ARTICLE II.-THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND THE ENGLISH

LANGUAGE.

THE two greatest treasures in the possession of any Christian nation are the Bible in the vernacular and the vernacular itself. Though it is true, as Archbishop Trench has stated, "that a language is more and mightier in every way than any one of the works composed in it," this advantage in favor of the language is reduced to a minimum if not indeed rendered doubtful, when we come to compare it with its expresssion in the Holy Scriptures. Of no nation of modern times is this assertion truer than of English-speaking peoples. Germany excepted, there is no civilized country where the Bible and the language alike have done more for the best interests of the population, and more in which the mutual relations of these two great educational and moral agencies have been closer and more marked. Among the English, as elsewhere, no sooner did Christianity enter and obtain a foothold than the necessity was felt of having the Word of God translated into the homespeech. It was so in the days of Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths. As soon as his countrymen along the Black Sea became converts to Christianity, in the early part of the fourth century, it was their earnest desire to possess the Bible in their own tongue. To this work the learned and holy bishop was competent and inclined. About 360, A. D., he completed the translation of the New Testament from the original Greek and a portion of the Old Testament from the Septuagint version into the Moeso-Gothic. It was in a true sense about the first written example of a Germanic language.

It was thus with the old Syriac, Latin, Armenian, and Slavonic versions, all of them being prepared at the demand of the people, upon the introduction of Christianity. It was so in the case of the Old Saxon metrical version of the continental tribes the Heliand of the ninth century, in which the unknown author, at the supposed request of Louis, the Pious, * Trench's Study of Words, p. 29.

sought to paraphrase in verse the sacred work for the use of the people. This was prepared after that a rude form of Christian faith had been brought to them by the agency of Charlemagne and his followers.

Precisely thus the English Bible finds its historical origin on English soil just after Gregory of Rome sent forth Augustine, A. D. 597, to carry Christianity to Kent. Shortly before this, Ethelbert, King of Kent, by his marriage with Bertha, a Frankish Christian queen, had become favorably disposed to the new doctrine and worship, so that he received the Romish missionaries with kindness, in the province of Canterbury. Intellectual and literary activity was at once awakened. Schools were established and worship observed. Among the books and treasures sent to Canterbury by Gregory, the most valuable by far were two copies of the gospels in the Latin language, one of which is still in the library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and the other, in the Bodleian, Oxford. The people were now more than eager for the vernacular scriptures. The establishment of Christianity had made this need imperative, and it was on the basis of the Oxford copy of the Latin Gospels-the Vetus Italica-that the first copies of the Scriptures were prepared in the native language and circulated throughout the center and north of England. Hence, as early as the eighth century, A. D., Bede, of Durham, and Boniface, of Devonshire, were engaged, respectively, in the further translation of the Bible and in preaching the gospel to the kindred tribes beyond the sea. The contemporaneous history of the English Bible, and the English language may be said to have begun at this early period, and has so continued with but little deviation to the Westminster version of our day. It will be our pleasing purpose in the discussion before us to trace this progressive history as it moves along the successive centuries, and thus to evince the large indebtedness of our English speech to our English Bible.

I. ENGLISH VERSIONS AND TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE. As to the exact date of the earliest translations of the Bible into English, tradition and history are so mingled that it is quite impossible to be accurate. As Bosworth suggests, the translators

and translations are alike a matter of doubt. It is, however, safe to say that leaving out of view the discursive work that was done by unknown scholars and copyists in the seventh century, a more specific work of translation began about the eighth century in the persons of Aldhelm, Guthlac, Egbert, and Bede. This was continued in the ninth and tenth centuries by Alfred and Aelfric. We learn authoritatively from Cuthbert, a pupil of Bede's, that his venerable teacher, who died in 735, A. D., was closing his translation of St. John's Gospel into English, as his life was ending. This, in all probability, was but the last of a series of gospel versions, inasmuch as we know that in the line of commentary work Bede gave special study to the four evangelists. In fact, other translations of the gospels may have existed before this. It is well authenticated, indeed, that in the early part of the same century (706) a translation of the Gospels was made by Egbert, as also of the Psalms, by Aldhelm. In the two following centuries, Alfred, and Aelfrie, the Grammarian, carried on the same useful work. The illustrious king is supposed to have prepared a partial version of the Psalms and Gospels. Aelfrie, who died in 1006, completed the translation of the Heptateuch-the first seven books of the Bible, together with a portion of Job. He is thus mentioned by Morley "as the first man who translated into English prose any considerable portion of the Bible."* In addition to this prose rendering, it is not to be forgotten that as far back as the middle of the seventh century the paraphrase of Caedmon gives us a metrical version of a large portion of the Christian scriptures, the poem, as now extant, containing substantial parts of Genesis, Exodus, Daniel and of The Life of Christ.

Thus early was the Word of God vernacularized. As soon, in fact, as the English nation and church began their existence; as soon as education entered and the English people started on their great work of evangelization, their bible was accessible in their own tongue. It at once began to exercise its influence in the native language in all those beneficent forms in which it is still at work. It is most suggestive to note that the two great agencies started historically together at the call of Christianity. *Morley's English Writers, vol. i., part I.

Fragmentary and tentative as many of their first versions are, so that there is now extant of that time but little save the Gospels, Pentateuch, and Psalms, what does remain is all the more valuable and is quite enough to establish that connection of close dependence of which we are speaking. Imperfect as these translations are, there is no subsequent period in which the secular and the inspired are so intimately blended. With Bede and Aelfrie, English was eminently biblical. All the leading authors of the time were holy men. Homilies, Christian biographies, and church histories were the staple form of prose production. Where actual bible translation was not done, they did the very next thing to it, in furnishing complete paraphrases of the Bible for the schools and the common people. In these first English times (449-1066) the language was in a marked degree the medium of scripture and scriptural ideas. "In the latent spirit of this," writes Morley, "will be found the soul of all that is Saxon in our literature. The Bible was the main book in the language and controlled the character of all other books."*

In what may be called the second or intermediate period of our language and our versions (1066-1550), attention should be called, as before, to the translations in metre. The most prominent of these is, The Ormulum (1215), by Orm. It is a metrical paraphrase of those portions of the gospels arranged for the respective days of church service, and as the author states in various forms, is designed to secure practical religious ends. What is known as the Surtees Metrical Psalter, probably, belongs to the early part of the fourteenth century. About 1340, Richard Rolle de Hampole translated the Psalter and Job into Northumbrian English to give to those people the same privileges that the people of Kent had earlier received in prose versions. As to these prose versions, we notice a prose Psalter by William of Shoreham as early as 1327, prepared especially for the Englishmen of Kent. Of the English Bible of John of Trevisa, to which Caxton refers and which is placed at 1380, no reliable record is found. This tradition is perchance the origin of Sir Thomas More's belief that the Bible was rendered complete into English long before the time of Wycliffe.

*Morley's English Writers, vol. i., part I., p. 299.

The first translation of the entire Bible into English is that of Wiclif, assisted by Nicholas de Hereford. It was based on the Vulgate, and issued (N. T.) in 1380. As it was prepared nearly a century before the introduction of printing into England (1474) it was circulated in manuscript only, as the versions preceding it had been, and was not finally committed to print till several centuries later (N. T. 1731, O. T. 1850). For about a century and a half, however, up to the time of the next and greater version (1525), it was the Bible of England and the basis of English. Its revision by Purvey in 1388 was a revision only, and made a good translation a better one. Connected, as Wiclif was, with the university of Oxford for nearly half a century, and versed, as he was, in the divinities, no one was better qualified to do that great initial work that was then needed, to embody the Scriptures permanently in the English tongue, and through them to open the way for the English Reformation. English education as well as Protestant English Christianity owes him a debt that can never be repaid. His work was philological and literary as well as biblical and moral.* Although in a council at Oxford, in 1408, it was decreed that no man hereafter read any such book now lately composed in the time of John Wiclif or since," this first great version could not be thus suppressed. The Lollards were persecuted and scattered but the Bible remained, and Foxe was able to write "that in 1520 great multitudes tasted and followed the sweetness of God's Holy Word."+

In 1525-32 appeared Tyndale's Version, containing the New Testament with the Pentateuch and historical books of the Old Testament. As the first printed English translation it stands conspicuously superior to all that had preceded it. From the additional fact, that it was not based on the Vulgate as was Wiclif's, but on the original text of the Hebrew and Greek, it was commended with increasing emphasis to the biblical student and reader. It is eminently natural, therefore, to hold with the great majority of Christian scholars that the history of our present English Bible practically begins with Tyndale's. It has been accepted as the basis of all later ver

*See Dr. Storrs on Wiclif.

+ Westcott's History of the English Bible, pp. 17, 18, 20.