Abstract
The Pentateuch contains one of the most influential narratives of western literature. Because In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Bible was still regarded as the Word of God, the creation story was appropriated by every artform as a means of understanding human subjection to the misery of the world, to death, pain, persecution and disease. In Adam’s turning away from God to embrace Eve, mankind was banished from the sight of the King of heaven to await the coming of an obedient son of God who would, through his sacrifice, pacify God and restore mankind to him. After the powerful narratives of Genesis and Exodus, many of which were imitated and appropriated by Renaissance writers, comes Leviticus, which one scholar has compared to an “unappetizing vein of gristle in the midst of the Pentateuch”1 Suddenly in 1532 Leviticus was very much on the menu, for Leviticus 20 held the key to Henry’s freedom to many Anne Boleyn.
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Reference
See R. Alter., and F. Kermode. eds. The Literary Guide to the Bible.London: Fontana, 1989. 66.
R. Marius, Thomas More. London: Weidenfeld, 1993. 47.
D. Maculloch. Thomas Cranmer: A Life.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.42.
J. N. King. `Henry VIII as David: The King’s Image and Reformation Politics.’ Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts. ed. P C Herman. Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.78–2.
See Eric Ives, Anne Boleyn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
H.H. Hutson and H.R. Willoughby. `Decisive Data on Thomas Matthew Problems.’Crozier Quarterly 2 (1939): 1–15. 2.
H.H. Hutson and H. R. Willoughby, `Decisive Data on Thomas Matthew Problems’. Crozier Quarterly (1939), 1–15, JRL, R82218, p 1.
BM, Harl. Ms 421 fol 40.
A. W. Pollard. Records of the English Bible London: Henry Frowde, 1911.15.
Ibid.,16.
D. Daiches. The King James Version of The English Bible. Hamden: Conn.: Archon books, 1968. 28.
W. F. Moulton. The History of the English Bible, 5th ed. rev. J.H. Moulton., and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911.123.
S. Brigden. London and the Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. 258259.
Rev. W.F.Moulton. The History of the English Bible, 5th ed. rev. J.H. Moulton., and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911.123.
J. L. Chester. John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible. The Pioneer of the English Reformation: And its first Martyr. London, 1861.31.
D. MacCulloch. Thomas Cranmer: A Life.New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.196.
See L. Greenfeld. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity.Cambridge Ma. and London: Harvard University Press,1992. She discusses the role of vernacular Bibles in the development of Nationalism in five European Countries. She argues that “Protestantism was able to perform this crucialactive role in the furthering of English nationalism because it, to an unprecedented degree, stimulated literacy”. 53.
M. Becan. The English Jarre.London,1611. STC 1702. 5.
This engraving precedes all of the Great Bibles.
S.L.Greenslade. ed. The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from The Reformation to the Present Day, 3.London: Cambridge University Press, 1963.150.
L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964–9. no.I68. `Ordering Rtnishment for Seditious Rumors, Martial Law for Unlawful Assemblies [Westminster, ?29 October 1536, 28 Henry VIIII’ 244245.
H.H. Hutson and H.R. Willoughby. `Decisive Data on Thomas Matthew Problems.’ Crozier Quarterly 2 (1939): 1–15.1.
B.F. Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed. rev. W.A. Wright..London: Macmillan, 1905. 72.
J.L.Chester. John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible. The Pioneer of the English Reformation: And its first Martyr. London, 1861. 32.
ibid., 31.
Rev. W.F. Moulton. The History of the English Bible, 5th ed. rev. J.H. Moulton., and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911.126.
C. Anderson. The Annals of the English Bible.London: Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 1862.569. 28B.F.Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed. rev. W.A. Wright..London: Macmillan, 1905. 169.
Ibid.,169.
D. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 336.
Ibid., p 336.
Ibid., p 337.
J.L.Chester. John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible. The Pioneer of the English Reformation: And its first Martyr. London, 1861.48.
B.F.Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed. rev. W.A. Wright..London: Macmillan, 1905.132.
Ibid.,177.
Rev. W.F. Moulton. The History of the English Bible, 5th ed. rev. J.H. Moulton., and W.F. Moulton. London: Charles H. Kelly, 1911.132.
Ibid.,50.
J.L.Chester. John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible. The Pioneer of the English Reformation: And its first Martyr. London, 1861.50.
The increasing importance of the vernacular language in France is evident in Francis of France’s decree of 1539, in which he insisted that vernacular French language should become the language of Government, the language of power.
Matthew Bible note “a* Antichrist sygnifyeth not any particular man, which (as the people dreame) shulde come in the ende of the worlde for ye se that even in S. Johns tyme he was al ready come: but all that teache falsse doctryne contrary to the worde of God, are Antichrists”, JRL, 10004 fol.cxiii.. Whilst such a note does not pin the pope to the role of Antichrist in the world, it does suggest that there is a very pervasive Antichristian presence in the world. This is actually more threatening than the suggestion that the Antichrist is focused in one Papal power, which is John Bale and Edmund Becke’s suggestion in their 1549 Bible.
B.F. Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd ed. rev. W.A. Wright..London: Macmillan, 1905. 71–72.
G. Hammond. The Making of the English Bible. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1982. 221.
See G. Gennette. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Tr, J E Lewin.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Petrarch writes “We should write the same way as bees make honey, not preserving flowers, but turning them into honeycombs, so that out of many and varied resources a single product should emerge, and that one both different and better”. Familiarum Rerum Libri, xxiii.19, in Francesco Petrarca, Prose, ed. G. Martellotti et al. Milan and Naples, 1995.1018.20. A. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.50.
H. Evans, The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Based on the original book of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer. Hertfordshire, Wordsworth, 1993.
A.E. Cowley. ed. Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar as edited and enlarged by the lateE. Kautzsch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. 342.
S.L.Greenslade. ed. The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from The Reformation to the Present Day, 3.London: Cambridge University Press, 1963.130431.
Le Fevre French Bible, 1534.JRL. R1707.
G. Hammond. The Making of the English Bible. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1982.14.
When Moses does eventually succeed in freeing his people, the first thing they do is to wish that they were back in Egypt where they were never hungry. “Would to God we had died by the hand of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full” Exodus 16.3, A.V.
These unaltered chapters of Exodus are as follows:5,6,13,14,16,17,18,19,20,24,29,31,32,33, 35,36,37,38,39,40. Rogers does alter the spellings of words, but those are beyond the scope of this enquiry.
His dislike of the word is endorsed and extended in Taverner’s revision of the historical books, where “plague” is similarly removed at Joshua 22.17 and Joshua 24.5. This detail may indicate that Rogers did not revise Joshua -2 Chronicles.
D. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 337.
L.Brown. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
In Deuteronomy 12.6; 17.2; 17.5; 18.4; 18.5; and 28.51, all of the possessive pronouns “thy” are replaced by the definite article in the Matthew Bible. Rogers’s change here from “the” to `thy“ is not evidence of a general revision pattern.
Pagninus. Latin Bible. 1527. JRL.19851.
Olivetan. French Bible. 1535. JRL. 120.
Rogers removed Tyndale’s note to Leviticus 25.9: “This home in ebrue is called iobel, and of this toke the pope an occasion to make everi.l.yere a iubelye, so that he contrafaiteth god in everi point and wyl not be one ace behinde him”. STC 2350. xlv `.
D. Daniell. William Tyndale: A Biography. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 336.
Tyndale makes 1500 changes to his 1526 Matthew, Mark and John Gospels alone, in his New Testament in 1534.
The OED equates “against” with “meet” in sixteenthcentury usage.
T. Cranmer. Miscellaneous Writings and Letters. ed. J.E. Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1846.100.
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Westbrook, V. (2001). John Rogers and the Matthew Bible. In: Long Travail and Great Paynes. Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2115-8_3
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