CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CODEX BEZAE AND THE VERSION OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE (1560)

Although many studies have been published of the history and influence of Codex Bezae, textual critics have hitherto overlooked the contribution which it made to one of the most noteworthy of the earlier English versions of the Bible. This was the sixteenth-century translation prepared by a group of English exiles who had fled to the Continent in order to escape the persecution of Queen Mary Tudor, sometimes referred to as "Bloody" Mary. Published at Geneva in 1560 it was reprinted many times thereafter and be­ came the family Bible of a very large number of English-speaking Protestants. It was the Bible of William Shakespeare, of John Bunyan, and the men of Cromwell's army. In the seventeenth cen­ tury it was carried to America by the Pilgrims, who would have nothing to do with the more recently published King James version of r6u. As is well known, the Geneva version was unique among English Bibles in several respects. It was the first English Bible to utilize numbered verses, each set off as a separate paragraph. It was the first to be printed with Roman type instead of the time-honored but clumsy-looking Gothic or black-letter type. It was the first to use italics for the words which the translators added in the interest of idiomatic English, but for which there was no distinct equivalent in the original.1 Of the group of English translators who prepared the Geneva version, the leader was William Whittingham, a fellow of All Souls College and senior student of Christ Church, Oxford. Since the had the advantage of a certain amount of supervision given it by and Theodore Beza, one is not surprised

1 The use of a different font of type to distinguish such words added in the translation of the Bible as have no exact representatives in the original seems to have been first employed by Sebastian Munster in his Latin version of the Old Testament published in 1534, -35. In 1556 Theodore Beza adopted the same practice for his Latin . On its use in the King James version, see F. H. A. Scrivener, The Authorized Edition of the English Bible ... (Cambridge, 1884), pp. 61-81. CODEX BEZAE AND THE GE NEVA BIBLE 139 that this version possesses many scholarly excellencies.1 One of these marks of scholarship, which has not hitherto received the attention which it deserves, is the presence in the margins of a number of variant readings derived from Codex Bezae2 and from several other Greek manuscripts. These translations of variant readings are printed in larger type3 than that which is used for the numerous marginal annotations on difficult passages and for the alternative renderings, as though to suggest that the variants have almost equal validity with the Scriptural text itself. The reader's attention is drawn to each of them by the presence in the text of two vertical parallel lines, which are repeated in the margin, after which the variant reading is cited. No indication is given of the manuscript or manuscripts which support the variant. The following is a list of all the variant readings which are found in the margins of the New Testament of the Geneva Bible of 1560. In each case the location of the variant is indicated by quoting the words of the text which immediately precede the two parallel lines. The variant readings which have the support of Codex Bezae are marked with an asterisk; those which had appeared in the margins of Whittingham's earlier translation of the New Testament, pub­ lished at Geneva in 1557, are marked with an obelisk.

I.* Luke 17 .35 the other shal be left. II 36 And they answered .... 4 II Two shal be in the field: one shal be receiued, & another shal be left.

1 The scholarly interest of the translators is shown in a number of ways. In the Old Testament, for example, a point was made in returning to a more precise spelling of proper names, and even in accenting them in accordance with the original Hebrew. In the New Testament, marginal notes identify the origin of the several quotations from pagan authors (namely the quota­ tions at Acts 17.28; I Cor. 15.33; and Titus 1.12). The Geneva translators were ahead of their times in observing that the Epistle to the Hebrews is probably not by Paul, and in printing the title simply "The Epistle to the Ebrewes." For other examples of the scholarship reflected in this version, see the present writer's article, "The Geneva Bible of 1560," in Theology Today, xvn (1960), 339-52. 2 Nicholas Pocock called attention to several of these in his article, "Some Notices of the Genevan Bible," published in the little-known journal, The Bibliographer, VI (1884), rn5-7. 8 This is true of all the variants except that at I Cor. 15.51, where ap­ parently the space in the margin was deemed to be too much crowded by other comments to permit the use of the larger type for the variant reading. ' In Bibles current today what is given in the margin of the Geneva version is assigned to verse 36, and the Genevan verse 36 is renumbered verse 37.