Bishops' Bible

The Bishops' Bible is an English translation of the Bible which was produced under the authority of the established Church of England in 1568. It was substantially revised in 1572, and the 1602 edition was prescribed as the base text for the King James Bible that was completed in 1611.

The Bishop's Bible succeeded the Great Bible of 1539, the first authorized bible in English, and the Geneva Bible of 1557-1560.

The thorough Calvinism of the Geneva Bible (more evident in the marginal notes than in the translation itself) offended the high-church party of the Church of England, to which almost all of its bishops subscribed. They associated Calvinism with Presbyterianism, which sought to replace government of the church by bishops (Episcopalian) with government by lay elders. However, they were aware that the Great Bible of 1539 — which was the only version then legally authorized for use in Anglican worship — was severely deficient, in that much of the Old Testament and Apocrypha was translated from the Latin Vulgate, rather than from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. In an attempt to replace the objectionable Geneva translation, they circulated one of their own, which became known as the "Bishops' Bible".

The promoter of the exercise, and the leading figure in translating was Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury. It was at his instigation that the various sections translated by Parker and his fellow bishops were followed by their initials in the early editions. For instance, at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, we find the initials "W.E.", which, according to a letter Parker wrote to Sir William Cecil, stand for William Alley, Bishop of Exeter. Parker tells Cecil that this system was "to make [the translators] more diligent, as answerable for their doings." Unhappily, Parker failed to commission anyone to act as supervisory editor for the work completed by the various translators, and was too busy to do so himself, and accordingly translation practice varies greatly from book to book. Hence, in most of the Old Testament (as is standard in English Versions) the tetragrammaton YHWH is represented by "the LORD", and the Hebrew "Elohim" is represented by "God". But in the Psalms the practice is the opposite way around. The books that Parker himself worked on are fairly sparingly edited from the text of the Great Bible, while those undertaken by Grindal of London emerged much closer to the Geneva text.

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