Taverner's Bible, more correctly called ''The Most Sacred Bible is the holy scripture, the old and new testament, translated into English, and newly recognized with great diligence after most exemplars by Rychard Taverner'', is a minor revision of Matthew's Bible edited by Richard Taverner and published in 1539. First editions of Taverner's Bible are extremely rare.

History

The successful sale of Matthew's Bible, the private venture of the two printers Grafton and Whitchurch, was threatened by a rival edition published in 1539 in

folio The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book ma ...

(Herbert #45) by "John Byddell for Thomas Barthlet" with Richard Taverner as editor. This was, in fact, what would now be called "piracy," being Grafton's Matthew Bible revised by Taverner, a learned member of the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wa ...

and famous Greek scholar. He made many alterations in the Matthew Bible, characterized by critical acumen and a happy choice of strong and idiomatic expressions. His revision seems to have had little influence on subsequent translators, although a few phrases in the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...

can be traced to it. Daniell sums up its influence, "indeed a version which had no influence". It was not reprinted in its entirety.

Quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

and

octavo Octavo, a Latin word meaning "in eighth" or "for the eighth time", (abbreviated 8vo, 8º, or In-8) is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multip ...

editions of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christi ...

alone were published in the same year as the original edition, and the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

was reprinted as part of a Bible in 1551. The

and

Apocrypha Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. The word ''apocryphal'' (ἀπόκρυφος) was first applied to writings which were kept secret because they were the vehicles of esoteric knowledge considered ...

were also issued by Day and Seres in five sections (Herbert #81, #82, #86, #87, #94) between 1549 and 1551.

References

Bibliography

* * Herbert, A. S. ''Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525–1961''. London: British and Foreign Bible Society; New York: American Bible Society, 1968. SBN 564-00130 9.

External links

Online version of Sir Frederic G. Kenyon’s article
in ''

Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible ''Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible'' was a five-volume Biblical encyclopaedia published 1898–1904. First edition The full title was ''A Dictionary of the Bible, dealing with the Language, Literature and Contents, including the Biblical Theology ...

'', 1909
Online scan of the text
from archive.org {{English Bible translation navbox 1539 books Early printed Bibles 16th-century Christian texts Bible translations into English