1881 (New Testament) and 1885 (Old Testament)
in order to modernize the 17th-century language of the King
James and to revise it in accordance with 19th-century scholarship.
The American Standard Version, in cooperation with
the Revised, appeared in 1901. Both translations soon proved
of great importance to scholarship, but were not widely employed
in worship. Subsequent versions created by individuals
were those of J. Moffatt (1913–24; revised 1935), E.J. Goodspeed
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3 613