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Antwerp Bibles in the King James Version: the Test Case of the Book of Proverbs

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Antwerp Bibles in the King James Version: the Test Case of the Book of Proverbs Antwerp Bibles in the King James Version: The Test Case of the Book of Proverbs Early Modern Translations of the Book of Proverbs (1533-1611) In an article published in the volume “The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic and Cultural Influences” edited by Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones for Cambridge University Press, 1 I argue that the characteristic language of the King James Version is the result of the balancing of opposing tendencies of its predecessors while incorporating them into the text.2 I also argue that the Antwerp English bible translations have played a decisive role in the naissance of the text of the Authorized Version.3 To put it somewhat bluntly, by modern standards of copyright, the Authorized Version would be considered today as a form of plagiarism. It is common knowledge that the King James Version relies heavily on William Tyndale’s biblical translations: scholars estimate that approximately 76-90% of Tyndale’s translation is incorporated verbatim in the King James Bible.4 It is less known, however, that also other Antwerp biblical translations, namely that of George Joye, Myles Coverdale and John Rogers’ Matthew’s Bible made their ways into the most important English Bible Translation. In this paper I would like to investigate how these early English biblical translations, prepared and printed in Antwerp, were employed in the King James Version. To illustrate these two points I will use here the test case of the Book of Proverbs, and will confine my scope to chapter one of the book. 1 Gergely Juhász, “Antwerp Bible Translations in the King James Bible”, in The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic and Cultural Influences, ed. Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 100-123 2 p. 113. 3 Passim. 4 Based on a study of eighteen sampled passages from those portions of the Bible which were translated by Tyndale, Nielson and Skousen proposed the overall figure of 83 percent for the entire Bible. Their study suggests the figures of 76 percent for the Old Testament and 84 percent for the New Testament (Jon Nielson and Royal Skousen, "How Much of the King James Bible Is William Tyndale’s?," Reformation 3 (1998): 49-74. The study by Nielson and Skousen is uncritically copied by other scholars (e.g. David Daniell, The Bible in English. Its History and Influence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 805, n. 813.) It should be noted however that these numbers are only indicative, as the study by Nielson and Skousen is based on a very limited sampling of the texts, most of the passages chosen for their familiarity. The methodology used by the authors is defendable, but not necessarily the best. Their study also indicates that the King James Version and the Wycliffe Bible, two supposedly independent translations made from different source texts and from different languages, have about seventy percent in common (it is not entirely clear from their study which edition of the Wycliffe Bible they used). It should also be noted that the authors did not take into account Tyndale’s 1535 and 1536 New Testament editions, nor Tyndale’s 1530 edition of Genesis. Furthermore they completely ignored George Joye’s two editions of Tyndale’s New Testament (Antwerp, 1534 and 1535) and other sixteenth-century translations. Westcott suggested the estimates of nine tenth (ninety percent) for 1 John and five sixths (eighty-three percent) for Ephesians (Brooke Foss Westcott and William Aldis Wright, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3d ed., (London and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905), 158, n.151.). Donald Coggan accepted the figure of ninety percent: Donald Coggan, The English Bible, (London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League by Longmans Green & Co., 1963), 19. Butterworth’s calculation of eighteen percent is misleading as he based his calculation on matching clauses and phrases only. At the same time, he frequently emphasizes that Tyndale’s wording has made it into the King James Bible essentially without change: Charles C. Butterworth, The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible, 1340-1611, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941), passim., e.g. 56-64. As is the case for several books of the Old Testament, the first printed English translation of Proverbs, of which we see the title page here, was prepared by the Protestant George Joye in 1533 or 1534. Joye was living at the time in self-exposed exile in Antwerp and worked for various printers in the town. He had the terrible misfortune of dying eventually peacefully in his own bed in his native county. Furthermore he had a falling-out both with William Tyndale, the undisputed authority of English Biblical translation of the era and with the much younger martyrologist John Foxe. Accordingly he was carefully excised from all later editions of Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, commonly known as the Book of Martyrs. These events explain the fact that he is virtually unknown today despite his achievement that besides Proverbs, he also prepared the first printed English translations of Psalms, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. The second translation of the Book of Proverbs prepared by another Antwerp exile Myles Coverdale, and was published in the 1535 Coverdale Bible, the first complete printed English Bible, which, as Guido Latré’s research has demonstrated, was also published in Antwerp. Coverdale’s translation was then revised by John Rogers, the chaplain of the English House in Antwerp, for his edition of the Bible published in 1537 under the fictitious name of Thomas Matthew. Coverdale also prepared another revision for the Great Bible, which accommodated some readings from the Vulgate to make it more acceptable to a conservative readership and which remained the authoritative text for two decades. None of these editions were translated from the Masoretic text but relied on various other sources. The 1535 Coverdale Bible claimed that it was based on ‘five sundry interpreters’. There is no agreement in the identification of these ‘five sundry interpreters’ in the secondary literature: beside the Vulgate scholars usually enumerate Luther’s Bible, the Zürich Bible, and Sante Pagnini’s Latin version, to which additionally Erasmus’s Latin New Testament, the Zürich Psalter, or the Worms Bible are sometimes named, though no satisfactory identification has been made. But as I have argued in the abovementioned book chapter, the gratuitous claim that by ‘Dutch’ Coverdale actually meant German (or exclusively German) is mistaken, and given its Antwerp origin, it would make a lot more sense to look among the contemporary Dutch Bible translations as possible sources for Coverdale.5 Though still being a revision of earlier translations, the 1560 Geneva Bible contained the first English rendering of the Book of Proverbs which was compared to the Hebrew text, followed by a series of reactionary biblical editions, generally known as the Bishops’ Bible. The first version of the Bishops’ Bible saw the light of day in 1568. By royal junction its 1602 edition formed the basis for the translators of the KJV. About a year before the publication of the King James Bible, in 1609-1610 Gregory Martin’s translation was published in the Catholic Douai Old Testament. It is generally agreed that it was too late to influence the formulation of the Authorized Version. Also some partial biblical translations and commentaries contained at least parts of the Book of Proverbs in English, such as the 1540 compilation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus,6 the metrical translation of 5 Juhász, “Antwerp Bible Translations in the King James Bible”, p. 104. 6 Here Begynneth the Prouerbs of Solomon. Wherunto is added dyuers other Bookes of the Byble. Uery good and profytable for euery Chrysten man for to know, London: Robert Redman, 1540 [translation from Coverdale Bible]. John Hall published in 1550 (which had been earlier pirated by Thomas Sternhold),7 A godly and learned exposition vppon the proverbs of Solomon printed in London in 1580, being Marceline Outred’s English translation of the Genevan pastor Michael Cope’s French commentary8 or Thomas Wilcox, A Short yet Sound Commentary on the Proverbs of Salomon (London, 1589). These have either contained no new translation or played no significant role in the final formation of the text in the Authorized Version, but some of them will be occasionally mentioned in my paper. Having sketched history of the various editions briefly, let us turn now to the text itself. Verse 1. Salomon kynge of Israel the sonne of Dauid wrote certayn senteces: (Joye) These are the prouerbes of Salomon the sonne of Dauid kynge of Israel (Coverdale) The Prouerbes of Salomon the sonne of Dauid king of Israell (Matthew, Great Bible, Bishops, KJV) The Parables of Salomón the sonne of Dauid King of Israél (Geneva, Douai) ִמ ְׁש ֵלי ְׁשֹלמ ֹה ֶב ָן־ּדוִד ֶמ ֶלְך יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל׃ Parabolae Salamonis, filii David, regis Israel (Vulgate) SOLOMON DAVIDIS filius, rex israelitarum, sententias conscripsit (Melanchthon) The first verse of the book functions as title and summary. The Vulgate renders it with parabola (a legitimate ָמ ָשׁל accordingly, and Jerome opted to translate possibility) that was picked up by the translators of Geneva and embraced by Gregory Martin for the Catholic Old Testament. But in the first printed English translation of the Book of Proverbs, George Joye expanded the verse into a full sentence with an active finite verb of which Solomon is the subject and ‘sentences’ is the direct object. Naturally the question arises whether this is a case where Joye exhibits his alleged custom of “expanding and adding words of his own” as some of the historians of the English Bible say? The answer is clearly no.
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