Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Greek Aquinas

Demetrios Kydones · c. 1324–1398

The Summa contra Gentiles and much of the Summa Theologiae rendered into Greek by a statesman who began learning Latin to read them.

The Wycliffite Bible

John Wycliffe's circle

The whole Bible translated from the Vulgate into English, first word for word and then revised into readable idiom, with a prologue defending vernacular scripture.

The Life of Stefan of Perm

Epiphanius the Wise · c. 1350–c. 1420

The missionary who devised an alphabet for the Komi people, translated the liturgy into their language, and cut down their sacred birch — told in an ornate style of word-weaving.

The Paraclesis

Desiderius Erasmus · c. 1466–1536

A preface wishing that the gospels were translated into every tongue, so that the farmer might sing them at the plough and the weaver hum them at the shuttle.

The New Testament in English

William Tyndale · c. 1494–1536

The first English New Testament translated from Greek and printed, smuggled into England in bales of cloth and publicly burned by the bishop of London.

On Translating: An Open Letter

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

A defence of adding the word alone to justified by faith, and a description of how hard it is to make Hebrew speak German without sounding like a foreigner.

The Works

Maximus the Greek · c. 1475–1556

Translations, textual corrections, and treatises by an Athonite monk brought to Moscow to revise the service books, who was imprisoned for decades for his corrections.

The German Bible

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

The whole Bible from Hebrew and Greek into a German shaped, as its translator said, by listening to the mother in the house and the common man in the market.

The Coverdale Bible

Miles Coverdale · 1488–1569

The first complete printed English Bible, made from Latin and German rather than the original tongues by a translator who admitted he knew neither well.

The Great Bible

Miles Coverdale · 1488–1569

A revision produced under royal authority and chained in every parish church by order of the crown, with a title page showing the king distributing the word.

The Geneva Bible

The English exiles at Geneva

A scholarly translation with verse numbers, roman type, maps, and extensive marginal notes — some of which told readers when a king might be disobeyed.

The Ostrog Bible

Ivan Fyodorov and the Ostrog circle

The first complete printed Church Slavonic Bible, prepared in Volhynia from Greek and Slavonic manuscripts under the patronage of a Ruthenian prince.

The Rheims New Testament

Gregory Martin and the English College

An English Catholic translation from the Vulgate, made by exiles and deliberately literal, with notes answering Protestant readings verse by verse.

The King James Bible

The forty-seven translators

A revision by six companies of scholars working to fifteen rules, told to follow the Bishops' Bible where they could and to avoid marginal notes on doctrine.

The Spiritual Exercises and Commentaries

Juliana Morell · 1594–1653

Devotional writings and a translation with commentary of a monastic rule, by a prodigy who publicly defended theses in philosophy at twelve.

The Massachusett Bible

Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God

John Eliot with Cockenoe, Job Nesutan, and James Printer · 1604–1690

The whole Bible translated into an Algonquian language and printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, by a team in which the Native collaborators did much of the work.