John Wycliffe (c. 1329-1384) was born in Hipswell, Yorkshire, and attended
Balliol College, Oxford. He was educated at Queen’s and Merton colleges of
Oxford and became a teaching fellow of Merton College about 1356. Wycliffe was a brilliant scholar
and a superb debater whose lectures were crowded with students. As time passed,
he became concerned about the corruption in the church and the papacy. The
church had become so wealthy and powerful that even the king of England had to
bow to it.
Wycliffe
responded by devoting more time to speaking and writing against this
corruption. Needless to say, the pope and the established church bitterly
resented the attention he was bringing on them. Ultimately, the power of the Roman Catholic Church ruled, and
university officials let Wycliffe go.
Wycliffe’s
message was for people to come back to the more biblical Christianity that the
Church practiced earlier. Soon his views were accepted and spread by traveling
preachers, of whom many were his own students from Oxford. Some became known as
Lollards (meaning “heretics”). A key appeal of Wycliffe’s message was that the people needed the Bible
in their own language for a real revival to take place. He steadfastly
preached this:
“It helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue
in which they know best Christ’s sentence.”
Even
though Wycliffe is generally associated with the first translation of the
entire Bible into English, it is uncertain whether Wycliffe made the
translation himself or whether several of his students helped with the
translation project while he oversaw the work. Wycliffe’s first version of the New Testament in Middle English
was published 1380, and a second
edition appeared in 1388 after his
death. The first edition was a
word-for-word translation of the New Testament from the Latin Vulgate. A
problem with the translation is that in some places translators followed the
Latin so closely that their translation makes no sense in English.
The
Wycliffe translation of the Old Testament
was completed about 1382. Nicholas of Hereford, Wycliffe’s
friend, is believed to have been the primary translator before trouble broke
out in Oxford in 1382 and forced him to leave. Nicholas did not do all the work
himself. There is evidence of five different translators. In a version copied
directly from Nicholas’s original (Douce 309) a note in red ink after Baruch 3:20 states in Latin: “Here ends the translation of Nicholas of
Hereford.” Realizing the shortcomings of the first edition, John Purvey, a follower of Wycliffe, is
credited with producing a second edition in 1388 -- four years after
Wycliffe’s death in 1384.
Leaders of the Catholic Church condemned the Wycliffe Bible
and both Purvey and Hereford were thrown into prison, while
some
of their friends were burned at the stake with Bibles
tied around their necks.
A
synod held at Oxford in July 1408
declared it forbidden to even read the Wycliffe’s Bible. Anyone caught reading it
would suffer the forfeiture of their
“land, cattle, life, and goods.” It is recorded that the price for
borrowing a Wycliffe Bible for an hour was a load of hay. Interestingly, the
unintended consequences of the threats of severe penalties for reading it
produced the opposite effect.
●
First, they aroused curiosity in people
to discover what the forbidden Bible said.
●
Second, it made people want to learn how
to read. So ultimately Wycliffe not only accomplished his goal of giving
the English a Bible written in their language, he ignited the desire for literacy among the common people.
In
1415 the Council of Constance condemned Wycliffe’s writings and
ordered his bones to be dug up and burned, and his ashes were scattered in
the River Swift. It is said that Wycliffe’s ashes were carried out to the sea
and his teachings spread to other lands, which is why Wycliffe is sometimes
called “the morning star of the Reformation.”*
Shalom,
Jim
Myers
PS: If this information is helpful and
beneficial, please consider helping us by “Liking” our Facebook
Page by Clicking Here and/or Donating to Help Us Do This Work by
Clicking Here.
_____________
* SOURCE: The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of
the Bible by Paul D. Wegner © 1999; Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan;
pp. 281-284.
Comments
Post a Comment