John Wycliffe is known as the Morning Star of the Protestant Reformation.

Wycliffe is the first person to translate the Bible into English. The basis for his work was Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.

Wycliffe was born in 1324. He joined Oxford College at a very young age and eventually received a Doctorate and also became a Roman Catholic Priest. However, somewhere around 1375, Wycliffe led in a conflict between Oxford College and the Roman Catholic Church over the doctrine of transubstantiation (the turning of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus). Then he would become a leader in England’s fights against the Roman Catholic Church. The Church would bring him to ecclesiastical trial several times.

Wycliffe began translating the Bible in 1378 A.D. He completed the New Testament in 1380 A.D. and the complete Bible in 1382 A.D. Making a single copy of Wycliffe’s Bible took ten months and a month’s pay was needed to buy one.

Wycliffe died in 1384. The Roman Catholic Church had his bones dug up in 1428 and burned as a heretic because his teachings caused them such problems.

See this link for an audio presentation:

John Wycliffe, the Morning Star of the Reformation

Just for those Biblical history buffs here is another one in the history books.

Did you know that there was published in 1631 a KJV Bible that was called the “Wicked Bible”?

The “Wicked Bible” was published by Barker & Lucas. In the type setting a word was left out. Some words being accidentally left out make a big difference in the sentence.

The word left out was “not”. A missing “not” makes a huge difference, especially when it is in this verse.

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. KJV

So the Bibles they printed said:

Exodus 20:14 Thou shalt commit adultery. KJV

Talk about getting in trouble! They were fined a huge sum and lost their printing license.

Although 1000 copies were printed, King Charles I declared that all should be destroyed. Nevertheless around eleven of the Bibles survived.

The “Wicked Bible” (“Adulterous Bible” or “Sinners Bible”) is very rarely seen.

There is one in the New York Public Library Collection, although not displayed. There is also one in the Bible Museum in Branson, Missouri.

Adding to the exciting and Bible packed summer we’ve had in Gadsden, Alabama, we will have a “Wicked Bible” on display from August 15th – September 6th as part of the Ink & Blood Display.

If you get a chance come to Gadsden, Alabama to see:

~ “The Wicked Bible” – August 15th – September 6th

~ Ink & Blood – until October 31, 2009

~ History of the English Bible – Monday, June 29, 2009 – Wednesday, August, 19, 2009 Listing of Bibles

Jerome and the Latin Vulgate
c. 405 A.D.

Beginning in 382 A.D., a Roman Catholic scholar by the name of Jerome began translating the Bible into Latin at the request of Pope Damasus I.

Jerome’s work, known as the Latin Vulgate, was completed in 405 A.D. It remains practically unchanged and is still in use in the Roman Catholic Church today.

“Vulgate” is Latin for “vulgar”, because it was written in the common, or vulgar, Latin dialect.

The Vulgate was the standard version of the Bible for Roman Catholics for over one and a half millennia. Since Latin was only studied by priests and scholars, the vast majority of people could not read or understand the Vulgate, even though they would hear passages from it every time they went to church.

Until 1450, when Gutenberg printed the Vulgate, copies were also very rare and expensive. During the Protestant reformation in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Bible was finally translated into modern languages, against great resistance from the Church. Finally in the mid-20th Century, the Roman Catholic Church abandoned the use of Latin for liturgy. However, this remains one of the most historically important Latin texts.

The Greek Septuagint
c. 285 B.C.

The Septuagint, or simply “LXX”, is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd and 1st centuries B.C. in Alexandria in Egypt.

It is the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The word “septuaginta” means “seventy” in Latin and derives from a tradition that seventy (or seventy-two) Jewish scholars translated the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Greek for Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

The Septuagint includes some books not found in the Hebrew Bible. Many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional books. Roman Catholics, however, include some of these books in their canon while Eastern Orthodox Churches use all the books of the Septuagint. Anglican lectionaries also use all of the books except Psalm 151, and the full Authorized (King James) Version includes these additional books in a separate section labeled the “Apocrypha”.

The Septuagint was held in great respect in ancient times; Philo and Josephus ascribed divine inspiration to its authors. Of significance for all Christians and for Bible scholars, the LXX is quoted by the Christian New Testament and by the Apostolic Fathers. While Jews have not used the LXX in worship or religious study since the second century A.D., recent scholarship has brought renewed interest in it in Judaic Studies. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls attest to Hebrew texts other than those on which the Masoretic Text was based; in many cases, these newly found texts accord with the LXX version. The oldest surviving codices of LXX (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) date to the fourth century A.D.