This article is part of theHistory of the English Bible series. |
Old English Bible translations |
John Wyclif |
William Tyndale |
Great Bible |
Bishops' Bible |
Geneva Bible |
Douai Bible |
King James Version of the Bible |
Revised Standard Version |
New American Standard Version |
New English Bible |
New International Version |
New Revised Standard Version |
The Geneva Bible was a Protestant translation of the Holy Bible into English.
During the time when England was ruled by Queen Mary I, who persecuted Protestants, a number of Protestant scholars fled to Geneva in Switzerland, which was then ruled as a republic by John Calvin and Theodore Beza. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who supervised the translation project. The first edition of this Bible appeared in 1560. It was revised substantially in 1576 and again in 1599. Like most English translations of the time, it was translated out of the original Greek and Hebrew, and was substantially based on the earlier English translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.
The Geneva Bible was extensively annotated by Laurence Tomson, who based his notes on Beza's 1574 Latin translation of the Bible. As such, it was the first annotated study Bible to appear in English, and the annotations made it more useful for private Bible reading than for public worship. This was the Bible read by William Shakespeare, by John Donne, and by John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Bishops' Bible, the translation authorised by the Church of England under Elizabeth I.
The annotations were strongly Protestant in character, and as such were disliked by King James I of England, who commissioned the Authorised Version or King James Bible to replace it. The Geneva Bible remained popular among Puritans and remained in widespread use until after the English Civil War.
