Miles Coverdale, Unsung Hero
Chapter 5
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Miles Coverdale, born in 1488, was
William Tyndale's friend, confidante and proofreader. His revision of
Tyndale's translation work, known as the Coverdale Bible, became the first
complete English Bible ever printed in 1535. Coverdale used Tyndale's New
Testament translation and the portions of the Old Testament Tyndale completed
before his death, as well as Luther's German Bible, the Swiss Bible of the
anabaptists, and the Itala Bible.
Something I find very interesting is
the fact that although we find no Baptist names in this long list of Bible
translators God so greatly used, we certainly find a great Baptist influence on
the translation work. You will recall from a previous chapter that Martin
Luther relied on the Waldensian Bible, the Bible of the anabaptists, to produce
a faithful translation of the Scriptures in German. Here again, we find
Miles Coverdale turning to the Swiss anabaptist text for his English translation
of the Bible.
The Itala Bible, used by Miles
Coverdale, is also a Baptist text. First produced in AD 156, it was the
first complete copy of the Bible in the world. It is known as the "Old
Latin Bible," translated from Syrian into Latin by the Waldensians and the
Albigenses, our anabpatist forefathers, and was revred as the preserved Word of
God for Latin-speaking believers. It was the Bible used by the early
Baptist church in the Italian Alps.
The Itala Bible is not the same as
Jerome's Latin Vulgate, produced almost three hundred years later, which is the
corrupt Catholic text used by John Wycliffe in the fourteenth
century.
The Itala Bible was translated from the
Peshitta, a Syrian translation of the original Greek manuscripts in AD
145. The very handwritten documents of Paul, Peter, John, Matthew, Luke,
and the other New Testament writers were used to produce a Bible translation for
the Syrian believers, who were "called Christians...
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first in Antioch,
Syria.
You may ask, "How do you know that the
Syrians had access to the very autographs of the New Testament writers?"
If this proposal can be proven as an accurate assessment, then there is
absolutely no validity to the modern bible translators' claim to a Scripture
text more accurate than the King James Bible based on the "oldest and most
reliable manuscripts." You certainly cannot get any older or any more
reliable than the first time "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost."
Tertullian, in AD 208, a full sixty years after the Peshitta had been translated,
said,
"Come now, run over the apostolic
churches, in which the very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in
their places, in which their own authentic writings
are read, uttering the voice and representing the face of each of them
severally. You find Corinth, Philippi, and the Thessalonians. Your
are able to get Ephesus. You have Rome, from which there comes even
into our own hands the very authority of the apostles themselves. I hold
sure title deeds from the original owners themselves, to whom the estate
belonged. I am the heir to the apostles. Jsut as they carefully
prepared their will and testament, even so I do hold
it."
Surely, if Tertullian had access to the
very writings of the apostles while he visited the very churches started by
those same apostles, when it came time for a translation of the Scriptures into
the Syrian language, the Syrian Christians used the available writings of the
founder of their church. the apostle Paul, and the other authentic New Testament
documents in circulation at the time.
Three hundred and fifty Peshitta
manuscripts are available to us today, some dating back to the second century
AD. It was available to and used by Miles Coverdale and also the
translators of the King James Bible. The Peshitta is in strong agreement
with...
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the text of the King James Bible.
This is a proven, direct link between the original manuscripts that the liberals
and critics of the Bible always harp about but have never seen and the King
James Bible, the Authorized Version of 1611.
I made reference to the Peshitta Bible
and its relationship to the King James Bible in my previous book "...To All
Generations." One Christian brother who bought the book felt it was
his duty to enlighten me as to where I was in error in my research and
subsequent conclusion. He wrote me a letter, the gist of which went
something like this: "You have never seent the Peshitta. If you had, you
would never have made such a claim as you did. It does not even resemble
the King James Bible, let alone agree with it."
To be quite honest, he was right in
that I had never actually seen the Peshitta, but he was wrong regarding
everything else he said. I had read after enough reputable men who are
very knowledgeable on our position for the King James Bible. I knew I was
on safe ground in restating what they had obviously researched and in taking a
similar position based on their evidence.
Then in December of 1996, I was invited
to preach a meeting in Massachusetts. The host pastor, sharing my
enthusiasm for old Christian books and Bibles, took me to a library filled with
treasures from the seventeenth and eithteenth centuries. It was there that
I pulled from the shelf a copy of Murdock's translation of hte Peshitta into
English. With much anticipation I began to look for all the verses that
were not supposed to be there. After all, those Textus Receptus renderings
found in the King James Bible which are routinely called into question by the
textual critics of our day "are not found in any manuscripts earlier than the
fourth century." That is the standard argument against the reliability of
the King James Bible and its underlying Greek and Hebrew
texts.
I looked for I John 5:7. It was
not supposed to be there. It was there. I looked for Mark
16:9-20. It was not supposed to be there.
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It was there. I looked for Matthew
17:21. It was not supposed to be there. It was there. I looked
for John 7:53-8:11. It was not supposed to be there. It never
existed in any manuscript prior to the fourth century AD, after the "oldest and
most reliable" manuscripts, the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, had come from
existence. Surely these passages of Scriture could not be found in a text
that pre-dates the entire textual foundation of the modernbible translation
movement by more than two hundred years! But they were there. What I
had believed by faith had been confirmed by sight, by hard, tangible, physical
evidence.
The reason William Tyndale never
completed his translation work on the Old Testament before his martydom is that
he encountered severe difficulties in trying to translate the Psalms from Hebrew
into English. The Book of Psalms was written as a song book, and is used
as such by the children of Israel to this day. It was also utilized as the
song book of the early church. It was not until the fifteenth century AD
that a Baptist preacher named Benjamin Keach introduced hymn singing in the
Baptist church.
Tyndale discovered that the transition
from Hebrew to English, trying to retain the meter, poetry and symmetry of
the songs from the Psalms, proved to be almost impossible. He labored
diligently in his efforts to no avail, but remember that he had no other
translation to work with in his dungeon prison cell--only his Hebrew Bible,
grammar and dictionary.
Miles Coverdale, on the other hand,
realized that although Hebrew to English was an extremely difficult transition
when it came to the poetry and flow of the Psalms, Hebrew to German to English
flowed very smoothly and beautifully. Martin luther had done a tremendous
job with his German translation of hte Bible form the faithful, reliable
Biblical texts, and his work on the Pslams was no exception. Miles
Coverdale translated the Book of Psalms in the Coverdale Bible directly from
Luther's German Bible. The Book of Psalms in the King James Bible was also
greatly influenced by Luther's German translation. Again we see the
sovereign hand of God at work in the small...
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circle of men God used to give us our
Bible. Martin Luther, a Protestant, the founder of the Lutheran movement,
and an ordained Catholic priest, had more influence on the King James Bible than
most of us ever realized. Without Martin Luther, William Tyndale would not
have been saved. Without William Tyndale, there woudl be no King James
Bible, because his translation and those that followed the faithful Biblical
text based on his work make up ninety percent of the text of the Authorized
Version of 1611.
The Coverdale Bbile was the first Bible
officially sanctioned by the king of England, Henry VIII, in answer to William
Tyndale's dying prayer, as we mentioned in the last
chapter.
Catholicism had reigned supreme over
most of Europe for centuries, and England was no exception. When the pope
spoke, kings bowed and groveled. This was true up through the time of the
death of William Tyndale.
Shortly after Tyndale's death, King
Henry VIII had a falling out with Rome over his desire to divorce his present
wife. Henry had been married several times. Some of his wives had
been beheaded or otherwise dispatched. His most recent wife was unable to
produce for him the son that he so greatly desired. He appealed to the
pope for an annulment. The pope refused to grant Henry's request. He
said, "No divorce." Henry then retorted, "No pope." The king of
England broke all British ties with Catholicism as a result of this
disagreement, and the Anglican Church, the Church of England, which we still
know today as the Episcopal Church, was born.
The king, not so much for the love of
the Word of God as for his open defiance of Rome, allowed and authorized the
Bible to be produced in the language of the poeple during the lifetime of Miles
Coverdale. Just a few short months after Tyndale burned at the stake for
translating the Bible, Miles Coverdale now had the official sanction and
blessing of the same king who killed Tyndale to do the same thing for which
Tyndale died at his hand.
Henry VIII hated the Baptists as much
as he hated Rome. He...
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set out to exterminate the Baptist
people in England and in Germany. In 1535 he gave the Baptists "twelve
days to depart out of the realm under pain of death." On May 25, 1535,
twenty-five Dutch Baptists were examined at St. Paul's Church in London.
Fourteen were condemned and burned at the stake. Eleven
recanted.
Froude, the English historian,
said,
"The details are all gone.
Their names are gone. Poor Hollanders they were and that is all. At
their death the world looked on complacent, indifferent. Fourteen poor men
and women could by no terror of stake or torture be tempted to say they believed
what they did not believe. In their deaths they assisted to pay the
purchase money for England's freedom."
The books of the Baptists were burned
whenever and wherever they were found, many times along with their owners.
On November 16, 1538, Henry VIII proclaimed, "None are to sell or print any
books of Scripture without supervision of the king. Anabaptists and the
like who sell books of false doctrine, and all who lately rebaptized themselves,
are ordered from the kingdom, or shall burn at the stake."
Baptists were accused of "drowning men
spiritually by rebaptizing," and "profaning the holy sacrament." Some
Baptists were drowned as punishment for this "error." Others were burnt
alive.
Only two people were burned under the
otherwise peaceful reign of Henry's successor, his son Edward VI. Both of
the victims were Baptists, which was considered a grave crime. Historian
Wiliam Clark said, "A considerable proportion of those who suffered martyrdom
under Mary were anabaptists." Bloody Mary, the tudor queen crowned after
the deathof young Edward VI, was Henry's daughter by one of his earlier
wives. Obviously, ...
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Henry instilled in his son Edward and
his daughter Mary his disdain for the Baptist people, and in the tradition of
their father they carried on the fierce persecution against
them.
Miles Coverdale, who was not a Baptist
but was greatly used of God nonetheless, was spared a martyr's death, but three
times he was forced to flee for his life, leaving behind his home, his property
and his possessions, which were confiscated and lost to him
forever.
God still had great things in store for
Miles Coverdale as he was responsible for giving England the Great Bible and
also served on the committee that produced the Bible that had the greatest
influence on the King James translators, the Geneva Bible.
