As we continue our look back into the history of the English Bible we must begin to recognize the miracle that was taking place in the English speaking world. Before Wycliffe translated his Bible form the Latin Vulagate there was NO complete Bible in the English language. The portions of English Scriptures that did exist were very sparse and only in very small portions. As a people, English speakers in effect were in total darkness. The Bibles came then in succession:
Tyndale’s New Testament – 1525
Coverdale Bible – 1536
Matthew’s Bible - 1537
Because of the work of translators, like Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, John Rogers, and many others, the English speaking peoples of the world would truely become a people in extraordinary possesion of God’s Word. So extraordinary, that in fact, it could be considered unprecedented in all of the history of mankind!
The story of the Great Bible is truely a historical illustration of the Scriptural truth found in Proverbs 21:1 “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.”
Henry VIII, who was a Roman Catholic in genuine belief, broke away the nation of England from the Roman Catholic Church for the “spirtual reason” of divorcing his present wife. Henry was a wicked man, that took the opportunity presented to him to create his own church (the Church of England) of which he would be the head.
Henry would order the printing of a Bible for the English speaking peoples of his realm.
The Irony:
Henry hated William Tyndale. In fact, he was ultimately responsible for Tyndale’s Martyrdom. He would also order the burning of all copies of Tyndale’s New Testament in the kingdom, yet in ordering the production of the Great Bible, he would authorize and publish the very work of Tyndale. Miles Coverdale, who would oversee the work, would use all of Tyndale’s work in the Old and New Testaments in Henry’s Great Bible!
In fact, The Great Bible would really just be another edition of the Matthew’s Bible, the results of Tyndale and John Rodgers. Both of these men would pay the ulitimate price for thier work in translating God’s Word into the English language!
Miles Coverdale oversaw the completion and printing of the first Great Bible, but there were several editions that were printed by other parties. Christopher Anderson in the Annals of the English Bible mentions five or six editions that appeared by 1540 and four more in 1541.
This Bible was persecuted by Roman authorities from its inception.
The printing began in Paris in 1538. Coverdale wrote that the work was “daily threatened.” The license they obtained for the printing had a provision that warned that the project had to conform to inquisition laws. Before the printing could be finished, the Romanist French ambassador to England learned of the project and wrote to French authorities, suggesting that it be destroyed.
Being warned of impending trouble, Coverdale and his workers labored diligently to ship the portions that had already been printed to England. Coverdale wrote, “If these men proceed in their cruelness against us, and confiscate the rest yet this at the least may be safe.”
Four days later the Roman Catholic Inquisitor-general for France demanded that the printing cease and called for any completed sheets to be removed. The feared Roman Catholic inquisitors descended upon the printing facility, seized the sheets which had not already been shipped to Britain, amounting to, some say, 2500 Bibles, and ordered them burned.
Henry VIII would order that an English Bible be placed in every church in England. The Great Bible was also called the Great “Chain” Bible becuse it would be chained to the desk in the church to discourage it’s theft!
