Stained with Blood: A One-Hundred Year History of the English Bible

Copyright © 2014 John Anthony Nordstrom.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-3044-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3043-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3045-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905043

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/17/2014

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Section One: The Foundation - From Eternity Past to the Sixteenth Century

Chapter 1- Let There Be Light

Chapter 2- Translations Of The Translator

Chapter 3- England’s—Spiritual Darkness

Chapter 4- Heresy Is Not A Word

Chapter 5- The Latin Vulgate

Chapter 6- John Wycliffe

Section Two: Sixteenth Century English Bibles

Chapter 7- Erasmus Greek New Testament

Chapter 8- Tyndale’s New Testament

Chapter 9- The Coverdale Bible

Chapter 10- The Matthew’s Bible

Chapter 11- The Great Bible

Chapter 12- The Geneva Bible

Chapter 13- The Bishops’ Bible

Chapter 14- The Rheims New Testament

Section Three: The King James Bible

Chapter 15- The Man King James

Chapter 16- Hampton Court Conference

Chapter 17- Richard Bancroft

Chapter 18- The Six Companies

Chapter 19- The Translation Process

Chapter 20- The Revision Process

Chapter 21- Those Alternative Words

Chapter 22- The 1611 Printing

Chapter 23- The Cambridge Editions

Chapter 24- The Oxford Editions

Chapter 25- The Translators To The Reader

Chapter 26- Preserving God’S Word In An Imperfect Way

Appendix One- The Translators To The Reader ~ Miles Smith

Appendix Two- Simulated Kjv Page Notations

DEDICATION

Every now and then in life, God teaches you something that goes down as a life-changing experience. It is true, the world is our classroom and we are the students. The last teacher to take me to another level was my four-year-old granddaughter—Faith Alexis. She has taught me more about the love of God than any adult I know. Thank you my precious little girl. I will try to put into practice what you have taught me in life.

Your loving Papo

FOREWORD

John Nordstrom has been a good friend and a fellow laborer in the ministry for thirty years. We have worked together in many different settings and as an evangelist and a personal soul-winner he has challenged and encouraged me. He is a committed fundamentalist, Baptist preacher and has ministered within this circle his entire ministry. John loves the Lord, loves His Word, and loves people.

Both of us have been concerned for some time about the division among our brethren over translations of the Bible. John has done us all a great service in researching what is behind our English Bible and sharing that research in his book Stained With Blood. This book is very well documented, presenting material with which I was unfamiliar. John’s observations throughout are gracious as well as forthright.

Stained With Blood contributes much to the understanding of the supernatural nature of our Scriptures. It is my prayer that it will challenge, instruct, and encourage us in our service for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Bruce Anderson

Pastor, Olivet Baptist Church

Westwood, Kansas

PREFACE

I have always loved history and the Word of God. When my studies on the European Reformation took me northward into England, I saw the closeness between the Reformers in England to their precious English Bibles. How did these Bibles come to be? What was the truth behind men and women willing to die just to hold and read the scriptures in their native tongue? As I investigated the why of this truth, the book Stained with Blood was born. I did not know where the journey would take me; in fact, it took me to a place I had never been. Now, I know why I believe and not just why I should believe. Someone has said knowledge is strength and I say that the strength of historical facts is the foundation to knowledge.

At Bible college, I learned the true meaning of history—history is His Story. Whether God ordained human events or allowed the same, all that transpires is approved by God. When we look at the history of the English Bible only one conclusion can be reached—God would not be stopped. His Word to the English speaking world would come to pass.

Eight noteworthy English Bibles were written between the years AD 1526 to 1611. At first, some were written illegally, but through trial and persecution the English Bible began to be authorized and accepted. Each Bible was different from its predecessor; each one grew stronger from the previous and for the most part was an improvement. Brave men willing to risk their lives would not quit. God rewarded these faithful men and blessed a nation with a Bible that has dominated the world for four hundred years—the King James Bible. Knowing the history of the English Bible is the greatest inspiration behind a deeper love for the Book we cherish.

What if the facts of history differ from what we have been taught? Do we turn our backs on the facts, or reevaluate our line of thinking? When I was in school, the motive for raising my hand in the classroom-setting always centered on something the teacher had said. What he or she taught may have challenged what I believed forcing me to speak up and ask questions. While researching and writing this book, I found the facts of history forcing my hand into the air asking questions. The historical facts didn’t support the foundation that others had built for me.

As you journey with me down the historical road of the sixteenth century, you too may raise your hand and ask questions; first ask yourself this, "Am I arguing with or against His Story?"

~ John Anthony Nordstrom

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with all endeavors, this project is the combined effort of many hard working friends. I want to recognize those who gave many hours into reading the rough drafts, correcting its errors, and giving constructive criticism to make this book of history—Stained with Blood—what it is.

First my college professor Glenn and preaching contemporary Bruce, both of whom I enlisted to safeguard the book’s history and theology. Second, a big thank you to Karen, whose thirty plus years of teaching junior-high English gave me confidence to continue on. To Lee Ann, whose love for reading kept my first attempt at writing, within the literary ballpark. To my son Matthew, whose graphic design work gives the book its professionalism. Whether a book should be judged by its cover or not, it is still the first thing people see, and if it beckons them inside its pages, it has done its job. To Johnny, who pushed the book to another level, thank you. Finally to the Millers, whose wax-on and wax-off editing has produced this work’s final polish. Thank you my dear friends.

To my wife, children, and grandchildren, I offer this work as a glimpse into my heart—thank you.

John Anthony Nordstrom

INTRODUCTION

England, whose motto would one day be, The empire on which the sun never sets, was spiritually in darkness. She needed the Son from God’s Word to shine throughout her dead churches, but at what price? The threat of losing one’s life was a dark cloud that hung over the heads of many sixteenth century Bible translators. Translating the Scriptures away from Latin into English became a death sentence to the scholar’s who dared. For almost one hundred years, brave men believed God’s Word to be more precious than their own lives. Whether it was Tyndale writing the New Testament while staying one step ahead of death, or English reformers called Marian exiles trading death-for-life in the city of Geneva, Switzerland, fear for life ruled the day. The power to extinguish that light was held in the hands of the Latin-speaking Catholic Church which was relentless in its efforts to keep uneducated commoners in check. Book burnings within the shadows of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and cries of heresy were seen and heard as civil authorities carried out ecclesiastical mandates. Any layperson caught reading the English Scriptures or harboring the same within their homes was not exempt from the killing fields at Smithfield or Lollard’s Pit. Here, hundreds of believers were burned at the stake in the name of religion. Nevertheless, courageous men, knowing that a Bible in the English tongue was the light England needed, continued to step out of their safe havens and into the papal bull’s-eye.

Their risk of life in the sixteenth century was a worthy one for us who live in the twenty-first century. We should hold in high esteem these ancestors who were willing to go to prison and die that we might live with the freedom to possess an English Bible. As stormy as this season was, the blood of these martyrs became the seed to England’s greatest harvest for the English speaking world—the King James Bible (KJV). Stained with Blood’s one-hundred-year study will shine history’s light on the brave men who gave us eight English translations of the Bible.

Sadly, history is repeating itself as bitter divisions over the Bible have separated Christians. As the sixteenth century Catholic Church labeled heroic men heretics, a similar cry of heresy can be heard from pulpits today. I am afraid, nothing has changed in five centuries. Today’s argument isn’t the old dispute between liberals and conservatives debating whether or not the original Bible is inspired, but between brother’s and sister’s in Christ, quarreling over whether or not variant translations of those originals can dare to be called the Word of God.

John Anthony Nordstrom

"If men could learn from history,

what lessons it might teach us!

But passion and party blind our eyes, and

the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern,

which shines only on the waves behind us!"

S. T. Coleridge ~ 19th Century Poet

CHAPTER 1

LET THERE BE LIGHT

God promised that He will not leave any generation without His Word (Ps. 100:5). The inspired Hebrew and Greek words given thousands of years ago are still with us today, but the translation of that Word into world languages, is still being fulfilled. Today, there are around seven thousand languages in the world; but by AD 600, only the four gospels had been translated into eight languages. By Johann Gutenberg’s day, AD 1456, thirty-three languages had only portions of the Bible. In the eighteenth century, portions of the Scriptures had been rendered into sixty-seven languages. A great push was made during the nineteenth century spreading partial Bibles into four hundred languages.¹ By the end of 2012, the United Bible Society claims 810 languages had only a portion of the Scriptures; complete New Testaments were in 1,257 languages and completed Bibles in 484 languages.² Sadly, there are over 4,000 languages that still do not have any Scriptures. Sending the light of God’s Word into the world’s languages should be the most important goal for Christendom. How else can the world learn who God is and what pathway He requires us to travel down. For England, it was their time; God was ready to say, Let there be light to the English speaking world.

The continent across the English channel had already begun to translate the Scriptures away from the Latin and into the various languages of Europe. Now it was England’s time to follow in their footsteps. Whether French, German, or our beloved English translation, nations began to slowly break away from the Latin status-quo by having a Bible in their native tongue. They were not perfect matches; each differed by language, but all rightly believed they held in their hands the Word of God. What was the origin of these translations? They did not begin by the will of man but by the will of God. Our story begins in heaven, not on earth!

The Word of God did not originate with man. It was established in the bosom of the Father long before the Garden of Eden (Jn. 1:18). As the psalmist wrote in 1000 BC, "Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in heaven (Ps. 119:89). This simple Bible statement created a series of questions that have lasted for centuries. Was there a personal copy of my English Bible up in heaven? When God inspired the writers, did He transfer my heavenly version down to the biblical author’s hands? If my English Bible is the only true Bible, what did the rest of the world have?

To answer these questions, we must answer one question: what is God’s eternal Word that was forever settled in Heaven? It is different from what sits on our laps each Sunday. It doesn’t resemble scrolls of parchment with ancient markings that few can understand. The Hebrew text of Psalm 119:89 leads with the Hebrew word Le-Olam, meaning forever. God is eternal, and now His Word is declared to be eternal. The eternal Word established in heaven is the Lord Jesus Christ, and you cannot separate the two. This oneness between the Father and the Son is foundational to Christianity.

The first-ever translation, the Hebrew into Aramaic, was called targum, meaning translation. It began as an oral interpretation and then eventually written down on parchment (dried animal skins), a practice continued into the fifteenth century as Johann Gutenberg printed thirty Bibles on animal skins.

There were several Targums, but two were official; one for the Pentateuch called Targum of Onkelos, and the other on the prophetical books of the Old Testament called, Targum of Jonathan.³ Targum interpretations vaguely resemble the literalness of the Bible translators who worked in the sixteenth century. Targum paraphrasing would go beyond the accepted translator’s sense to outright changing the text and its meaning.⁴ For instance, Cain’s cry in the Hebrew text, Behold, you have driven me this day from the land, and from your face I shall be hidden (Gen. 4:14), is changed to read in the Targum, "Behold, you have driven me this day from upon the land, but it is not possible to be hidden from you."⁵ An irony for this first-ever paraphrase was that those who gave the commentary sometimes translated Word of God in place of God’s name, Yahweh. In the minds of these Jewish teachers you could not separate Yahweh from His word. Centuries later, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle John called Jesus Christ the Word (Logos) of God (John 1:1). In the mind of the New Testament writers, one cannot separate Jesus Christ from Yahweh.

The ancient understanding of logos in the classical and biblical Greek conveys both thoughts and speech. As Logos, Jesus Christ is the mind of God; and when God speaks, He is the Word of God. You cannot separate spoken words from the thoughts that generate those words, and you cannot separate the mind of the Father from the voice of the Son. Herein lies the harmony between God and His Word. The Word of God, the second person of the Godhead, has always existed in heaven and in time would have to be translated down to earth.

The heavenly Word needed to be humanized for man’s spiritual understanding of God but most importantly, for mankind’s salvation. On paper, this is a downward step, but it was necessary. One would be hard pressed to see any similarity between the second person of the Godhead (the mind and voice of God) with the tangible incarnate Christ. Once Adam and Eve were created, the eternal Word needed to be inspired into an earthly language. In the beginning, the voice of God—Jesus Christ—walked through the garden, teaching our first parents about their Creator (Gen. 3:8). For the first time, humanity heard the mind of God in a human dialect. Though the heavenly Word took on an earthly quality, no one can doubt it was perfectly rendered.

The humanizing of God’s mind with words continued long after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. God spoke directly through conversations, in dreams, in visions, or by whatever means He desired. Eventually, God chose the final medium to convey His heavenly Word, this time in a written record. Job was the first book of the Bible given to man under divine inspiration. God’s language of choice was Hebrew. For the first time, God’s eternal Word resembled ink on rolls of parchment. Now it was possible for man to hold in his hands a perfect Bible and declare it to be the Word of God.

To best understand how something earthly can still be heavenly, we need only to look to the incarnation. The Lord Jesus Christ was the God-Man—100 percent God while at the same time 100 percent man. Has this not divided the world? How both natures can be one is a great mystery we believe by faith. The second person of the Godhead, the mind and Word of God, became flesh. When one looks at His humanity, he or she may question His deity. When one understands the fullness of His deity, he or she may question His humanity. Yet, Jesus Christ was God even though He lived with limitations of the flesh. No limitations placed on Him during His earthly journey detracted from His heavenly deity.

It is hard to imagine God as a babe in the manger, feeding from the breast of a peasant woman, but He did. The same can be said when contrasting the inspired originals with the Bible translations that followed them. Early translators of the sixteenth century, having meager resources, did the best they could with what they had, poring over the ancient words which in some cases had no English equivalent. Trying to translate Hebrew idioms without prior English work to draw from forced these translators to be very subjective. Being hot under the collar may be easy for Americans to translate, but what is meant by the Hebrew idiom, The children’s teeth are set on edge? These challenges limited the translators from having a perfect match to the ancient text. Tyndale, a pioneer and the greatest of the translators, did all his work while running for his life. In his 1526 prologue, Tyndale expected other translators to improve upon his work.

I have here translated… the New Testament for your spiritual edifying, consolation, and solace: Exhorting instantly and beseeching those that are better seen in the tongues than I, and that have higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of the scripture and meaning of the spirit, then I, to consider and ponder my labor, and that with the spirit of meekness. And if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense of the tongue, or meaning of the scripture, or have not given the right English word, that they put to their hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do.⁶

In 1534, he made five thousands changes to his 1526 New Testament. We can see Tyndale’s labor over perfecting his own translation of John 1:17.⁷

"The law was given by Moses: but grace and verity by Jesus Christ." [1525]

"The law was given by Moses: but favour and verity by Jesus Christ." [1526]

"The law was given by Moses: but grace and truth by Jesus Christ." [1534]

Historically, even with thousands of corrections, Tyndale’s translations are still regarded as some of the greatest works ever produced. All Bible translations are limited to a shadowy resemblance of the pre-existent mind and Word of God. Yet for us humans who live in those shadows, they are the mind and Word of God. As Christ was God, yet, made lower than the angels (Heb. 2:7), so too translations are God’s Word, though penned in a limited way by human agents.

How can the transmission of God’s Word from heaven to earth safely be accomplished? Only by divine inspiration. Forty men of God over a period of 1500 years were inspired by God to write down His heavenly Word. It would involve things they had never seen (Gen. 1:1) and things that were seen through eyewitness accounts (1 Jn. 1:1). It would even include future events that only God could know (Rev. 1:19). Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, each author perfectly penned in his own style exactly what God intended us to have. Chafer’s Systematic Theology lists seven theories of how God might have done this. The two most popular theories are these: 1) The Mechanical (or Dictation) Theory: God dictated the Scriptures to men… in the diction and vocabulary of the divine Author, free from idiosyncrasies of men. 2) The Verbal Plenary Inspiration Theory: verbal inspiration means, in the original writings, the Spirit guided in the choice of the words used. Human authorship was respected to this extent, that the writers’ characteristics are preserved and their style and vocabulary are employed but without the intrusion of error. Because plenary inspiration involves the accuracy which verbal inspiration secures and is extended to every portion of the Bible, both infallible as to truth and final as to divine authority.⁸

Verbal plenary inspiration has historically been the conservative Christian view. Inspiration guaranteed an infallibility of words and the writer’s sense in the original text. It also allowed each author to be distinct from the others, to communicate truth in different ways. Paul’s style of writing is different from Jeremiah’s, and Daniel’s was different from any of the gospel writers.