What is The Bishops' Bible?

The Bishops’ Bible was a 1568 English translation of the Bible produced under the authority of the established Church of England. The Church of England deemed the translation necessary for two reasons: first, the Great Bible, the only version authorized for use in the Anglican Church at the time, was admittedly deficient, with much of the Old Testament having been translated from the Latin Vulgate. Second, the alternative to the Great Bible was the Geneva Bible, which included Calvinistic notes and seen as too “Presbyterian” for use by Anglicans.

So, a group of bishops and scholars, with oversight from Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker, produced a new translation of the Bible. By and by it came to be known as the “Bishops’ Bible.” The first edition included 124 full-page illustrations. The Bishops’ Bible was substantially revised in 1572. The revision sported several adjustments, including the intentional use of more “ecclesiastical” language. For example, both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible used the word love in 1 Corinthians 13; the Bishops’ Bible was the first to use the word charity instead. The revised edition was later prescribed as the base text for the Authorized King James Version of 1611.

The Bishops’ Bible was authorized to be read in church, although the Geneva Bible remained the favorite of the people for reading at home. The bishops met their goal of excising Calvinistic leanings from the text of their Bible: the offending study notes and cross-references of the Geneva Bible were gone. The Bishops’ Bible saw more than fifty editions published.

The Bishops’ Bible—Translation Method

Under the direction of Matthew Parker, who himself answered to Queen Elizabeth I, portions of the biblical text were assigned to various revisers, the majority of whom were bishops. Some passages were translated directly from the original Greek and Hebrew, using the Great Bible as a guide. Other passages seem to have been simple English revisions of the Great Bible. In both Old and New Testaments, the translators also turned to the Geneva Bible as a basis for the translation process.

The Bishops’ Bible—Pro’s and Con’s

Because of lax supervisory editing, translation quality varies greatly from book to book, and inconsistencies are evident. For example, in most of the Old Testament the tetragrammaton YHWH is represented by “the Lord,” and the Hebrew Elohim is represented by “God.” But in the Psalms that practice is reversed. Describing the translation, one commentator remarked, “Where it reprints Geneva it is acceptable, but most of the original work is incompetent, both in its scholarship and its verbosity” (Daniell, D., Tyndale’s New Testament, Yale University, 1989, p. xii). Unlike other Bibles from the same era, the Bishops’ Bible has rarely been reprinted, and the archaic language makes it all but unusable for the modern reader.

The Bishops’ Bible—Sample Verses

John 1:1, 14 – “In the begynnyng was the worde, & the worde was with God: and that worde was God.” “And the same word became fleshe, and dwelt among vs (and we sawe the glory of it, as the glory of the only begotten sonne of the father) full of grace and trueth.”

John 3:16 – “For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in hym, shoulde not perishe, but haue euerlastyng lyfe.”

John 8:58 – “Iesus sayde vnto them: Ueryly, veryly I saye vnto you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Ephesians 2:8–9 – “For by grace are ye made safe through fayth, and that not of your selues, it is the gyft of God: Not of workes, lest any man shoulde boast hym selfe.”

Titus 2:13 – “Lokyng for that blessed hope and appearyng of the glorie of the great God, and our sauiour Iesus Christe,”