I am pleased to announce that the Book of Romans from the 1599 Geneva
Bible has been Proofread and uploaded to the GenevaBible.org website,
( http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html
) (both the Footnotes
version and the Non-footnotes version)
Also, I have changed the fonts and fixed some formatting issues,
please let me know if like the new changes. Only Matthew through
Romans have been updated, and the rest will follow about one book a
month, on average, until I finish the footnotes of the 1599 Geneva
Bible.
Some changes have been made to bring it closer to the original, like
the ¶ has been included to both the non-footnote and footnote version.
Italics have been included as the original 1599 Geneva Bible had them,
italics were used to show which words the translators added that
wasn't in the original Holy Writ (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Syrian
texts) they added these words to help the reader to understand. The
1611 KJV also followed the use of italics.
For the footnotes version the Scripture cross-references have been
included as to which the original 1599 Geneva Bible had them.
The website to download from is:
http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html
to download the files find the
link you want to download and right click on it and choose Save As.
When I come across the many diagrams found in the 1599 Geneva Bible I
will be placing those images in the footnotes version only.
If you have been at a lost at the history of the Breeches/Geneva Bible
because of bias from the KJV Onlyists, here is the Historical
Knowledge you need to know:
http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/igb.htm
The Geneva Bible
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Introduction to the GenevaBible
For the last three centuries Protestants have fancied themselves the
heirs of the Reformation, the Puritans, the Calvinists, and the
Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock. This assumption is one of
history's greatest ironies. Today's Protestants laboring under that
assumption use the King James Bible. Most of the newer Bibles such as
the Revised Standard Version are simply updates of the King James.
The irony is that none of the groups named in the preceding paragraph
used a King James Bible nor would they have used it if it had been
given to them free. The Bible in use by those groups until it went out
of print in 1644, was the Geneva Bible. The first Geneva Bible, both
Old and New Testaments, was first published in English in 1560 in what
is now Geneva, Switzerland,* William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John
Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other
luminaries of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively.
Until he had his own version named after him, so did King James I of
England. James I later tried to disclaim any knowledge of the Geneva
Bible, though he quotes the Geneva Bible in his own writing, As a
Professor Eadie re****ted it:
". . . his virtual disclaimer of all knowledge up to a late period of
the Genevan notes and version was simply a bold, unblu****ng falsehood,
a clumsy attempt to sever himself and his earlier Scottish beliefs and
usages that he might win favor with his English churchmen." 1
The irony goes further. King James did not encourage a translation of
the Bible in order to enlighten the common people. His sole intent was
to deny them the marginal notes of the Geneva Bible. The marginal
notes of the Geneva version were what made it so popular with the
common people.
The King James Bible was, and is for all practical purposes, a
government publication. There were several reasons for the King James
Bible being a government publication.
First, King James I of England was a devout believer in the "divine
right of kings," a philosophy ingrained in him by his mother, Mary
Stuart. 2 Mary Stuart may have been having an affair with her Italian
secretary, David Rizzio, at the time she conceived James. There is a
better than even chance that James was the product of adultery*
(G.P.V. Alerigg Jacobean Pageant p.6.). Apparently, enough evidence of
such conduct on the part of Mary Stuart and David Rizzio existed to
cause various Scot nobles, including Mary's own husband, King Henry,
to drag David Rizzio from Mary's supper table and execute him. The
Scot nobles hacked and slashed at the screaming Rizzio with knives and
swords, and then threw him off a balcony to the courtyard below where
he landed with a sickening smack. In the phrase of that day, he had
been scotched. 3
Mary did have affairs with other men, such as the Earl of Bothwell.
She later tried to execute her husband in a gunpowder explosion that
shook all of Edinburg. King Henry survived the explosion, only to be
suffocated later that same night. The murderers were never discovered.
Mary was eventually beheaded at the order of her cousin, Elizabeth I
of England. 4
To such individuals as James and his mother, Mary, the "divine right
of kings" meant that since a king's power came from God, the king then
had to answer to no one but God. This lack of responsibility extended
to evil kings. The reasoning was that if a king was evil, that was a
punishment sent from God. The citizens should then suffer in silence.
If a king was good, that was a blessing sent from God.
This is why the Geneva Bible annoyed King James I. The Geneva Bible
had marginal notes that simply didn't conform to that point of view.
Those marginal notes had been, to a great extent placed in the Geneva
Bible by the leaders of the Reformation including John Knox and John
Calvin. Knox and Calvin could not and cannot be dismissed lightly or
their opinions passed off to the public as the mere dithering of
dissidents.
First, notes such as, "When tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they
burst forth into open rage," (Note i, Exodus 1:22) really bothered
King James
Second, religion in James' time was not what it is today. In that era,
religion was controlled by the government. If someone lived in Spain
at the time, he had three religious "choices":
1. Roman Catholicism
2. Silence.
3. The Inquisition.
The third "option" was reserved for "heretics," or people who didn't
think the way the government wanted them to. To governments of that
era heresy and treason were synonymous.
England wasn't much different. >From the time of Henry VIII on, an
Englishman had three choices:
1. The Anglican Church.
2. Silence.
3. The rack, burning at the stake, being drawn and quartered, or some
other form of persuasion.
The hapless individuals who fell into the hands of the government for
holding religious opinions of their own were simply punished according
to the royal whim.
Henry VIII, once he had appointed himself head of all the English
churches, kept the Roman Catholic system of bishops, deacons and the
like for a very good reason. That system allowed him a "chain of
command" necessary for any bureaucracy to function. This system passed
intact to his heirs.
This system became a little confusing for English citizens when Bloody
Mary * ascended to the throne. Mary wanted everyone to switch back to
Roman Catholicism. Those who proved intransigent and wanted to remain
Protestant she burned at the stake - about 300 people in all. She
intended to bum a lot more, but the rest of her intended victims
escaped by leaving the country.
A tremendous number of those intended victims settled in Geneva.
Religious refugees from other countries in Western Europe, including
the French theologian Jean Chauvin, better known as John Calvin, also
settled there.
Mary died and was succeeded to the throne by her Protestant cousin,
Elizabeth. The Anglican bureaucracy returned, less a few notables such
as Archbishop Cranmer and Hugh Latimer (both having been burned at the
stake by Bloody Mary). In Scotland, John Knox led the Reformation.
The Reformation prospered in Geneva. Many of those who had fled Bloody
Mary started a congregation there. Their greatest effort and
contribution to the Reformation was the first Geneva Bible.
More marginal notes were added to later editions.
* Daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. She became queen in
1553 after her brother, Edward VI, died.
By the end of the 16th Century, the Geneva Bible had about all the
marginal notes there was space available to put them in.
Geneva was an anomaly in 16th Century Europe. In the days of absolute
despotism and constant warfare, Geneva achieved her independence
primarily by constant negotiation, playing off one stronger power
against another. While other governments allowed lawyers to drag out
cases and took months and years to get rid of corrupt officials, the
City of Geneva dispatched most civil and criminal cases within a month
and threw corrupt officials into jail the day after they were found
out. The academy that John Calvin founded there in 1559 later became
the University of Geneva.
Religious wars wracked Europe. The Spanish fought to restore Roman
Catholicism to Western Europe. The Dutch fought for the Reformation
and religious freedom. England, a small country with only 4 ½ million
people, managed to stay aloof because of the natural advantage of the
English Channel.
The Dutch declared religious freedom for everybody. Amsterdam became
an open city*. English Puritans arrived by the boatload. The 1599
Edition of the Geneva Bible was printed in Amsterdam and London in
large quantities until well into the 17th Century.
*At the time Geneva, was a city-state. Geneva did not become part of
Switzerland until 1815.
King James, before he became James I of England, made it plain that he
had no use for the "Dutch" rebel who had rebelled against their
Spanish King.
Another of the ironies left us from the 16th Century is that freedom
of religion and freedom of the press did not originate in England, as
many people commonly assume today. Those freedoms were first given to
Protestants by the Dutch, as the records of that era plainly show.
England today does not have freedom of the press the way we understand
it (There are things in England such as the Official Secrets Act that
often land journalists in jail.)
England was relatively peaceful in the time of Elizabeth I. There was
the problem of the Spanish Armada, but that was brief Elizabeth later
became known as "Good Queen Bess," not because she was so good, but
because her successor was so bad.
Elizabeth died in 1603 and her cousin, James Stuart, son of Mary
Stuart, who up until that time had been King James VI of Scotland,
ascended the throne and became known as King James I of England.
James ascended the throne of England with the "divine right of kings"
firmly embedded in his mind. Unfortunately, that wasn't his only
mental problem.
* In those days an "open city' was one in which the inhabitants were
allowed to believe in or print what they preferred
King James I, among his many other faults, preferred young boys to
adult women. He was a flaming homo***ual. His activities in that
regard have been recorded in numerous books and public records; so
much so, that there is no room for debate on the subject.
The King was queer. The very people who use the King James Bible today
would be the first ones to throw such a deviant out of their
congregations.
The depravity of King James I didn't end with sodomy. James enjoyed
killing animals. He called it "hunting." Once he killed an animal, he
would literally roll about in its blood. Some believe that he
practiced bestiality while the animal lay dying.
James was a sadist as well as a sodomite: he enjoyed torturing people.
While King of Scotland in 1591, he personally supervised the torture
of poor wretches caught up in the witchcraft trials of Scotland. James
would even suggest new tortures to the examiners.
One "witch" Barbara Napier, was acquitted. That event so angered James
that he wrote personally to the court on May 10, 1591, ordering a
sentence of death, and had the jury called into custody. To make sure
they understood their particular offense, the King himself presided at
a new hearing (which could hardly be called a trial) and was gracious
enough to release them without punishment when they reversed their
verdict.
History has it that James was also a great coward. On January 7, 1591,
the King was in Edinburgh and emerged from the toll booth. A retinue
followed that included the Duke of Lennox and Lord Hume. They fell
into an argument with the laird of Logie and pulled their swords.
James looked behind, saw the steel fla****ng, and fled into the nearest
refuge which turned out to be a skinner's booth. There, to his shame,
he "fouled his breeches in fear." 5
In short, King James I was the kind of despicable creature honorable
men loathed, Christians would not associate with, and the Bible itself
orders to be put to death. 6
Knowing what King James was we can easily discern his motives.
James ascended the English throne in 1603. He wasted no time in
ordering a new edition of the Bible in order to deny the common people
the marginal notes they so valued in the Geneva Bible. That James I
wasn't going to have any marginal notes to annoy him and lead English
citizens away from what he wanted them to think is a matter of public
record. In an account corrected with his own hand dated February 10,
1604, he ordained:
That a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be
to the original Hebrew and Greek; and this to be set out and printed
without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of
England in time of divine service.
James then set up rules that made it impossible for anyone involved in
the project to make an honest translation, some of which follow:
1. The ordinary Bible read in the church, commonly called the Bishop's
Bible to be followed and as little altered as the truth of the
original will permit.
Or, since the common people preferred the Geneva Bible to the existing
government publication, let's see if we can slip a superseding
government publication onto their bookshelves, altered as little as
possible.
2. The old Ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz. the word "church" not
to be translated "congregation," etc.
That is, if a word should be translated a certain way, let's
deliberately mistranslate it to make the people think God still
belongs to the Anglican Church - exclusively.
3. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the
explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot without some
cir***locution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.
James didn't want those pesky marginal notes cropping up, not even
once. That was fine for the common herd, but not for James' own
bishops. Many of their writings and sermons alluded to the Geneva
Bible and its marginal notes decades after the King James Bible was
published.
The bishops had good reason to be confused. They needed those marginal
notes. James had just obliterated a procedure that kings and
governments had used for thousands of years. Because words and phrases
quite often had several meanings all im****tant state or royal decrees,
treaties, and agreements contained marginal explanations or
commentaries in order to remove all doubt from the mind of the reader.
In the 16th century those marginal notes were called "glosses." Today
the members of the legal profession use almost the same system in the
form of footnotes and case cites.
The King James Bible was finally printed in 1611. It was not
technically a translation. What the flunkies employed by King James
did was revise and compare other translations of which they simply
plagiarized about 20% of the Geneva Bible. *
* Translations from one language to another almost never come out
word-for word identically.
In their New Testament translation, the King James "translators"
didn't even revise and compare. What they did was simply copy – almost
word for word - William Tyndales' 1525 New Testament. At the time of
his translation Tyndales' New Testament had been labeled as "seditious
material" by Henry VIII and copies discovered on ****ps reaching
English ****ts were confiscated and destroyed. William Warham,
archbishop of Canterbury, even went so far as to buy all the copies he
could get in Europe in order to destroy them.
Tyndale was hounded from London to Cologne to Worms. He settled in
Marburg under the protection of Philip, landgrave of Hesse. Nobody
messed with Big Phil.
Philip didn't care what anyone thought. If he felt like telling the
emperor to "stuff it," he did. If neighboring royalty wanted to
rumble, Philip showed up with troops. If Philip decided one wife
wasn't enough for him, he just took another one. In March of 1540,
after Martin Luther and other prominent Protestant theologians had
expressly approved polygamy according to the Scriptures, Philip became
Europe's best- known bigamist.
Unfortunately, even Philip couldn't cope with treachery. Tyndale was
betrayed by his personal Judas, Henry Phillips. He was tried for
heresy, condemned, strangled at the stake, and his body afterwards
burnt.
It is interesting to note that the Geneva Reformers- men such as John
Calvin - expressed opinions in the marginal notes that would be simply
unacceptable to the "scholars" of today. For example, the passage in
Genesis 12:2-3, that reads:
"And I will make of thee a great nation, and will bless thee, and make
thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.I will also bless them
that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all
the families of the earth be blessed."
Our ministers today tell us this refers to Jews. That isn't the way
the Geneva translators understood it:
The world shall recover by thy seed, which is Christ, the blessings
that were lost in Adam. 7
Twentieth century scholarly works, such as the Scofield Reference
Bible, published by Oxford University Press, hold that the 38th
Chapter of Ezekiel refers to an invasion of Jerusalem by Russian
armies leading the Northern European powers. John Calvin and his
cohorts, who annotated the Geneva Bible, understood it a little
differently:
Signifying all the people of the world should assemble themselves
against the Church and Christ their head. 8
The Reverend Scofield and his fellow "scholars" hold up Satan as some
sort of boogey-man. The Geneva translators, as in Psalm 109:6, simply
translated the word, "adversary." In Mark 8:33, Christ said to Peter,
"Get thee behind me, Satan." The Geneva translators understood exactly
what the word meant and apparently didn't figure anyone else would be
dumb enough to equate Peter with the Evil One. On that, the Geneva and
King James translate the word the same.
James did not stop at censoring the Bible. He carried his "divine
right of kings" to the point that he dissolved Parliament. That
institution was to James simply a convenience he needed to raise money
for his endless pursuit of pleasure and depravity. When Parliament
balked at his requests for money James dissolved it Magna Carta and
the liberties of Englishmen were mere frivolities in the mind of
James. As an illustration of the loathing and contempt Christians of
that era held for the government of James I, it is interesting to note
that after the first bitter weather in New England, when half their
number were dead, not one of the Pilgrim survivors wanted to be taken
back to the England of James I aboard the Mayflower.
James' oldest son died and his second son, Charles, ascended to the
throne after the death of James I, Charles also believed in the
"divine right of kings." By 1642, English patience was at an end and
civil war erupted. By 1649, the English Parliament had had enough of
Charles, who apparently believed that one of his "divine rights" was
to sign agreements and then break them any time he felt the urge.
Charles was beheaded. Oliver Cromwell took over the government.
Oliver Cromwell, of Celtic and Welsh ancestry, made the same basic
mistake that James I and his son, Charles, made. Cromwell believed, as
James had professed to, that governments were for the common wealth
(good) and not the common will. He tried to legislate moral codes that
very few could handle. The prisons overflowed with his critics. During
his invasion of Ireland, he slaughtered enough women and children to
fill entire graveyard& Cromwell died in 1658. The English had had
quite enough of his form of government and acquired another king,
Charles II.
The last run of Geneva Bibles was printed in 1644. That was the year
John Milton was invited to instruct the English Parliament on the
actual teachings of the Bible regarding divorce (it was allowed). What
Milton understood that none of our modern "experts" seem to was that
"He who divorces his wife and marries another," was not a prohibition
of divorce, it was a prohibition against throw-away people. As John
Milton in his On Christian Doctrine and Martin Luther in his essay on
Deuteronomy 21:15 pointed out, having more than one wife was
Scriptural. You just weren't supposed to throw them away when you got
bored with them.
Four years after the last Geneva Bible was printed, the Thirty Years
War (the last of the great religious wars of Europe) ground to a halt.
Millions had died. Germany was so depopulated it took her two
centuries to recover. The Reformation had survived. It didn't survive
for long.
After several generations of English speakers grew up without the
stabilizing influence of the Geneva marginal notes, the "interpret it
any way you want" school of thought came into fa****on. The
"charismatic" movement was in full swing by 1730.
A few men here and there tried to show people what the religion of
their ancestors actually was. A man named Ferrar Fenton published his
own translation of the Bible in 1906, complete with a history lesson
at the beginning of each set of books in the Bible. Another man named
George Lamsa wrote "Idioms of the Bible Explained," and tried to show
the errors of the modem scholars. They were drowned by the works of
others.
Of course, there were those that went the other way. A backwoods
preacher, Noah Fredericks, wrote a book titled, Pilgrim ****ps, in
which he claimed the people of the Old Testament came from outer
space, Moses's rod was an electronic control used to open a fortress
(mistranslated, "rock"), Elijah introduced a path for current to flow
from the ionosphere to the ground in order to fry two platoons of
Ahab's infantry, and other theological positions that will probably
never be taken seriously by anybody (unfortunately).
During the 16th Century and the one preceding it, the Spanish Empire,
a colossus larger than the Roman Empire, had been unable to stamp out
the Reformation with the world's finest and most well equipped armies.
The Spaniards needn't have bothered. What the armies of Catholic Spain
were unable to make a dent in, one sadistic sodomite, James I, did
with a pair of censoring scissors.
The Reformation, and the blood of millions who fought for it,
apparently went for nothing. Protestant churches of today hardly
resemble the churches of the Reformation.
Today's preachers study the Scofield Reference Edition of the King
James, a volume that contains marginal notes that would seem no more
accurate to John Calvin and John Knox than Mother Goose. The blind are
once more leading the blind. This reprinted edition of the 1599.
Geneva Bible is probably the last sputtering flame of the Reformation.
The works of John Milton, John Calvin, John Knox, George Buchanan,
William Tyndale, and the rest can still be found on the shelves in the
public libraries. Such works are checked out by uninterested college
students on an average of about one volume every ten years, no one in
today's churches reads them.
Michael H. Brown - 1988
Footnotes:
1 Luther A, Weigle, The English New Testament, P.24. [back]
2 Otto J. Scott, James I, Passim [back]
3 lbid [back]
4 Ibid, p. 212 [back]
5 Ibid, p. 211 [back]
6 Leviticus, 20:13 [back]
7 Genesis 12:2 note c 1599 Geneva Bible [back]
8 Ezekiel 38:7. note e 1599 Geneva Bible [back]
Copyright © 1999-2003, The Reformed Reader, All Rights Reserved
Steve
stevez062905@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Page
http://www.genevabible.org
1599 Geneva Bible Online
1 Corinthians 14:8
And also if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare
himself to battle?
"Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it
most respect." John Adams, the second president of the United States
Yahoo Group Owner
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Watchmen-on-the-wall/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Geneva_Bible/
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