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The Bible

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 5, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 49.

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The Bible

By L. L. C.

The Invention of Printing

WHEN the Reformation had turned the minds of God’s people again to the study of the Scriptures, the time had come in the providence of God for the third step necessary to make the Bible the universal book. “The first step was,” as we have seen, “the invention of alphabetical writing. The second was the process of translation. The third was the invention of the art of printing.” Up to the time of this invention, all copies of the Bible had to be made slowly and laboriously by hand. Though John Wycliffe had already been instrumental in giving to England for the first time in history a complete version of the Scriptures in the English language, this version had to be circulated in the manuscripts copied by hand.
About fourteen or fifteen years after the death of Wycliffe there was born in Germany (at Mainz, it is supposed) a boy named Johannes Gensfleisch, who afterward adopted the name of Gutenberg, his mother’s birthplace. The story is told that one day, being left alone, the boy cut from the bark of a tree the letters of his name. By some accident while he was arranging them, one fell into a pot of boiling purple dye which stood near by. Without thinking, the boy reached for the letter, only to drop it from his scalded fingers to a white dressed sheepskin on a bench near by. As a result there appeared on the sheepskin a beautiful purple “h.” Somehow this image so wrought itself into the boy’s mind, we are told by Paterson Smythe, in “How We Got Our Bible,” page 74, that it resulted, years later, in his discovery of the art of printing.
Shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century Gutenberg’s printing press was at work in the city of Mainz. The first dated book which he published was the Psalter of 1457. Five years later he printed the first dated Bible. These were both in Latin.
The first person to take advantage of the art of printing to bring out an English Bible was William Tyndale, “to whom,” as Dr. B. F. Westcott says, “it has been allowed more than to any other man to give its characteristic shape to the Bible.”—History of the English Bible, London, 1905, p. 25. This version of the Bible was printed at Cologne, and the books were brought into England by every secret method that could be devised. Try as they would, the enemies of the Holy Scriptures could not keep them from the English people. The tide of public opinion set in strongly in favor of the Bible in the language of the people. But Tyndale himself did not live to see the full dawning of the day. Betrayed by pretended friends, he was arrested, and died a martyr at the stake. It is said that while dying he prayed, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
About sixty-seven years after this prayer was uttered, James I, king of England, desiring one uniform translation (a number had been made since Tyndale’s day by various persons), and professing that he had never yet seen a perfectly satisfactory English version, decided that this work could best be done by appointing learned men of the English universities to prepare a revision, which should then be reviewed by the bishops and chief learned men of the church, and presented to the Privy Council, and ratified by royal authority. Thus he hoped to have a Bible produced to which the whole church might be bound as to a final authority. The work of preparing this King James, or Authorized Version, was begun in 1604, but was not completed and published until 1611.
Almost two centuries went by, and though many copies of the Bible were printed, still God’s Word had not been circulated as widely as it was God’s plan that it should be. It was truly in the providence of God that a little over a hundred years ago, in 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society was established. Twelve years later, in 1816, the American Bible Society was organized. These two societies have been largely instrumental in the wonderful circulation of the Scriptures during the last hundred years. The Bible has now been translated into almost five hundred languages, and is sold by the millions every year. There is no book published which has a larger sale than the Bible.
Because of the change which the English language had undergone in over two hundred and fifty years, and on account of the discovery of a number of important new Bible manuscripts,—the Sinaiticus and others,—it seemed best to bring out a revision of the King James Version. The men chosen for the revision committee were the most learnedBiblical scholars to be found, and the revision which they produced, while in some places seemingly lacking the majestic style of the Authorized Version, on the whole is more faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts as we now have them. The English revision was brought out from 1881 to 1885, and an American revision followed in 1901.
The work of the Bible societies seems to be bringing to a fulfilment that prophecy in Daniel, that in the last days “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Not only have travel and commerce been wonderfully developed during the last hundred years, and scientific and other general knowledge been increased, but the wonderful inventions of printing and of means of rapid transportation have made possible the greatly increased knowledge of the Scriptures. The Christian believer cannot suppose that all these things simply happened during the last hundred years, for he knows that it has all been in accord with God’s prearranged plan for a rapid work in the last days.
Let us appreciate the many wonders which have made possible the universal circulation of the Bible among all men, and in this appreciation let us study the Scriptures more.
L. L. C.