BretLudwig
November 18th 08, 11:04 PM
In the English language at the time of the founding of America, English
speaking Protestants used the Authorized Version of 1611, in a 1740s
edition. There were other Bibles but the main one was the Geneva Bible,
often called "the Breeches Bible".
A leading source quotes:
"If you have paid any attention to English drama, you have read the
Duchess of Malfi, by Shakespeare's greatest contemporary. You may even
have seen one of the rare productions of that deeply moving tragedy. And
you remember the horrible scene in which a group of madmen, placed in an
apartment next to the one in which the Duchess is confined, so that their
uproar will prevent sleep at night and obtund her ears by day, are sent
into her presence and rave, each yelling out the revelation he wants to
communicate to the world. One of them, you remember, proclaims, "We are
only to be saved by the Helvetian translation." (The episode ends when the
Duchess mistakes for one of the madmen the assassin whom her brothers have
sent to strangle her.)
You recognized the allusion to what is called the Geneva Bible, and
recognized that allusion as another gibe at the Puritans, such as a
madman's earlier disclosure of the scatological composition of the syrup
that a clever apothecary sells to the Puritans to soothe their throats
when they become hoarse with perpetual ranting and exhortation.
Although the Calvinistic translation of the Bible was extremely popular in
its day--a bibliographer found in two English collections a hundred and
forty editions (reprintings) of it published between 1560 and 1644, and
there were probably scores of printings that escaped the collectors--you
would probably have to go to a large library to see a copy of it today,
although everyone knows one passage in it, the passage in Genesis in which
we are told that when Adam and Eve discovered they were naked, "they sewed
fig leaves together and made themselves breeches," thus anticipating
today's feminine styles.
(( Note: The author wrote this originally in the early 1960s, when Doris
Day was fashionable in 'pedal-pushers'. Bret.))
That is apt to give the impression that the "Breeches Bible" is just a
curiosity, like the very rare and expensive copies of Bibles in which
Yahweh commands "Thou shalt commit adultery" (thus anticipating the creed
of so many evangelicals today) or predicts, with unwonted accuracy, "the
unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God," or states a sad truism,
"The fool has said in his heart there is a god." (1) But that is to ignore
the importance of the Genevan Bible in the long and gloomy history of
Christian fantasies about their superstition.
I was astonished the other day to discover that the Geneva Bible is back
in print in a photographically enlarged reproduction of an edition of
1599, which contains the text of the translation and the accompanying mass
of marginal notes that interpret the text in strictly Calvinistic terms.
The republication, said to weigh 6 1/2 pounds, may be obtained for $120.00
from the National Christians (P.O. Box 1839, Ocala, Florida; 32678), who
describe it as "certainly the cornerstone of our forefathers['] faith and
of our heritage." So, if you are interested in the sad history of Western
Christianity, here is your chance to own a very significant edition of the
Bible, which, you may be sure, your Christian friends have never seen.
The advertisement for this new edition, however, is simply breath-taking,
It begins
'In 1557, a then unknown clergyman, John Calvin, undertook to
translate the complete Bible into English. Calvin's Bible, which came to
be known as the Geneva Bible, was printed from 1560 to 1644 in over 200
different printings.'
This is so typical a consequence of religious fervor that I must comment
on it.
[1] In 1557 Calvin was the most famous heresiarch in Europe. He was the
virtual dictator of Geneva, which he had made a theocracy, ruled by God,
who, however, was busy elsewhere and had named Calvin as his Vice-Regent.
From this fortress of holiness he launched verbal lightning-bolts against
the Anabaptists, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, and all other
servants of Satan, and he had attained even greater and extraordinary
celebrity in 1553 by covertly exposing the pseudonym under which Michael
Servetus had concealed his authorship of Christianismi restitutio,
insuring his conviction by supplying as a specimen of his handwriting a
letter that Servetus had written under the impression that in Calvin he
was addressing a friendly fellow Protestant, and when Servetus escaped
from prison and passed through Geneva on his way to a refuge in Germany,
having him arrested and burned at the stake. (2) In 1557, Calvin may have
been the most famous man in all of Europe.
The advertisement goes on to assure us that
'The Geneva Bible was the Bible of choice for William Shakespeare and
John Milton. The 1599 edition was the Bible the Pilgrims were holding when
they stepped on Plymouth Rock. ... This Bible [is] the foundation stone
upon which our Christian American Republic was laid.'
Welladay! Christians are incorrigible, so we must note that Shakespeare
(whether he was the actor or the Earl of Oxford), like Webster, whose
opinion I indicated above, and everyone connected with the theatre,
detested the Puritans and all their works, since attending theatrical
performances was high on those fanatics' list of deadly sins for which
Yahweh ordained drastic punishment. I do not recall having read anything
in which Milton expresses an opinion about translations of the Bible, but
he was a Puritan. The Pilgrims probably did have a copy of the Geneva
Bible, which was extremely popular in England, where it was proscribed by
law and possession of a copy was sometimes treated as a felony. Many of
the founders of the United States (e.g., George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin--assuming that he was not really an atheist)
were Deists; many more were, at least nominally, Anglicans, who would have
spurned the Puritans' seditious version of their holy book; and even many
of the influential descendants of the Puritans in New England (e.g., John
Adams) had abandoned Calvinism. The American Republic, which lasted until
1861, was based on political abstention from every variety of religion."
The Catholic priests and scholars used a Latin version called the
Vulgate. Such Catholic laypeople as possessed and read a Bible generally
went for the Douay-Rheims Bible. At no time in U.S. history did orthodox
Catholic teaching prohibit lay reading of the Bible, but as late as 1960
most Catholic households in the US contained no Bible or had a KJV or
other unchurchworthy one laying about the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay-Rheims_Bible
Today there are roughly 80 versions of the Bible available in the English
language, of which perhaps ten constitute the most commonly sold ones. The
KJV tends to be commonly available not so much through the preferences of
the literary preferrers of it or from KJV-Only fetishist pressure
(KJV-Onlyists are no more numerous than Sabbatarian fundamentalists-e.g.,
most all Sabbatarians besides SDAers-or perhaps even snake handlers) but
because it is out of copyright in the USA and no fees need to be paid to
print it, even to copy the typeset from early-20th-Century printings of
it.
The ultimate authority on these speaks forthrightly:
"There are innumerable English translations of the Bible, but in all of
them the stories are essentially the same, differing only in diction and
in details that concern only theologians who use them to whet their own
axes. The Bible is not like another famous story-book, usually called the
Arabian Nights, of which the four commonly used English translations
differ enormously in content."
--
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/group/rec.audio.opinion/
More information at http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/faq.html
speaking Protestants used the Authorized Version of 1611, in a 1740s
edition. There were other Bibles but the main one was the Geneva Bible,
often called "the Breeches Bible".
A leading source quotes:
"If you have paid any attention to English drama, you have read the
Duchess of Malfi, by Shakespeare's greatest contemporary. You may even
have seen one of the rare productions of that deeply moving tragedy. And
you remember the horrible scene in which a group of madmen, placed in an
apartment next to the one in which the Duchess is confined, so that their
uproar will prevent sleep at night and obtund her ears by day, are sent
into her presence and rave, each yelling out the revelation he wants to
communicate to the world. One of them, you remember, proclaims, "We are
only to be saved by the Helvetian translation." (The episode ends when the
Duchess mistakes for one of the madmen the assassin whom her brothers have
sent to strangle her.)
You recognized the allusion to what is called the Geneva Bible, and
recognized that allusion as another gibe at the Puritans, such as a
madman's earlier disclosure of the scatological composition of the syrup
that a clever apothecary sells to the Puritans to soothe their throats
when they become hoarse with perpetual ranting and exhortation.
Although the Calvinistic translation of the Bible was extremely popular in
its day--a bibliographer found in two English collections a hundred and
forty editions (reprintings) of it published between 1560 and 1644, and
there were probably scores of printings that escaped the collectors--you
would probably have to go to a large library to see a copy of it today,
although everyone knows one passage in it, the passage in Genesis in which
we are told that when Adam and Eve discovered they were naked, "they sewed
fig leaves together and made themselves breeches," thus anticipating
today's feminine styles.
(( Note: The author wrote this originally in the early 1960s, when Doris
Day was fashionable in 'pedal-pushers'. Bret.))
That is apt to give the impression that the "Breeches Bible" is just a
curiosity, like the very rare and expensive copies of Bibles in which
Yahweh commands "Thou shalt commit adultery" (thus anticipating the creed
of so many evangelicals today) or predicts, with unwonted accuracy, "the
unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God," or states a sad truism,
"The fool has said in his heart there is a god." (1) But that is to ignore
the importance of the Genevan Bible in the long and gloomy history of
Christian fantasies about their superstition.
I was astonished the other day to discover that the Geneva Bible is back
in print in a photographically enlarged reproduction of an edition of
1599, which contains the text of the translation and the accompanying mass
of marginal notes that interpret the text in strictly Calvinistic terms.
The republication, said to weigh 6 1/2 pounds, may be obtained for $120.00
from the National Christians (P.O. Box 1839, Ocala, Florida; 32678), who
describe it as "certainly the cornerstone of our forefathers['] faith and
of our heritage." So, if you are interested in the sad history of Western
Christianity, here is your chance to own a very significant edition of the
Bible, which, you may be sure, your Christian friends have never seen.
The advertisement for this new edition, however, is simply breath-taking,
It begins
'In 1557, a then unknown clergyman, John Calvin, undertook to
translate the complete Bible into English. Calvin's Bible, which came to
be known as the Geneva Bible, was printed from 1560 to 1644 in over 200
different printings.'
This is so typical a consequence of religious fervor that I must comment
on it.
[1] In 1557 Calvin was the most famous heresiarch in Europe. He was the
virtual dictator of Geneva, which he had made a theocracy, ruled by God,
who, however, was busy elsewhere and had named Calvin as his Vice-Regent.
From this fortress of holiness he launched verbal lightning-bolts against
the Anabaptists, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, and all other
servants of Satan, and he had attained even greater and extraordinary
celebrity in 1553 by covertly exposing the pseudonym under which Michael
Servetus had concealed his authorship of Christianismi restitutio,
insuring his conviction by supplying as a specimen of his handwriting a
letter that Servetus had written under the impression that in Calvin he
was addressing a friendly fellow Protestant, and when Servetus escaped
from prison and passed through Geneva on his way to a refuge in Germany,
having him arrested and burned at the stake. (2) In 1557, Calvin may have
been the most famous man in all of Europe.
The advertisement goes on to assure us that
'The Geneva Bible was the Bible of choice for William Shakespeare and
John Milton. The 1599 edition was the Bible the Pilgrims were holding when
they stepped on Plymouth Rock. ... This Bible [is] the foundation stone
upon which our Christian American Republic was laid.'
Welladay! Christians are incorrigible, so we must note that Shakespeare
(whether he was the actor or the Earl of Oxford), like Webster, whose
opinion I indicated above, and everyone connected with the theatre,
detested the Puritans and all their works, since attending theatrical
performances was high on those fanatics' list of deadly sins for which
Yahweh ordained drastic punishment. I do not recall having read anything
in which Milton expresses an opinion about translations of the Bible, but
he was a Puritan. The Pilgrims probably did have a copy of the Geneva
Bible, which was extremely popular in England, where it was proscribed by
law and possession of a copy was sometimes treated as a felony. Many of
the founders of the United States (e.g., George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin--assuming that he was not really an atheist)
were Deists; many more were, at least nominally, Anglicans, who would have
spurned the Puritans' seditious version of their holy book; and even many
of the influential descendants of the Puritans in New England (e.g., John
Adams) had abandoned Calvinism. The American Republic, which lasted until
1861, was based on political abstention from every variety of religion."
The Catholic priests and scholars used a Latin version called the
Vulgate. Such Catholic laypeople as possessed and read a Bible generally
went for the Douay-Rheims Bible. At no time in U.S. history did orthodox
Catholic teaching prohibit lay reading of the Bible, but as late as 1960
most Catholic households in the US contained no Bible or had a KJV or
other unchurchworthy one laying about the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay-Rheims_Bible
Today there are roughly 80 versions of the Bible available in the English
language, of which perhaps ten constitute the most commonly sold ones. The
KJV tends to be commonly available not so much through the preferences of
the literary preferrers of it or from KJV-Only fetishist pressure
(KJV-Onlyists are no more numerous than Sabbatarian fundamentalists-e.g.,
most all Sabbatarians besides SDAers-or perhaps even snake handlers) but
because it is out of copyright in the USA and no fees need to be paid to
print it, even to copy the typeset from early-20th-Century printings of
it.
The ultimate authority on these speaks forthrightly:
"There are innumerable English translations of the Bible, but in all of
them the stories are essentially the same, differing only in diction and
in details that concern only theologians who use them to whet their own
axes. The Bible is not like another famous story-book, usually called the
Arabian Nights, of which the four commonly used English translations
differ enormously in content."
--
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/group/rec.audio.opinion/
More information at http://www.talkaboutaudio.com/faq.html