Next to the Bible itself, the English Bible was -- and is -- the
most influential book ever published. The most famous of all
English Bibles, the King James Version, was the culmination of
centuries of work by various translators, from John Wycliffe, the
fourteenth-century catalyst of English Bible translation, to the
committee of scholars who collaborated on the King James
translation. "Wide as the Waters" examines the life and work of
Wycliffe and recounts the tribulations of his successors, including
William Tyndale, who was martyred, Miles Coverdale, and others who
came to bitter ends. It traces the story of the English Bible
through the tumultuous reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor,
and Elizabeth I, a time of fierce contest between Catholics and
Protes-tants in England, as the struggle to establish a vernacular
Bible was fought among competing factions. In the course of that
struggle, Sir Thomas More, later made a Catholic saint, helped
orchestrate the assault on the English Bible, only to find his own
true faith the plaything of his king.
In 1604, a committee of fifty-four scholars, the flower of Oxford
and Cambridge, collaborated on the new translation for King James.
Their collective expertise in biblical languages and related fields
has probably never been matched, and the translation they produced
-- substantially based on the earlier work of Wycliffe, Tyndale,
and others -- would shape English literature and speech for
centuries. As the great English historian Macaulay wrote of their
version, "If everything else in our language should perish, it
alone would suffice to show the extent of its beauty and power." To
this day its common expressions, such as "labor of love," "lick the
dust," "a thorn in the flesh," "the root of all evil," "the fat of
the land," "the sweat of thy brow," "to cast pearls before swine,"
and "the shadow of death," are heard in everyday speech.
The impact of the English Bible on law and society was profound. It
gave every literate person access to the sacred text, which helped
to foster the spirit of inquiry through reading and reflection.
This, in turn, accelerated the growth of commercial printing and
the proliferation of books. Once people were free to interpret the
word of God according to the light of their own understanding, they
began to question the authority of their inherited institutions,
both religious and secular. This led to reformation within the
Church, and to the rise of constitutional government in England and
the end of the divine right of kings. England fought a Civil War in
the light (and shadow) of such concepts, and by them confirmed the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. In time, the new world of ideas that
the English Bible helped inspire spread across the Atlantic to
America, and eventually, like Wycliffe's sea-borne scattered ashes,
all the world over, "as wide as the waters be."
"Wide as the Waters" is a story about a crucial epoch in the
history of Christianity, about the English language and society,
and about a book that changed the course of human events.
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