Audio • Season 1 • Episode 5 • (New) Series 1 Episode 5 Part Three. Geneva — The Bible that troubled a King.

The artwork is: The Frontispiece to the King James' Bible, 1611.

The title page text reads: The Holy Bible , containing the Old Testament, and the New.

Newly Translated out of the Original tongues and with the former Translations diligently compared and requested by his Majesties special Commandment.

Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majesty. At the bottom is "C. Boel made this in Richmond"

Cornelis Boel c. 1576 – c. 1621, was born at Antwerp, he was a Flemish draughtsman and engraver.

Cornelis Boel engraved the illustrated main title page of the original 1611 King James Bible. It shows the Twelve Apostles at the top. Moses and Aaron flank the central text. In the four corners sit Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, authors of the four gospels, with their symbolic animals. At the top, over the Holy Spirit in a form of a dove, is the Tetragrammaton "YHWH". The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew name for God, which translates to "to be," "to exist," or "to cause to become"

The Music is: Psalm 8:1, 3-9 sung by Free Church of Scotland: Psalmody Conference Selections .

Presented by the The Westminster Covenanter. Further details, including lyrics are included in the epilogue. The music plays for the first 30 seconds.

Notes:

Part Three begins at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, where King James objected to the Geneva Bible’s marginal notes and supported a new English translation. It follows the scholars who produced the Bible published in 1611, showing how their work drew upon earlier translations, including the Geneva Bible itself.

The story then asks whether James really banned the Geneva Bible, traces its continued use in Britain and North America, and considers the lasting influence of the English exiles’ work.

© 20 26 The Rise of the Protestants., Author, Shaughan Holt.

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Series 1.

Episode 5.

Part Three.

The Geneva Bible.

The Bible, That Troubled a King.

Earlier we traced the Geneva Bible, from its origins with English exiles, to its role in the homes, churches and religious life of England and Scotland.

We also saw that some of the Bible’s notes questioned rulers' actions, and suggested limits on obeying them.

More than forty years after the Bible was first published, those notes drew the attention of a king.

The Hampton Court Conference.

The date is 16 January 16 04.

Inside Hampton Court Palace, the new King of England met with his bishops, ministers and royal advisers.

Less than a year before, James VI of Scotland had become James I of England.

He now ruled two kingdoms, and a Church, still divided by debates over worship, authority and reform.

The conference had been called to consider complaints from Puritan ministers within the Church of England.

During the discussions however, John Rainolds, a leading Puritan scholar, proposed a new English translation of the Bible.

King James welcomed the idea.

He said that he had never seen an English Bible translated to his satisfaction, and that of all the versions then in use, he disliked the Geneva Bible most.

The Geneva Bible had been created by Protestant refugees seeking protection from a Catholic queen.

More than forty years later, the Geneva Bible's annotations, would become a source of concern for a Protestant king.

However, the Geneva Bible was no longer limited to a small, isolated religious community.

By the time James ascended the English throne, the Geneva Bible had circulated for several generations.

Copies of the Geneva Bible were present in churches, schools and family homes.

Puritan ministers used it, and so did bishops, and other leading defenders of the Church of England.

The Geneva Bible's language now influenced sermons, religious debates, literature and everyday speech.

In short, it had become part of the religious culture of England and Scotland.

To understand the Geneva Bible’s influence, and the reasons its annotations, - so concerned the monarchy, it is necessary to examine its readership.

The Notes That Troubled the King.

King James had objections to the Geneva Bible’s translation.

But his strongest concern was the commentary printed in its margins.

At Hampton Court, he singled out two notes that he considered particularly dangerous.

The first note appeared beside the story of the Hebrew midwives in Exodus.

Pharaoh had ordered them to kill, every male child born to the Israelites.

But the midwives feared God, and disobeyed his command.

When Pharaoh questioned them, they claimed that Hebrew women gave birth before a midwife could reach them.

The Geneva note made an important distinction.

“Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling evil.”

In other words, the midwives did the right thing by refusing Pharaoh’s order, but it was wrong, for them to lie about what they had done.

James focused on the first part.

The note clearly said that sometimes it is lawful to disobey a ruler.

The second note was about King Asa.

Earlier, we learned that Asa removed Maachah, the queen mother, from her royal position because she promoted idolatry.

The Geneva note criticised him for letting her live, saying, that according to God’s law, she should have been put to death.

To James, the implications were alarming.

The note appeared to place God’s law above family loyalty and royal status.

Even a member of the royal family could be judged and punished for acting against it.

James had grown up in Scotland, during a time of religious and political conflict.

Ministers there often challenged royal authority, and argued that rulers, who went against God, could be resisted.

He worried that readers might use the Geneva Notes in a similar way.

If the Hebrew midwives were allowed to disobey Pharaoh, could people also disobey other rulers?

And if a king could be criticised for sparing a royal relative, were even royal families answerable to a higher law?

Most of the Geneva Bible’s notes, focused on explaining Scripture, - instead of encouraging rebellion.

But James thought these specific notes, encouraged readers to judge their rulers’ actions on their own.

When John Rainolds, suggested a new English translation at Hampton Court, James agreed to support it.

Realising that this new Bible, could be used by the whole Church, and would not include the marginal notes that had so concerned him.

This decision, started one of the most ambitious translation projects in English history.

The Making of the King James Bible.

King James, did not translate the Bible himself.

Instead, the work was entrusted to scholars from across the Church of England.

Fifty-four men were appointed, although surviving records name forty-seven who took part.

They included bishops, university scholars and parish clergy, with differing views on the future of the Church.

The translators worked in six groups, called companies.

Two met at Westminster, two at Oxford and two at Cambridge.

Each company was assigned a portion of the Bible.

Lancelot Andrewes led the Westminster company, responsible for translating, - Genesis through to the Second Book of Kings.

King James and the bishops established a series of rules to guide the work.

The Bishops’ Bible of 16 02 was to provide the starting point.

The translators were instructed to alter it, only where the original Hebrew or Greek required a change.

They were also told to preserve traditional religious words.

For example, the word “church” was to remain, rather than being replaced by “congregation.”

However, the translators were not restricted to the Bishops’ Bible.

They were instructed to consult earlier English translations, including those of Tyndale and Coverdale, the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible.

This created an interesting irony.

One reason for producing the new translation, was to address problems that King James associated with the Geneva Bible.

However, the translators were allowed to use the Geneva Bible as a reference when looking for the clearest and most accurate wording.

The translation was not the work of a single author, or even a single committee.

It was the result of a long process of translation, comparison, discussion and revision.

The finished Bible would later carry the name of King James.

But much of its language came from generations of earlier English translations, and among the most important of those earlier translations was the Geneva Bible itself.

The Bible of 16 11.

The translators did not regard their work as a complete break from the past.

In their address to the reader, they explained that their purpose was not to turn a bad translation into a good one.

Instead, they hoped “to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one.”

The Bible of 16 11 was therefore both a new translation, and the culmination of a long English tradition, - and after several years of work, it was now ready for publication.

Robert Barker, the King’s Printer, published it in London in 16 11.

The first edition was a large folio, designed principally for reading aloud in churches.

Like most English Protestant Bibles at the time, it included the books of the Apocrypha, between the Old and New Testaments.

The Apocrypha is a collection of ancient religious writings included in some Bibles but not others.

The Bible's title page, described it as newly translated from the original languages, and revised through careful comparison with earlier translations.

It was not called the King James Bible at the time.

Nor did it use the name by which it would later become widely known in Britain, the Authorised Version.

Those names became common much later.

At the time, it was simply the new Bible produced under the king’s authority, for use in the Church of England.

The margins of this Bible looked very different from those of the Geneva.

While they still contained cross-references, alternative translations and brief explanations of Hebrew or Greek word, they offered almost none of the extended theological or political commentary that had disturbed James.

The Geneva Bible included a guide for interpreting Scripture beside the text.

The Bible of 16 11, largely left interpretation to the Church, its ministers and its readers.

This new translation, would later become one of the most influential books in the English language.

But that did not happen immediately.

In 16 11, the Geneva Bible was still widely read, widely owned and firmly established in English-speaking homes.

The arrival of the new Bible did not bring its story to an end.

The Myth of the Ban.

It is often said, that King James banned the Geneva Bible because he disliked its marginal notes.

But no evidence of such a ban has been found.

The Geneva Bible continued to be printed in England, even after the new translation came out in 16 11.

Robert Barker, the King’s Printer, printed the last known English edition in 16 16.

It is unclear why he stopped printing it, although he had a financial interest in promoting the new Bible.

At the same time, copies printed in the Netherlands still reached English readers.

Some of these copies had false title pages, that said they were printed in London in 15 99, possibly to make it easier to bring them into England.

Restrictions came later, under James’s son, Charles the First.

In the 16 30s, the authorities tightened control over the printing and importation of Geneva Bibles, and some copies were seized.

But this happened after James’s death.

It does not show that he had banned the Bible, and owning an existing copy was not generally prohibited.

The Geneva Bible, gradually gave way to the King James version, as the newer translation spread through churches and became available in more sizes and at more prices.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, it had become the dominant English Bible.

Yet older Geneva Bibles were still being read.

Some travelled even farther, crossing the Atlantic with English settlers.

Across the Atlantic.

The Geneva Bible is often described as the Bible carried to America aboard the Mayflower.

It is an appealing story.

The Pilgrims had separated from the Church of England and established a congregation in the Netherlands.

Many Pilgrims grew up when the Geneva Bible was the most widely read household Bible in England.

Its emphasis on personal study, clear explanations, and notes that sometimes questioned authority would have appealed to many Separatists.

It is therefore likely that members of the congregation owned Geneva Bibles.

One copy that still exists belonged to William Bradford.

Bradford joined the Separatist congregation as a young man, and later travelled with its members from England to the Netherlands.

In 16 20, he sailed on the Mayflower across the Atlantic, and later became governor of Plymouth Colony.

His Geneva Bible, printed in 15 92, is now kept at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

But we don’t know if Bradford actually brought this Bible with him on the Mayflower.

No detailed list of what was on the ship has survived, and no records from that time tell us which Bible was used during the voyage.

Bradford may have taken it aboard the Mayflower, but he could also have acquired it at some later point in his life.

The evidence we have doesn’t answer that question.

There’s another reason to be careful about this story.

The Pilgrims were familiar with more than one English translation.

John Alden, who also sailed on the Mayflower, owned a King James Bible printed in 16 19 or 16 20.

That Bible is also at the Pilgrim Hall Museum, but again, there’s no proof it was on the ship.

By 16 15, John Robinson, the Separatist pastor in Leiden, was already quoting from the King James Bible.

Robert Cushman, another leader in the congregation, used the King James Bible’s language in a sermon he gave at Plymouth in 16 21.

The Pilgrims did not reject the new translation, simply because it had been commissioned under King James’s authority.

Geneva Bibles were probably in many Separatist homes, but the King James Bible, was becoming familiar too.

Both translations, were part of the religious world, the Pilgrims brought with them across the Atlantic.

For English settlers in North America, the Geneva Bible’s smaller editions were easy to carry, - while its chapter summaries, cross-references and notes, helped families study Scripture far from the churches and libraries they had known.

The Geneva Bible’s Legacy.

The Geneva Bible also helped shape the religious and literary culture of its time.

People heard its words in sermons, used them in religious debates, and found them echoed in English literature.

Puritans and Separatists read it, but so did bishops and supporters of the established Church.

It reached family homes, Scottish kirks, and communities across the Atlantic.

Its readers often disagreed with each other.

They did not always agree with every note in the margins, either.

For generations, the Geneva Bible gave English-speaking readers a text they could read, compare and discuss for themselves.

Its greatest legacy may lie in the habits of reading it encouraged.

Yet the English congregation that created it lasted only four and a half years.

On 30 May 15 60, William Whittingham had thanked the Geneva council for sheltering the exiles, and gave it the congregation’s register for safekeeping.

The book contained one hundred and forty-nine numbered pages, yet only twelve had been used.

It had been prepared for a congregation that expected to remain.

Instead, its members left Geneva, and most of its pages stayed blank.

The Bible they created had a very different future.

It would travel throughout England and Scotland, cross the Atlantic, and even trouble a king.

Although its translators received little recognition, their work outlasted them all.

The congregation left Geneva.

Its register fell silent.

But its Bible continued to speak.

Epilogue.

The Wars Continue.

The Geneva Bible’s language also appeared in a small pamphlet published in 16 43, shortly after the outbreak of civil war in England.

Despite its title, “The Souldiers Pocket Bible” was not a complete Bible, but a sixteen-page collection of selected verses.

Its passages were taken from the Geneva translation, demonstrating that its language remained familiar; more than thirty years after the King James Bible first appeared.

The conflict in England formed part of the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of connected struggles involving England, Scotland and Ireland.

The English Civil Wars continued, with periods of uneasy peace, until 16 51.

Historians commonly divide them into three principal phases

The First Civil War began in August 16 42, when King Charles the First raised his royal standard at Nottingham, and called upon his supporters to take up arms against Parliament.

Royalists and Parliamentarians fought for control of England and Wales.

The war ended in 16 46, after the king’s armies were defeated, and Charles surrendered to the Scottish army.

The Scots later handed him over to the English Parliament, but the political and religious divisions behind the conflict remained unresolved.

As a result, fighting resumed in 16 48.

Royalist uprisings broke out in several parts of England, while a Scottish army entered the country, this time in support of the king.

Parliament’s forces defeated these challenges, during what became known as the Second Civil War.

Its leaders, now concluded that lasting peace would be impossible while Charles remained king.

He was placed on trial, convicted of treason, and executed on 30 January 16 49.

.The monarchy was abolished, and England was declared a Commonwealth..

Supporters of the king’s son, recognised him as King Charles II, and the rightful heir to the throne.

With primary support from Scotland, he attempted to reclaim his father’s kingdoms.

This final phase, ended on the 3rd of September, 16 51, when Oliver Cromwell’s army, defeated Charles and his largely Scottish forces at the Battle of Worcester.

Charles escaped and remained in exile until the monarchy was restored in 16 60.

During these years of conflict and revolution, the Geneva Bible continued to circulate.

Its days as a regularly printed translation had ended, but its language remained present in homes, sermons, political arguments and now, the verses selected for soldiers.

The civil wars may have transformed the three kingdoms, but they did not bring the Geneva Bible’s influence to an end.

The Music is: Psalm 8:1, 3-9 sung by Free Church of Scotland.

Presented by The Westminster Covenanter.

Lyrics.

1 How excellent in all the earth, Lord, our Lord, is thy name! Who hast thy glory far advanced above the starry frame.

3 When I look up unto the heav'ns, which thine own fingers framed, Unto the moon, and to the stars, which were by thee ordained;

4 Then say I, What is man, that he remembered is by thee? Or what the son of man, that thou so kind to him should'st be?

5 For thou a little lower hast him than the angels made; With glory and with dignity thou crowned hast his head.

6 Of thy hands' works thou mad'st him lord, all under's feet didst lay;

7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and beasts that in the field do stray;

8 Fowls of the air, fish of the sea, all that pass through the same.

9 How excellent in all the earth, Lord, our Lord, is thy name!