at home now, will reply in more detail tomorrow — question, is that the first edition which Wycliffe himself translated or is it the second edition which was translated by others?
“is that the first edition which Wycliffe himself translated or is it the second edition which was translated by others?”
I didn’t know there were two versions. I did know that Wycliffe himself wasn’t responsible for the full translation. I suspect the link is to the second and much more commonly found version.
Here, for example, is the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) in this [first] version. (The spelling is modernized.)
Forsooth he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Soothly Jesus beholding, said ‘Some man came down from Jerusalem into Jericho, and fell among thieves, which also robbed him and, wounds put in, went away, the man left half quick. Forsooth it befell, that some priest came down in the same way and, him seen, passed forth. Also forsooth and a deacon, when he was beside the place, and saw him, passed forth. Forsooth some man Samaritan, making journey, came beside the way, but he seeing him was stirred by mercy. And he, coming nigh bound together his wounds, holding in oil and wine. And he, putting on his horse, led into a stable, and did the cure of him. And another day he brought
forth two pence, and gave to the keeper of the stable, and said, “Have thou the cure of him, and whatever thing thou shalt give over, I shall yield to thee, when I shall come again.” Who of these three seemeth to thee to have been neighbour to him that fell among the thieves?’
And he said, ‘He that did mercy on him.’ And Jesus saith to him, ‘Go thou, and do thou in like manner.’
Earlier from the same article:
“An examination of the evidence, however, suggests that Wycliffe can be said to have translated the whole Bible only in the sense that ‘he who does something by the agency of another does it himself’ (qui facit per alium facit per se). Most of the translating was carried out by his disciples, but certainly at his instance. The primary evidence lies in the copies of the Wycliffite Bible that have survived, nearly 200 in number. It was a manuscript Bible, for its production and circulation belong to the period before the invention of printing in Western Europe; and even after printed books began to appear (about 1450) the Wycliffite Bible was long in being printed. The New Testament part of the work was first printed in 1731; the whole Wycliffite Bible in print was first published in 1850 (at Oxford), in a four-volume edition by Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden.
The comparative study of the manuscripts has revealed that there were two distinct versions of the Wycliffite Bible, an earlier and a later. The earlier version was probably completed while Wycliffe was alive; the later version, which represents a revision of the earlier one, was issued ten or twelve years after his death.
The manuscripts containing the earlier version are far fewer than those containing the later version. That is not surprising, because the later version was a popular work in idiomatic English, whereas the earlier was a rigidly literal rendering of the Latin Vulgate, regularly reproducing the constructions natural to Latin in preference to those characteristic of English idiom. Why should this be? Wycliffe himself was the master of a racy and pungent English style; the style of the earlier version cannot be put down to a donnish inability to achieve anything but a literal translation.
The reason for the literalness of the translation is simply that the Bible was treated as a law-code. The Bible, and not the corpus of canon law, was the codification of God’s law. Even civil law was secondary to God’s law set forth in the Bible. It should make no difference whether the Latin text or the English text was used. People of education could use the Latin text, but it was most desirable that those who had no Latin should have equal access to God’s law; hence the English version. But it had to be evident that, whether the Latin or the English text was used, the two texts exhibited a word-for-word identity. The lay leaders of John of Gaunt’s party could be satisfied that they were using (in English) precisely the same law-book as the learned clerks read in Latin.
Theological students, too, could derive an advantage from this word-for-word translation. In the standard glosses or commentaries on the sacred text, each individual Latin word was annotated; it was therefore easier to use them to elucidate the English Bible if each English word corresponded, as far as possible, to its Latin counter-part.”
While the first version is stilted, it is better than nothing. The second version is better English.
“When Sir Thomas More, in 1529, contrasted the ‘malicious’ translation of the Bible made by ‘the great arch-heretic Wyclyffe’ with the acceptable version ‘well and reverently read’ by many ‘good and godly people’, he went on to say:
Myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles fair and old written in English, which have been known and seen by the bishop of the diocese, and left in laymen’s hands, and women’s, to such as he knew for good and catholic folk that used it with devotion and soberness. But of truth, all such as are found in the hands of heretics, they use to take away. 14
There is no reason to doubt More’s personal witness. There was, however, one thing of which he was unaware: those English ‘Bibles fair and old’ were copies of the later Wycliffite version. There was nothing in the translation itself that smacked of Lollardy or any other form of ‘heresy’, and the copies bore no indication of the translators’ identity. Many bishops would feel quite happy to grant permission for the possession and use of such copies to those who could be trusted not to exploit the permission for ‘improper’ purposes.
But many others, who could not obtain official permission, refused to be deprived of the opportunity of reading the Scriptures in their own tongue, and met together in small groups to read and discuss them together. The house-meeting for reading the Bible in this way became a tradition that still lives on in English-speaking lands (as well as elsewhere), but in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries those who attended such groups did so at the risk of liberty and even of life itself.”
All quoted came from the 12 page article below:
http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_098_4_Bruce.pdf