Bible Translation

First hand wrote English bible

1380

John Wycliffe an Oxford professor, Scholar, and theologian. Wycliffe was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed t be contrary to the Bible.

John Hus

1415

John Hus actively promoted Wycliffe's ideas; that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415, with Wycliffe's manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire.The last words of John Hus were that," in the 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed."

Johann Gutenberg

1450

Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany.

Thomas Linarce

1490

In 1490 another Oxford professor, and the personal physician to King Henry the 7th and 8th Thomas Linacre, decided to learn Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate, he wrote in his diary,"Either this is not the Gospel.....or we are not Christians".

John Colet

1496

Another Oxford professor and the son of the Mayor of London, started reading the New Testament in Greek and translating it into English for his students at Oxford, and later for the public at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. The people were o hungry to hear the Word of God in a language they could understand, that within six months there were 20,000 people packed in the church and at least that many outside trying to get in.

The Great Scholar Erasmus

1516

In considering the experience of Linacre and Colet, the great Scholar Erasmus as so moved to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, that in 1516, with the help of printer John Froben, he published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh rendering of text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from a half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired.

Martin Luther

1517

Almost 100 years later Martin nailed his famous 95, Theses of Contention into the Church door at Wittenberg. The prophecy of Hus had come true! Martin Luther went on to be the first person to translate and publish the Bible in the commonly-spoken dialectof the German people; a translation more appealing than previous German Biblical translations.

William Tyndale

1522

William Tyndale was the Captain of the Army of reformers, and was their spiritual leader. Tyndale holds the distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English Language. Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his Native Language.

Myles Coverdale

1535

Myles and John " Thomas Matthew" Rogers had remained loyal disciples the last six years of Tyndale's life, and they carried the English Bible project forward and even accelerated it. Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 he printed the first complete Bible English Language, making use of Luther's German text and the Latin as sources.

John Rogers

1537

John went on to print the second compete English Bible in 1537. IT was, however, the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical language of Hebrew and Greek. He printed it under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew" as a considerable part of this bible as the translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned by English authorities.

Mathew-Tyndale Bible

1549

It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament and coverdale's Bible and some of Roger's own translation of the text. IT remains known most commonly as the "Matthew-Tyndale Bible". It went through a nearly identical second-edition printing in 1549.

John Elliot

1663

Although the first Bible printed in America was done in the native Algonquin Indian Language by John Eliot in 1663; the first English Language Bible to be printed in America by Robert Aitken in 1782 was a King James Version.

Isaiah Thomas

1791

Also in 1791, Isaiah Thomas published the first illustrated Bible printed in America....in the King James version. For more information in the earliest Bibles printed in America from the 1600's through the early 1800's you may wish to review.

Noah Webster

1883

While Noah Webster, just a few years after producing his famous dictionary of the English Language, would produce his own modern translation of the English Bible in 1883; the public remained too loyal to the King James Version for Webster's version to have much impact.

Thomas Nelson

1982

In 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers produced what they called the "New King James Versions". Their original was to keep the basic wording of the King James to appeal to King James version loyalists, while only changing the most obscure words and the Elizabeth "Thee, thy, thou" pronouns.