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The
1599 Geneva Bible
Original
Study Bible Updated for Modern Readers
 The Geneva
Bible is a sixteenth century English translation with extensive
notes. Expatriate Calvinists produced the Geneva Bible during the
reign of "Bloody" Mary, and it appeared in a variety of
editions thereafter. It was the English Bible of the Reformation,
but its popularity displeased King James I. As far as he was concerned,
a king ruled by divine right and was in a better position than his
subjects to determine what sound doctrine should be. When he wasn't
suppressing separatists, he commissioned what ultimately became
the most influential (and note-free) translation, the King James
Version.
But
the success of the KJV was not immediate. It was the Geneva Bible,
not the KJV, that Pilgrims
carried with them to the New World. (William Bradford, for example,
owned a 1592 edition.) Much has been written about the significance
of the Geneva Bible, but interest today is largely antiquarian.
In the 1990s, when a name was needed for a new Reformed study Bible,
the publishers called it The
New Geneva Study Bible. Today, the name has been changed to
Reformation
Study Bible -- presumably because consumers didn't "get"
the reference. For all its former glory, the Geneva Bible is now
covered in a thick layer of dust.
FACSIMILES
ABOUND
That doesn't mean it's forgotten -- or even particularly inaccessible.
A variety of facsimile editions are now available to readers. They
tend to be expensive, unweildy and (thanks to sixteenth century
typography) difficult to read. The massive leather-bound L.L. Brown
facsimile of the 1599 Geneva Bible has been on my shelf for several
years. When I first delved into it, I was surprised at how helpful
the notations are for study. The goal of the notes is typically
to steer the reader through the "argument" of the passage.
Working through them, you develop a real appreciation for how the
theology of the Reformation is derived from the text. Which is not
to say that modern readers, even Reformed ones, will agree with
everything they find. The value of the notes, as compared to those
found in many study Bibles today, is that, in addition to clarifying
ambiguities, they present a running "reading" of the text.
I have no trouble seeing what made the Geneva Bible so appealing
to its original audience.
But
in facsimile form, these benefits are not exactly accessible. Read
through a few pages of this
facsimile of the 1560 edition and you'll see what I mean. It's
not hard to make out -- particularly if you have experience parsing
early modern typography -- but it's not exactly easy, either. Given
its significance, I've always wondered why an edition of the Geneva
Bible with updated spelling and typography isn't available.
Well,
now it is.
 ENTER
TOLLE LEGE
There is a lot to love about the new Tolle Lege edition of the 1599
Geneva Bible: updated typography, modernized spelling and punctuation,
practical proportions. In one bold stroke, the original study Bible
has been brought up to date. The changes are conservative -- this
is still very much a sixteenth century Bible -- but they make a
big difference. Imagine you've been reading a facsimile of the 1611
KJV all your life, and then suddenly you're given a modern Cambridge
KJV. The quality of the Tolle Lege edition isn't up to Cambridge
standards (more on that in a bit), but you get the idea. This is
a big event. It makes a classic milestone safe for non-antiquarians.
My
first thought on flipping through the pages was that something had
to be missing. After all, my 1599 facsimile is huge, and the words
are literally crammed onto the page. The Tolle Lege edition is slender
in comparison, and the pages, while full, are well-ordered in a
way the 1599 Geneva Bible rarely is. It just goes to show what small,
clear type and thin Bible paper can do.
The
editors have not reproduced all of the artwork and maps from the
original, but they have preserved "Instructions, Prayers, and
Title Pages from the original 1599 Geneva Bible," as well as
"A Form of Prayer to be Used in Private Hours Every Morning
and Evening (by the 1599 Geneva Bible Translators)." In addition,
there are introductory essays by Dr. Peter Lillback, who chaired
the project's advisory board, Gary DeMar and Dr. Marshall Foster,
which put the Geneva Bible in its historic and theological context.
To aid modern readers, there is a "Glossary of Middle-English
Terms Originally Used in the 1599 Geneva Bible." (Some editions
of the KJV have a similar glossary; personally, I'd prefer to see
archaic words clarified in footnotes, but interleaving modern and
period notes would have added a whole new layer of complexity.)
THE
NOTES
To be perfectly honest, the thing that has always interested me
about the Geneva Bible isn't the translation itself, but the notes.
They strike an interesting balance between the pastoral and the
theological -- or perhaps I should say that they blend
the two, as if there is no proper distinction to be made. I'll try
to illustrate this with just one example. 1
Corinthians 4:7 reads, "For who separateth thee? and what hast
thou, that thou hast not received? if thou hast received it, why
rejoicest thou, as though thou hadst not received it?" The
Geneva Bible makes two notes on the passage. First, it offers some
practical application: "He showeth a good means to bridle pride:
first, if thou consider how rightly thou exemptest thyself out of
the number of others, seeing thou art a man thyself: again, if thou
consider that although thou have something more than other men have,
yet thou hast it not but by God's bountifulness. And what wise man
is he that will brag of another's goodness, and that against God?"
Then the Geneva Bible draws out a theological implication of the
passage: "There is nothing then in us of nature, that is worthy
of commendation: but all that we have, we have it of grace, which
the Pelagians and half Pelagians will not confess."
The
Geneva Bible is famously polemic. King James wasn't too fond of
the politics found in the notes; he seemed to think that the condemnation
found there of Pharaoh's tyranny was equally applicable to his own.
In this regard, the Geneva Bible is quite different from its modern
study Bible offspring -- which are more likely to state their interpretations
(and dissenting views) than to argue for them. There are certainly
a few things in the notes that make me cringe -- for example, the
note on Luke 24:1, which reads: "Poor silly women, even beside
their expectation are chosen to be the first witnesses of the resurrection,
that there might be no suspicion either of deceit or violence."
Perhaps the offense is ameliorated by the note on verse 9: "The
cowardly and dastardly minds of the disciples is upbraided by the
stout courage of women, (so wrought by God's great mercy) to show
that the kingdom of God consisteth in an extraordinary power."
(Then again, if the implication is that great mercy and extraordinary
power are necessary before stout courage can be displayed by women,
it might compound the offense.)
What
can I say? Take them for what they are -- a valuable but by no means
perfect reading of Scripture. And remember this, too: the fact that
the Geneva Bible was the Bible of the English Reformers, Puritans
and Pilgrims does not mean that they shared all of its interpretations.
I grew up in a church where everybody had a Scofield Bible, but
that didn't mean they accepted everything it taught. So reading
Scofield offered a window into their belief system, but not a perfect
one.
QUALITY
ISSUES
Tolle
Lege is a small operation taking on a big project, and my appreciation
for their efforts is huge. And when it comes to having an accessible,
modernized Geneva Bible, this is the only game in town. Not surprisingly,
though, this edition is plagued by the same quality problems that
characterize so many genuine leather Bibles today. The design is
good where it is conservative, but it isn't always conservative.
There is a lot of text in the introductory sections rendered in
boldface and underlined, which makes it a little hard on
the eyes. The important pages, though -- the text and notes -- follow
the conventions familiar to most KJV readers. I would have prefered
a paragraphed text, modeled on the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.
(Norton's work is cited in the Preface.) Still, this traditional
arrangement is appropriate for the project and is a vast improvement
over the facsimiles.
 Unfortunately,
the impression is uneven, so some pages are dark and others are
light. The text isn't always consistly placed on the page, either.
I've included a photograph of a heading in 1 Chronicles that ventures
very close to the edge of the page. Typographically, there are a
variety of little problems. For example, Psalm 45 flows a single
line from the inside left-hand column to the top of the inside right,
leaving the words "give thanks unto the world without end"
floating in white space. Most people don't notice design anomalies
like this, but there are enough of them here to make an old typesetter
like me want to fix them.
The
real shortcomings, though, are the ones you'd expect. The leather
cover is thin and hard. Today's genuine leather feels like yesterday's
bonded leather -- but that's a universal problem. By the time I'd
turned every page, breaking the bond left by the gilt edges, the
front cover had already "lifted." The same thing happened,
by the way, with the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. There is a limited
edition bound in calfskin that sells for $400, but I haven't seen
any photographs, so it's hard to say whether the enormous expensive
is justified.
The
binding is sewn. It doesn't feel robust exactly, but the fact that
it's sewn makes this a more appropriate candidate for re-binding.
(Which could be done for far less that the $330 premium you pay
for the limited edition -- though presumably that edition is printed
on superior paper.)
To
sum up, the quality is adequate but not ideal. With a little more
attention to the interior design and a better cover, Tolle Lege
would have knocked one out of the park. As it is, though, this edition
is a must-have for anyone interested in the history of the English
Bible or the Reformation. Until now, your only option was a hard-to-read
facsimile. The Tolle Lege 1599 Geneva Bible makes the people's Bible
accessible once again to the people.
LINKS
Tolle
Lege Press | Wikipedia
entry on The Geneva Bible | L.L.
Brown edition of 1599 Geneva Bible | Facsimile
of 1560 Geneva Bible | High
Resolution Scans of 1560 Geneva Bible
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