Has anyone read the Geneva Bible, if so, please educate me, excellent or mediocre translation?
Guest 77
Info on the Geneva Bible
by Guest 77 3 Replies latest jw friends
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Sargon
My library has a copy. Very archaic and hard to follow. Interesting to look at but the language is very difficult.
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Gamaliel
I've read a few NT books in it along with a few Psalms and a few chapters of Genesis. It's much easier to read than Tyndale (which it seems to copy in the updated English of the 1500's), but still a tough read without a fair background in archaic English. The actual Bible portion is nearly identical to the original King James Version. (By the way the entire Geneva Bible is on the Net in a few places along with all its marginal notes.) (see: http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/bcomp.htm )
The place where the Geneva Bible adds value is in a study of early Protestantism/Calvinism. The marginal notes are, in essence, the complete Calvinist doctrine. The translation from Hebrew and Greek was never really at question. The Bible (and mostly its notes) were a direct response to the fact that Catholic Queen Mary Tudor (and her Catholic Spanish husband Philip II) chased away the Protestants from England. Within 50 years, the English began to love its anti-Catholic notes except that this was about the worst time for a popular Bible to also have notes that explicitly questioned the authority of tyrannical kings. (Kings James and Charles I were annoyed and completed its replacement with the KJV, almost the same thing but without the notes.
I think it's mostly only useful for historical value, not as a study Bible. It doesn't have the advantage of Westcott and Hort's work on trying to discover which Greek texts were the most likely to be like the original. (1 John 5 is, of course, the most notorious example). Not that W&H were perfect, but in the late 1800's they produced the best explanations of what they had chosen as the new "received text" and why. KJV lovers hate W&H of course, but a true student of Bible translations will want the advantage of knowing what the new "choices" are -- and you won't get that added value by going back to the last half of the 1500's.
Hope this helps,
Gamaliel
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Guest 77
Sargon & Gam., many thanks for the info.
Guest 77