On October 5, 1536, William Tyndale stood chained to a stake in what is now called Belgium. The crime for which he was about to be put to death was that he had used his linguistic ability to translate the New Testament into the English language. He had done so with the hope that the people of England would be able to read the Word of God for themselves and be brought through its power to faith in Jesus Christ. But at the last, He had been betrayed into the hands of his enemies and had been sent to the place of execution as a heretic, for translating the words of Scripture. Significantly, in his final words of prayer, before he was strangled and his body burned to ashes, Tyndale cried out, Lord, open the King of England's eyes. Just a few months afterward, early in the following year, there appeared in England the first English translation of the Bible to bear the license of the king. It was called the Matthew Bible after the name of its publisher, Thomas Matthew. But that wasn't his real name. Thomas Matthew, I think you would have to admit, doesn't sound like a name. It sounds like two first names put together. It was a pseudonym. The man's name actually was John Rogers. And he was a close friend and confidant of William Tyndale. And to Rogers, Tyndale, before he had been captured, had turned over all of his translation of the Old Testament that had not yet been published. And so Rogers took Tyndale's New Testament translation and combined it with the parts of the Old Testament that Tyndale had finished, and for the rest, Rogers turned to the Bible that had been published by Miles Coverdale. That Bible had first appeared in England a year before Tyndale's death. And so it came to pass that Tyndale's dying prayer was answered only months after his death. Because the very translation that King Henry VIII had despised and outlawed because it had been done by Tyndale, became the translation that King Henry endorsed once Tyndale's name was removed from it. And the king urged it to be read in all the English churches. The action of the king, ironically, began the process that led early in the following century to the publication of the English Bible that was to become most well known as the best English translation ever to be produced. Actually, the drama that surrounded the life of William Tyndale was only a small slice of the story of how we have received the Bible that we now hold in our hands. It is an amazing thing that in terms of the New Testament that you hold in your hands, 90% of those words are the words of Tyndale. So that we can say in a very definite way that when we hold this copy of the scriptures in our hands, we can feel the heat of the flames to which Tyndale was given as a sacrifice in order that we might have the benefit of his labor. There were many other sacrifices along the way. One of the greatest wonders of the story is that a king like James I of England should exercise so much care to ensure that the translation of the Bible into English should be so painstaking as it was. We're going to see that this evening. James himself was such a dissolute character and hated the Puritans so much that many believers of that period viewed him with a strange mixture of allegiance and contempt. But God is not limited to the choice of instruments that appear palatable to us. Often he uses the most unsavory people to advance the cause of his kingdom. Is that not what the Scriptures mean when they teach us that God sometimes sets up over the kingdoms of men, the basest of men? The fact is that the version of the Scriptures that bears the name of King James has been the instrument of countless blessings to the English-speaking world for nearly 400 years. In the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, as well as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, this version of the Scriptures in English is of particular importance. As noted in several of our denomination's publications, one of which is the Geneva Reform Seminary Bulletin that I showed you earlier, we read these words. The Free Presbyterian Church has from its inception maintained the use of the authorized version of the Bible for all its public worship. It recognized the unique place of the autographs of Scripture and refused to countenance the error of the Church of Rome in elevating a translation to the authority of the original manuscript. It also recognized that though other translations might faithfully reflect the original text, there were many that were untrustworthy. Avoiding the confusion that it saw in other churches where people frequently found it difficult to follow a preacher using another translation, it uniformly employed the authorized version as the standard version for its worship and service. So you gain some sense then of the importance that we place upon this version of the Scriptures. We recognize the unique place then that this version of the Bible holds in the history of the Protestant worship. since the early 17th century. And we decry the multiplication of unreliable translations in our time that have caused great confusion by the devil's own design regarding what the Word of God actually says. Tonight, we want to look at this great legacy of the Protestant Reformation. We want to gain some understanding of the multitude of providential arrangements that produced what came to be called then, and ever since, the Authorized Version. The concept of the Bible in the vernacular, in the common language of the people is a concept with which we are readily familiar. But it was not such a familiar concept in the days of the Reformers. But it was not an innovation by the Reformers. That is, the Reformers were not the first ones to come along and say, let's have the Bible in the language of the people. At the time when the books of the New Testament were being written, the common languages of the world were Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In fact, you can read in two of the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Christ, that when Pontius Pilate gave the order to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, he also directed that a sign be posted on his cross to identify that particular victim. Not many of the other victims were identified, but this one was identified and that sign carried the message of his name and of his title in each of those three languages, in Greek, in Latin, and in Hebrew. Thus nearly everyone who passed by Golgotha that day could read Pilate's message and understand it. Whether they were from the western part, the Roman part of the empire, or the eastern part, the Greek part, or whether they were from Palestine itself. It was an indication of the importance of Greek in the world at large, that the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament were translated into Greek. A translation that came to be known as the Septuagint, because there were 70 scholars who worked on the translation. In the late 4th, early 5th century, Jerome translated the Scriptures into Latin. That is, he worked from the Hebrew and the Greek into Latin. That was the language that had replaced Greek as the dominant manner of communication in the worlds of politics and commerce. So to translate the words of Holy Scripture was not then a radical idea worthy only of heretics. It had been done before. It had been historically standard practice. But when Tyndale proposed to translate the words of the Greek New Testament that Erasmus had published in 1516, the so-called Textus Receptus. When he had proposed to translate that into English, the Roman Catholic Church determined to prevent him from doing so. Now, their fear was not so much that Tyndale was not capable from the standpoint of scholarship and linguistics. for they knew that he was. After all, they had educated him. Their fear was that the impact of the English translation on the people who could read it would upset the whole order. For those people had been dragged along in their scriptural illiteracy and had been taught to accept church teaching just because the church priests and bishops said that they were to accept it. The story that we consider this evening is a powerful illustration of the truth of which we have read in our passage in Psalm 119. What do we read here? We read that the Word of God is settled forever in Heaven. And that this Word is instrumental in directing the consciences and practices of the people of God. You notice in verse 102, I have not departed from thy judgments, for thou hast taught me. How does God teach His people? It is through the words of Scripture. Notice verse 103, How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. And then in verse 104, Through thy precepts. I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way." How do the people of God learn what is true, what is right, and what is false? They learn those things through the words of Scripture. And what response do they learn when they understand the words of Scripture? They hate, they oppose, they abhor every false way. The Word of God is then to be the delight of the believer's soul. I want to look at this story in its three primary phases. First, there was patient preparation. Then, there was diligent application. And finally, there was increasing acclimation. So let's begin with the first phase, patient preparation. The story of the Bible in English goes back to the 14th century, unto the labors of John Wycliffe. I think maybe it was last year that Reverend Baker spoke about the Lollards, last year or the year before, one of the two. The Lollards were the itinerant preachers that John Wycliffe trained to take the gospel out into the English countryside. Wycliffe was himself a challenger of Roman Catholic doctrine in many areas. He challenged the whole idea of transubstantiation, which was a fairly recent innovation in Wycliffe's time. He was a Protestant, before there were any people called by that name. But the area in which Wycliffe was most insistent was that of translating the Bible into the language of the people. And he set himself to that work. He finished the translation of the New Testament in 1380, and the entire Bible he finished just two years later in 1382, and I don't think he had any word processors or any kind of sophisticated technology to help him with that work. He finished the Bible then just two years before his death. But Wickliffe's great handicap in his work was that he had no access at all to the Greek or Hebrew texts. that are behind the Bible. That meant he was translating exclusively from the Latin Vulgate that Jerome had translated, I referred to him earlier, around the turn of the 5th century. That was the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. That was the Bible, as I was saying in the introduction, that was the Bible that the Church had elevated to be the standard saying that this translation, and there were in Jerome's translation a number of errors, but this translation was to be the standard. Wycliffe did not have access to anything but that. But Tyndale did. He had the access to the ancient manuscripts. That was the result of the Renaissance. That was the result of the back-to-the-sources movement, which was in turn the result of the Crusades, which was in turn the supreme expression of medieval Romanism, sending all these people over to the Holy Land to reclaim it from the infidel Turks. And when they came back, they brought back the knowledge that there were manuscripts of the Bible in Greek and in Hebrew that had been preserved in that part of the world. So through the Back to the Sources movement, Tyndale then came into contact with these manuscripts. Now Tyndale was also, like Wycliffe, a passionate man who had a strong desire in his vivid expression, to see to it that the boy who was driving the plow in the field would know more of the Bible than the priests and other clerics of the church. And he set about the task of making that desire come to fruition. I've already mentioned the translation that was done by Miles Coverdale. He actually did several translations. His translation is one of the first to be licensed by the king. And of course that to which I refer to John Rogers who was Tyndale's friend. Now while Mary Tudor was Queen of England and she succeeded her brother Edward the only son of Henry VIII. While she was Queen of England in a five-year period, there were more than 300 Protestants who were put to death, including Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Nicholas Ridley, and Hugh Latimer, and Bishop Hooper, and many others. So there were many that were put to death. But there were others who managed to get out of England. And many of them went to Geneva in Switzerland. That was where John Calvin lived. That was where he labored. William Whittingham, an Englishman who was brother-in-law to John Calvin, worked in Geneva on a translation of the Bible into English and that translation was published in 1560 and it was called the Geneva Bible. Now the significance of 1560 is that was the year that John Knox returned to Scotland to pursue the reformation of the Church of Scotland and the Bible that the Scottish reformers used in that period was the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was the Bible that the Pilgrims carried with them on the Mayflower in 1620 when they crossed to North America. And so the Bible that was used in Plymouth Plantation, in the Plymouth Colony, in those early years was the Geneva Bible. It was known as the Bible of the Reformers. But it was the version of the Bible that King James in particular hated. Now I want you to see the provenances here. Because it was the opposition of King James I to the Geneva Bible that led him to issue a call in the second year of his reign for work on a new English translation. And that would become the authorized version. What was it that he disliked about the Geneva Bible? Because really, in terms of language, if you were to compare the Geneva Bible to the authorized version, there is very strong similarity. But the thing he didn't like about the Geneva Bible was the presence of its footnotes. The footnotes provided what James felt was an unacceptable Puritan, non-conformist slant to the understanding of the Bible. He didn't like the Puritans. He didn't like the non-conformists because they did not submit to his view of the divine right of kings or his view of the fact that he should be the supreme authority in the church. So he wanted to have a Bible that didn't have these objectionable footnotes. Now along the way there had been other versions of the Bible. There was the Bishop's Bible, that was one of the earliest English translations that was used in the churches, and as its name implies, it was endorsed by the bishops of the church. There was the Great Bible, and the Great Bible was actually Coverdale's translation, it was called the Great Bible, not because it was somehow distinct from all the others, but because of its size. It was very large. This was not the kind of Bible that you would carry through the streets with you. It was called the Great Bible and The king's budget provided for every church to have a copy of the Great Bible. And because of the value of these books, the Great Bible was often found chained to a reading desk in the church. So that was somewhat of the history. Now we're talking about a compressed period. William Tyndale was burned in 1536. So we're talking about a short period of time leading up to the call for the new translation. King James came to the throne of England in 1603. Elizabeth I died that year. James I had been king of Scotland since he was six months old. He had been king of Scotland for 37 years. But when he became king of England, he set the forces in motion to produce the authorized version. So now we see the patient preparation and when I say that, I'm talking about God's preparation of the whole city for this work. And that brings me to the second phase of this process, of this story, diligent application. It was in 1604, during the second year of the king's reign, that James summoned a group of scholars to the palace at Hampton Court on the Thames River. It came to be called the Hampton Court Conference. And he urged these scholars to begin the work of making a new translation into English that would replace all the other translations. You see, that was his aim. He wanted to get rid of all these others that were floating around, some of which he didn't like. So he appointed 54 men to the commission that would undertake the work. Only 47 actually ended up serving. And among those there were four Puritans. I think James felt that in order to make it a truly national version that he needed to have the Puritans on board. Lawrence Bence has written a history of this process, and he wrote in his history, these men were the best biblical scholars and linguists of their day. In the preface to their completed work, it is further stated that there were many chosen that were greater in other men's eyes than in their own, and that sought the truth rather than their own praise. Again they came or were thought to come to the work learned not to learn. Other men were sought out, according to James, so that our said intended translation may have the help and furtherance of all our principal learned men within this our kingdom." So those last words were the words of the king himself. Now, the amazing thing to me is that he was so intent on that, because he really was more anxious to do away with everything that had come before. But he wanted this translation to be the very best that it could be. Now the interesting thing is that they were given instructions to work in a very organized and deliberate fashion. Lawrence Vance also notes the translators were organized into six groups and met respectively at Westminster, that's in London, Cambridge, and Oxford. Ten of them were meeting at Westminster. They were assigned Genesis through 2 Kings. Seven had Romans through Jude. So there were a total of seventeen then at Westminster. At Cambridge, eight worked on 1 Chronicles through Ecclesiastes. while seven others handled the Apocrypha. The authorized version did include the Apocrypha for about 40 or 50 years after it was first published. It wasn't until later in that century that the Apocrypha was removed. Oxford employed seven to translate Isaiah through Malachi. Eight occupied themselves with the Gospels, Acts, and Revelations. So they divided them up and they put them in different places and the object of that was to try to ensure that there wasn't a lot of cross-fertilization, if you will. Now there were 15 general rules that the king set down to guide the scholars in their work. And I'm not going to take the time to go over all 15 of them, but there are some that are especially noteworthy. Rule number six was, no marginal notes at all to be affixed. That is, no footnotes. But only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words. That is, he would allow them to include an additional explanation of something in the original, which cannot, without some circumlocution so briefly and fitly, be expressed in the text. Number seven was, such quotations of places to be marginally set down as shall serve for the fit reference of one scripture to another. That is, marginal cross-references. Those were allowed. So that one scripture verse, there might be a note to look at another scripture verse that refers to the same thing. Rule number eight was, every particular man of each company to take the same chapter or chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their parts what shall stand. So that they had divided the Bible up, now every man was to take certain chapter or a group of chapters and he was to go off on his own. And he was to work on translating those chapters or that chapter. And then after everybody was done, they were all then to meet together and compare their translations with each other. I want you to see the methodical nature of what was done here. The idea being that They would work independently so that they wouldn't be influenced by what others thought before they actually did the work. And then as they would come together, it may be that they saw that the way another man had put something was better. Number nine, as any one company hath dispatched any one book in this manner, they shall send it to the rest. to be considered of seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this point. So that when a group was done with a book of the Bible, what were they to do? They were to send it on to another group, meeting in another location. And they were to take the same approach. They were to study it in the same way. And in this way, all of those who were involved in the project would be exposed to every part of the Bible. So in other words, you wouldn't have some who would say, well, here were the experts on Exodus, and here were the experts on Revelation. No, they all were exposed to all the contents of the Bible. Rule number 10 said, if any company, upon review of the book so sent, doubt or differ upon any place, to send them word thereof. Note the place, and withal send the reasons, to which if they consent not, the difference to be compounded at the general meeting, which is to be of the chief persons of each company at the end of the work, so that if there were differences, that would exist and they couldn't resolve them to everybody's satisfaction, they would be set aside and then in the general meeting that would happen at the end, then those differences would be considered and they would come to a decision. So you see there was a desire to proceed in a careful manner. And there was also a desire to prevent, and this was the genius of the way it was done, to prevent any man's particular prejudices from influencing the outcome of the whole work. In other words, it was set up where the prejudices that any particular person had would be effectively screened out by the process. Now, the scholars set about their work in 1604, and they worked, according to this procedure, steadily for four years. And then, after all that work was done, then there was a smaller series of groups that was set up with representatives from each of the larger groups And they continued the work, resolving the apparently unresolvable differences of opinion, and they worked at that for the next year to 18 months. So that the whole process of the actual work on the translation took five to five and a half years. Then when all of that work was done, the translation went through another process of editing before it was finally published in 1611. Now I have to stop and say that there are a lot of people today who have set some magic by the date 1611. the authorized version, or the King James Version as they like to call it, 1611. The thing about the version that came out in 1611 was it had barely hit the streets before everybody realized this thing's got a lot of errors in it. I'm not talking about errors in terms of the scriptural content. I'm talking about errors of printing. Printing was not the science then that it is now. Everything had to be set by hand. There were no machines to set up the printed pages. There were a lot of printing errors. There were a lot of misspellings. And so right away, it was realized that we're going to have to have some revisions of this version. And as early as 1629, another edition of the authorized version appeared to try to correct some of those problems. And there were a number of revisions. I mentioned that later in the 17th century, the Apocrypha was eliminated from the Authorized Version. The most important revision to the Authorized Version came in 1769. And again, it was not a revision of the contents, of the scriptural contents. It was a revision of spelling. 1769, that edition was published through the efforts of an Oxford scholar called Benjamin Blaney. And the version, the edition, if you will, of the authorized version that we use today is essentially the 1769 edition. If you were to go back before that, And you look at the editions, you would find that in typical style in that period, the S, the letter S, was printed so that it looked like we would expect an F to look. So that if you saw a word with S's in it, you would, from your standpoint, be a little bit confused. So in 1769, all of those spellings were adjusted and modernized. Now, from the first edition of the Authorized Version in 1611, it has been the practice to place in italics any words that the translators supplied that did not correspond to a word or words in the original languages. And that is the hallmark of all honest translation. That is, if there is a word that has to be supplied to make it read properly in English, you put that word in, in italicized text. So I want you to see that the diligence that was involved in this work, that it was very methodical, very careful, and led to a result that we find in the third phase, increasing acclimation. It is called the authorized version. I prefer that designation. The King James Version is something that is almost uniquely American. But there is a lot of disagreement as to whether or not it was ever authorized. That is, did King James ever give to this edition of the Bible his official sanction? Well, some argue there was a dedication of the Bible, an epistle dedicatory, some copies of the authorized version, maybe yours, will have that epistle dedicatory in it. There was the implication that this was a tacit admission that James himself had authorized this version. But there are others who say that the Bible that was published in 1611 was compelled to gain acceptance gradually over a period of years as older versions fell out of use. The Geneva Bible was published several times up until 1644. and probably the most famous edition of the Geneva Bible, certainly the one the Pilgrims carried with them, was published in 1599. But as time went by, English readers began to recognize the sheer excellence of the Authorized Version, the accuracy of its translation, and the elegance of its style. It was said of Luther's translation of the Bible into German that it became the standard for the German language, for German literature. Well, certainly something like that can be said about the Authorized Version. Increasingly, Protestants dropped their allegiance to the Geneva Bible and began to use the Authorized Version instead. It was the Bible that the Wesleys used. and that Whitfield used, and that became widely adopted in the American colonies. One author has said of the authorized version, the style used in this version was unique. It was not the English of that day either spoken or written. That's significant. Indeed, and he quotes another author, Another man asserts that the dialect used was not at any period the actual current book language, nor the colloquial speech of the English people. Now, it's well to note that assessment, because one of the objections that you hear against the authorized version today is, this isn't This doesn't relate to the people who read it. It's not the language they speak. Well, it wasn't the language that the people spoke in 1611 either. In fact, it can be argued that the translators were striving for a style that was elevated so that people would understand this is the Word of God. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And so that they would distinguish this book from all other books. That was what they aimed at. The men who worked on the Authorized Version, for the most part, were very spiritual and godly men. They were men who had a love for the Gospel. And they wanted this translation to be such that it would be timeless. And I think that we can argue that they achieved that objective. Frederick Faber, who later in his life abandoned Protestantism for Romanism, who wrote that hymn, Faith of Our Fathers, not about the Protestant fathers, but about the Roman Catholic fathers, nevertheless was compelled to write this eulogy of the authorized version. Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds against heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, an extenuation of whose grotesque fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man are hid beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft and gentle and pure and penitent and good speaks to him forever out of his Protestant Bible. It is a sacred thing which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. And that was the admission of one who had really moved away in his mind from Protestant truth. So if he is compelled to admit that even so, this Bible possesses a quality that obviously was put into it by God himself, not to suggest that it is in any way inspired, or in any way a standard by which the original is to be evaluated, the authorized version became the true production of Reformed thought of the Reformation, and it became, as I say, one of its most enduring legacies. When you sit down with the Authorized Version, I trust you'll think back to October 5, 1536, the prayer of Tyndale, open the King of England's eyes and reflect that it was that sacrifice that became responsible ultimately for this version of the Bible. That sacrifice meant that we could have the Bible not only in our own language, but have the ability to read it freely, to interpret it for ourselves as we are led by the Spirit of God and through the faithful exposition of it by preachers whom God has called to that task. And that in all things we may look upon this version of the Scriptures as an exposition of Jesus Christ. That was the aim. And I trust that we will see that still. as the aim today. Let us then take it up and read it, teach it to our children and our grandchildren, and long that in the days to come these tremendous words will still be with us even unto the end.