The fyrst Chapter. The begynyng off the Gospell of Jesu Christ the sonne off Bodas yt ys written in thepiophetti/be holde I sendemy messenger bez foze thy face/whych shall pres parethy waye befozetbe. The voyce of won that cryeth in the wildernes:preparevethewaye off the lorde make his pathes streyght. Jhon did baptifeinthe wyldernes and pre ache the baptim of repentaunce for the remissio offynnes. And all thelonde offieway, and they of Jerusalem went out onto hym and wereall baptised ofhymin the ryver Jozdan/knowled gynge theire fynnes.

hon was clothed with cammyllf beer and wyth a geropll offa beestes fyn about hys loys nes.And he ate locust? ãd wylde hony/and pzeź ached saynge: a stronger then commneth after me/whos shuelatchett Jamnot worthy to sto upedouneand vnlose. Jhavebaptised youwi th water but heshall baptise you with the holy goost.

Andyt cam to passeithose dares that Jesus

Reproduced by kind permission of the British and Foreign Bible Society. From a specimen in their Library.

TINDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT, THE FIRST PRINTED TRANSLATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

A.D. 80, possibly for Jews in Rome, where it was known before the end of the first century. It is the most elaborate literary work in the New Testament, a short treatise rather than a letter. Because of its polished precision we still find it fairly easy to read, though its Jewish background of High Priest and sacrifice and its allegorical use of Scripture are foreign to our thought. There are in it some finely eloquent passages.

The First Epistle of Peter and the Epistles of James and Jude are all short works, and there is no agreement among scholars as to their authorship and date. "James" is the most Jewish book in the New Testament: its note of kindly authority and its atmosphere of simple goodness make it singularly attractive. If it was written by "the brother of the Lord," it must be one of the earliest Christian writings which have survived. The First Epistle of Peter has originality and a certain distinction: it is interesting in that it stands, as it were, midway between St. Paul's Hellenism and the Judaic Christianity of St. James. "Jude" is mainly remarkable because the writer refers to late Jewish legends preserved in works called The Book of Enoch and The Assumption of Moses. The so-called Second Epistle of Peter is the latest book in the Bible. It was written between the years A.D. 130-150, and has little historical and no literary value.

The Revelation of St. John the Divine is a book of remarkable grandeur and power. It is the work of a Jew who, though he wrote in Greek, thought in Hebrew and constantly used Hebrew idioms. Its style proves conclusively that its author was not the St. John of the Fourth Gospel. The greater part of it is poetry rather than prose: and the poetry has rare beauty and sublime simplicity.

Dr. Charles gives, as an example of its character:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth;

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away;

And there was no more sea.

And the holy city, New Jerusalem, I saw

Coming down out of heaven from God,

Made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

The seer, whose visions are so rich in imagery and spiritual insight, was apparently a Christian from Galilee who migrated to Ephesus and completed his book during the persecution of Domitian about the year A.D. 95. Like the writer of the book of Daniel, he used the later Jewish form of prophecy which we term Apocalyptic. His object was to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God upon earth, and to assure the persecuted Christians of the final triumph of goodness. That triumph will be realised when "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ." The faithful are to follow wherever the Lamb that was slain may lead: for them, whether they live or die, there can be no defeat. With such splendid optimism the Bible ends.

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TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE

After the time of Ezra (450 B.C.) Hebrew gradually ceased to be a living language. When Jesus taught, though Hebrew was still used in worship, the Jews of Palestine spoke a dialect called Aramaic. The great international language at that time was Greek. In fact, after Alexander the Great (330 B.C.) conquered the Persian Empire, Greek speedily became the common speech of the Jews who spread over the Eastern Mediterranean in pursuit of trade. In Alexandria there was, from its foundation, a large Jewish colony; and for their needs a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was begun about the year 240 B.C. It was probably finished within the next two centuries; and is known as the Septuagint. It contained a number of works, now in our Apocrypha, which were not in the Hebrew

Old Testament. This Greek version is especially important because New Testament writers very frequently quote it when they refer to passages in the earlier part of the Bible. The New Testament itself was originally written in Greek; and until about the year A.D. 200 the Christian Church normally used Greek Scriptures. About that time these Greek Scriptures were translated into Latin. Some two centuries later the great scholar Jerome made a more accurate Latin translation of the whole Bible. For this purpose he used, not the Septuagint, but the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. He thus produced the Vulgate, which to this day remains the standard Latin translation of the complete Bible.

The first complete English version of the Old and New Testaments resulted from Wycliffe's attempt to evangelise England. In the fourteenth century the Church in England was wealthy and powerful; formal worship was magnificent; but, as Chaucer's writings plainly show, there was dire need of a religious revival. Wycliffe saw the need; and, like the Reformers a century and a half later, realised that the Bible must be the basis of Christian teaching. So in order that his "poor preachers" might "faithfully scatter the seed of God's Word," he and his followers produced about the year A.D. 1382 a translation of the Scriptures, made from the Latin Vulgate. The officials of the unreformed Church sought to prevent its circulation. But it spread far and wide, though printing was unknown and only manuscript copies could be obtained. Wycliffe had the insight of a great spiritual leader. May we contend that he knew the religious temperament of his countrymen and divined that they would love the Bible if they could have it in their own tongue?

The First Printed English Bible

By the end of the fifteenth century printing had been discovered, and the great Dutch scholar Erasmus published the first Greek Testament in A.D. 1516. Erasmus lived and lectured at

Cambridge while beginning to prepare his work; and the fame which the University thus gained as a home of the New Learning helped to make it the intellectual centre of the English Reformation. To Cambridge in A.D. 1515 there came an Oxford scholar named William Tindale, who was henceforth to devote his life to translating the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew. Tindale's New Testament was published in A.D. 1526; and, when he was martyred abroad ten years later, he had finished about half of the Old Testament. Meanwhile, in the year A.D. 1535, Miles Coverdale gave to the world the first printed English Bible. Revised versions then began to appear in rapid succession as scholars and divines worked with enthusiasm and skill in the golden age of English literature. Finally our Authorised Version was published in 1611; and, notwithstanding the greater accuracy of the Revised Version published in 1885, it remains the Bible of the English-speaking peoples.

The supreme literary excellence of the Authorised Version has made it the greatest of English classics. Owing to the superb beauty of its language, the Bible has an importance in our literature which is unparalleled elsewhere. It has been well said that its English "lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten." To the fortunate chance that it was made in the sixteenth century, when our language was in its vigorous prime, we must attribute its extraordinarily fine quality. Yet, if any one man deserves especial praise for his share in the work, it is Tindale. More than four-fifths both of the New Testament and of the Pentateuch is his; and the influence of his magnificent prose is manifest throughout the whole version. He described himself with sincere humility as "speechless and rude, dull and slowwitted"; but, if he had not the pen of a ready writer, there was magic in his style. As a scholar he was laborious, accurate, and honest. For him "every part of Scripture had one sense and one only, the sense in the mind of the writer." He regarded his work as a Divine Service to which he had been called, and solemnly pro