farfel_n01_014_007

Tyndale's 1st New
Testament
printed Cologne 1525 by
Peter Quentel (80 quarto
pages) -> completed at
Worms - Feb 1526.
(an octavo edition) 2
copies still exist.
Translated from Erasmus's
Greek Testament.
Tyndales' revised
New Testament - Nov.
1534 + "altogether
Tyndales' noblest
monument."
1536 - executed by
Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor at Vilvorde

CHAPTER THREE
The English New Testament in Print

The Printing Press
THE THREE QUARTERS of a century from 1450 to 1525 were
momentous years in the history of Europe. Mid-century witnessed
the invention of printing--an invention which seems so simple to us
who are acquainted with it that it may seem surprising that no one
had thought of it before, or at any rate had thought of it as a means
for multiplying the output of books. Few inventions, apart from the
invention of writing itself, have had such far-reaching implications
for human life and culture. Henceforth, where formerly each indi-
vidual copy of any work had to be laboriously transcribed by hand,
hundreds or evven thousands of identical copies could be produced at
one printing. The credit for the discovery goes to Johann Gutenberg
of Mainz in the Rhineland. The first dated printed work is a Latin
Psalter of the year 1454; the first major work to emerge from the
press was the Latin Bible of 1456--commonly called the Mazarin
Bible, because of the interest excited by a copy of it belonging to
the great library of the seventeenth-century French statesman
Cardinal Jules Mazarin, but more justly known as the Gutenberg
Bible.

The Pentateuch in Hebrew was printed at Bologna in North Italy
in 1482, and the complete Hebrew Bible at Soncino, near Cremona,
in 1488. The New Testament was first printed in Greek in 1514 at
Alcala in Spain, under the direction of Cardinal Ximenes. This print-
ing formed part of the Complutensian Polyglot (so called from
Complutum, the Latin name for Alcala). In this the New Testament
appeared with the Greek text and the Latin Vulgate in parallel col-
umns; in the Old Testament section of the work the Latin Vulgate
was flanked by the Hebrew and the Septuagint Greek like our Lord
24

Coverdale's sources
1) Tyndale (N.T.)
2) Vulgate (O.T.)
3) Dominican Scholar Sanctos Pagnimus - new Latin
translation (1528)
4) Luther
5) Luther's test adapted to Swiss German (Zurich 1524-29)

John Wycliff (c 1330-1384) early (bet. 1360-84) & later version (appeared
after his death)

King James, London, 1633 Robert Barker - Folio, 737 leaves, 2 columns, 59 lines to
the full column. 39x26 cm. - 2 printing offices were apparently
used & many minor editional & typographical differences derived from
this arrangement which was designed to provide a large edition in
a short period.