LONG TRAVAIL AND GREAT PAYNES STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN RELIGIOUS REFORMS VOLUME 1 Editor Irena Backus, University of Geneva Board of Consulting Editors Michael J.B. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles Guy Bedouelle, Universite de Fribourg Emidio Campi, University of Zurich Bernard Cottret, Universite de Paris-Versailles Denis Crouzet, Universite de Paris IV-Sorbonne Luc Deitz, Bibliotheque nationale de Luxembourg Paul Grendler (Emeritus), University of Toronto Ralph Keen, University of Iowa Heiko Oberman, University ofArizona, Tucson Maria-Cristina Pitassi, University of Geneva Herman Selderhuis, Theological University Apeldoom David Steinmetz, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina Christoph Strohm, Ruhr-Universitdt Bochum Mark Vessey, University of British Columbia Lee Palmer Wandel, University o.fWisconsin-Madison David Wright, University of Edinburgh LONG TRAVAIL AND GREAT PAYNES A Politics of Reformation Revision by VIVIENNE WESTBROOK Assistant Professor Renaissance Literature at National Taiwan University SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. A C.l.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-90-481-5699-3 ISBN 978-94-017-2115-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2115-8 Printed on acidJree paper AII Rights Reserved © 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE vii WILLIAM TYNDALE (1494-1536) xiv GEORGE JOYE (1495-1553) xiv JOHN ROGERS (1500? - 1555) xv RICHARD TAVERNER (1505-1575) xv MYLES COVERDALE (1488-1568) xvi EDMUND BECKE (fl1550) xvii WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM (1520-1579) xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. xix INTRODUCTION xxi A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BIBLE xxiii THE REFORMATION OF THE CHURCH xxvi THE QUESTION OF LITERACY xxix EDUCATION xxxv PREACHING AND THE PLACE OF TEXT xxxvii ENGLISH BIBLE AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE xxxviii CHAPTER 1 : GEORGE JOYE'S NEW TEST AMENT CHAPTER 2: MYLES COVERDALE'S PSALTER 14 COVERDALE'S PENITENTIAL PSALMS 22 CHAPTER 3 : JOHN ROGERS AND THE THOMAS MATTHEW BIBLE 36 THE MATTHEW BIBLE PENTATEUCH 1537 45 CHAPTER 4 : RICHARD TAVERNER'S REVISION 78 CHAPTER 5 : EDMUND BECKE'S REVISION 113 BECKE'S PROPHETIC BOOKS 119 CHAPTER 6 : WILLIAM WHITTINGHAM'S NEW TESTAMENT 127 CHAPTER 7: THE GENEVA BIBLE ANNOTATIONS 143 ANNOTATIONS TO THE REVELATION 144 POWER IN THE MARGINS OF THE GENEVA BIBLE 147 REVELATION APARATEXTUALCONCLUSION 174 REFERENCES 181 PREFACE TO THE READER This study sets out to re-examine some of the early English printed Bibles that have been neglected by the most influential Bible historians. A great deal of what is frequently said about the history of the printed English Bible has been indebted to a small number of nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholars. Westcott's General View is still unrivalled in scope and depth as a history of the English Bible.1 Moulton's collations of the lesser-known biblical texts were an enormous resource to Westcott and often formed the basis of Westcott's conclusions.2 Fry's important study of Coverdale's Bibles, in particular, was an enormous contribution to our understanding of those texts.3 It provided Mozely with much of what he needed to know for his important book on the subject.4 The effort that has gone into documenting these Bibles is only to be glimpsed from the working files of bibliophiles like Offor. 5 The Darlow and Moule catalogue6and Pollard and Redgrave's Short Title Catalogue7are two invaluable standard reference works for a student of the English Bible. Two factors must be born in mind, however, when we approach Westcott's work. The first factor is that Westcott was tracing a general history of the English Bible up to 1611. The perception of the King James Authorised Version as the definitive English Bible dictated the agenda of Westcott's history, and has done subsequent histories. English Bibles were considered important IB.F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3rd ed., rev., W.A. Wright. London: Macmillan, 1905. 2W.F. Moulton, The History of the English Bible, 5th ed., rev., J.H. Moulton and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911. IF. Fry, A Description of the Great Bible 1539 and the Six Editions of Cranmer's Bible, 1540 and 1541. Bristol: Printed for the Editor, 1862. R4549. 4J.F. Mozley, Coverdale and his Bibles. London: Lutterworth Press, 1953. 5G. Offor, 'Collections for a History of the English Bible 1525-l.679.' BM, Add Ms 26,67()'26,675. &r.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue ofPrinted Editions of the English Bible 1525 1961.rev. A.S. Herbert. London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1968. 7A.W. Pollard and G R Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England. Scotland. & Ireland, and ofEnglish Books Printed Abroad, 1475-164Q III, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Vlll PREFACE TO THE READER only if they contributed either to the internal history of the King James Version, or if they were able to claim precedence in the history of English biblical production. In Westcott's work, therefore, it is no surprise that Bibles that were internally different from the King James Version were given secondary place to those Bibles which bore inherent resemblance to what was perceived to be the finished text, the King James Version. A second factor that scholars should be alerted to is that some of the collations on which Westcott based his verdicts were small. Some Bibles have therefore suffered neglect because of slim and unrepresentative evidence, where larger collations might have shown more agreement with the King James Version than Westcott supposed. Other Bibles have suffered from the very method by which they have been approached. In this study I review some of those neglected texts using substantial collations of my own from first edition texts in the John Rylands Manchester University Library and the British Library. Whilst studies of Reformation Bibles have addressed the implications of Sola Scriptura and the problems of canon, the interpretation of the text evidenced in the application of marginal annotations has rarely been discussed. I will attempt to do that here.s Tyndale's importance as a maker of the English language through his translations has only relatively recently been established by scholars such as Hammond9 and Daniell. 10 Less discussed are Tyndale revisions of his own work, which sometimes displayed less philological accuracy for the sake of making better sense. I I This tendency was more fully developed by sixteenth-century revisers of Tyndale's work after his martyrdom in 1536. Nida's contribution to this field of study suggested methods for organising the kinds of decisions that translators make into categories. 12 Nida's is one method of organising this material, but as he has said: "revisions are in some ways a good deal more difficult than original translations, and hence often involve very complex procedures, usually because of vested interests".13 Nida makes no distinction between the process of translation and that of revision, though two processes do clearly require different treatments. This study is about sixteenth-century revision, and it would be an injustice to Tyndale, and to Coverdale, to suggest 8 See R. A. Muller. 'Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: The View from the Middle Ages.' in Muller. R.A. and J.L.Thompson. eds. Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 3n. 9G. Hammond. The Making of the English Bible. Manchester: Carcanet, 1988. 100. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 11M. Weitzman has described Tyndale recently as a maximalist translator. See his article: 'Translating the Old Testament: the Achievement of William Tyndale', Reformation 1 (1996) 165- 180. 12E. A. Nida. Toward a Science of Translating with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating. Leiden: Brill, 1964. iibid. Nida goes on to say that "no attempt is made to distinguish between the two processes". 245. PREF ACE TO THE READER ix that the revisers of their work were doing the same kind of thing as Tyndale and Coverdale had done when they made their translations. Whilst the main preoccupation of Bible scholars has been to trace internal histories and to establish importance on that basis, there are many more ways to approach a sixteenth-century biblical text. This study therefore attempts to approach the material from alternative perspectives. Even in the case of the perceived landmarks of English biblical history, a great deal of erudite scholarship has documented the changes that occur, but often these are presented in the form of raw data with very little discussion of the implications of those changes for the reader. In this study I uncover differences between biblical texts that have not been registered or discussed previously, and I consider the implications of revision for a reading of the texts. The extent to which these revisions might be accounted for by "vested interest" or agenda in the sixteenth century is a second consideration of the study. The title of this book is drawn from Edmund Becke's prefatory epistle to Prince Edward in his revision of the Matthew Bible, published by John Daye in 1'549. 14 It is a phrase that resounds through the literature of the period. The biblical prefaces are addressed to a variety of audiences: "brethren", "good Christians", "gentle readers". The texts themselves have a variety of uses. When Coverdale prints his Psalms, they are for instruction and prayer; even his Goostly Psalms have the same essential purpose but have musical apparatus to enable memorisation.