Biggest Defect of Wycliffe’s Bible

Wycliffe’s Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. This is the great defect in his work.

Continuing Wycliffe Translates The Bible Into English,
our selection from How We Got Our Bible by J. Paterson Smyth published in 1886. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Wycliffe Translates The Bible Into English.

Time: 1382
Place: Oxford University

But it is with his Bible translation that we are especially concerned. As far as we can learn, the whole Bible was not translated by the reformer. About half the Old Testament is ascribed to Nicholas de Hereford, one of the Oxford leaders of the Lollards; the remainder, with the whole of the New Testament, being done by Wycliffe himself. About eight years after its completion the whole was revised by Richard Purvey, his curate and intimate friend, whose manuscript is still in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Purvey’s preface is a most interesting old document and shows not only that he was deeply in earnest about his work, but that he thoroughly understood the intellectual and moral conditions necessary for its success.

“A simpel creature,” he says, “hath translated the Scripture out of Latin into Englische. First, this simpel creature had much travayle with divers fellows and helpers to gather many old Bibles and other doctors and glosses to make one Latin Bible. Some deal true and then to study it anew the texte and any other help he might get, especially Lyra on the Old Testament, which helped him much with this work. The third time to counsel with olde grammarians and old divines of hard words and hard sentences how they might best be understood and translated, the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunnying at the correcting of the translacioun. A translator hath great nede to studie well the sense both before and after, and then also he hath nede to live a clene life and be full devout in preiers, and have not his wit occupied about worldli things that the Holy Spyrit author of all wisdom and cunnynge and truthe dresse him for his work and suffer him not to err.” And he concludes with the prayer, “God grant to us all grace to ken well and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste.”

Like all the earlier English translations, Wycliffe’s Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome; and this is the great defect in his work, as compared with the versions that followed. He was not capable of consulting the original Greek and Hebrew even if he had access to them — in fact, there was probably no man in England at the time capable of doing so; and therefore, though he represents the Latin faithfully and well, he of course handed on its errors as faithfully as its perfections. But, such as it is, it is a fine specimen of fourteenth-century English. He translated not for scholars or for nobles, but for the plain people, and his style was such as suited those for whom he wrote — plain, vigorous, homely, and yet with all its homeliness full of a solemn grace and dignity, which made men feel that they were reading no ordinary book. He uses many striking expressions, such as (II Tim. ii. 4): “No man holding knighthood to God, wlappith himself with worldli nedes;” and many of the best-known phrases in our present Bible originated with him; e.g., “the beame and the mote,” “the depe thingis of God,” “strait is the gate and narewe is the waye,” “no but a man schall be born againe,” “the cuppe of blessing which we blessen,” etc.

Here is a specimen from Wycliffe’s Gospels:

In thilke dayes came Joon Baptist prechynge in the desert of Jude, saying, Do ye penaunce: for the kyngdom of heuens shall neigh. Forsothe this is he of whom it is said by Ysaye the prophete, A voice of a cryinge in desert, make ye redy the wayes of the Lord, make ye rightful the pathes of hym. Forsothe that like Joon hadde cloth of the beeris of cameylis and a girdil of skyn about his leendis; sothely his mete weren locustis and hony of the wode. Thanne Jerusalem wente out to hym, and al Jude, and al the cuntre aboute Jordan, and thei weren crystened of hym in in Jordon, knowlechynge there synnes.

It is somewhere recorded that at a meeting in Yorkshire recently a long passage of Wycliffe’s Bible was read, which was quite intelligible throughout to those who heard.

It will be seen that this specimen (Matt. iii. 1-6) is not divided into verses. Verse division belongs to a much later period, and, though convenient for reference, it sometimes a good deal spoils the sense. The division into chapters appears in Wycliffe’s as in our own Bibles. This chapter division had shortly before been made by a cardinal Hugo, for the purpose of a Latin concordance, and its convenience brought it quickly into use. But, like the verse division, it is often very badly done, the object aimed at seeming to be uniformity of length rather than any natural division of the subject. Sometimes a chapter breaks off in the middle of a narrative or an argument, and, especially in St. Paul’s epistles, the incorrect division often becomes misleading. The removal as far as possible of these divisions is one of the advantages of the Revised Version to be noticed later on.

The book had a very wide circulation. While the Anglo-Saxon versions were confined for the most part to the few religious houses where they were written, Wycliffe’s Bible, in spite of its disadvantage of being only manuscript, was circulated largely through the kingdom; and, though the cost a good deal restricted its possession to the wealthier classes, those who could not hope to possess it gained access to it too, as well through their own efforts as through the ministrations of Wycliffe’s “pore priestes.”

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