In the Old-English period, the predominant influence of the Scriptures
may be seen in the frequency with which the men of letters turned to
them for subjects, and in the Biblical colouring and texture of thought
and style. Cædmon’s famous “Hymn” and the other poems like “Genesis,”
“Exodus,” “Daniel,” and “Judith,” which were once ascribed to him;
Cynewulf’s “Crist,” “The Fates of the Apostles,” “The Dream of the
Rood”; Ælfric’s “Homilies” and his paraphrases of certain books of
Scripture—these early fruits of our literature are all the offspring of
the Bible.
In the Middle-English period, that anonymous masterpiece “Pearl” is
full of the spirit of Christian mysticism, and the two poems called
“Cleanness” and “Patience,” probably written by the same hand, are free
and spirited versions of stories from the Bible. “The Vision of Piers the
Plowman,” formerly ascribed to William Langland, but now supposed by some
scholars to be the work of four or five different authors, was the most
popular poem of the latter half of the fourteenth century. It is a vivid
picture of the wrongs and sufferings of the labouring man, a passionate
satire on the corruptions of the age in church and state, an eloquent
appeal for a return to truth and simplicity. The feeling and the imagery
of Scripture pervade it with a strange power and charm; in its reverence
for poverty and toil it leans closely and confidently upon the example of
Jesus; and at the end it makes its ploughman hero appear in some mystic
way as a type, first of the crucified Saviour, and then of the church
which is the body of Christ.
It was about this time, the end of the fourteenth century, that John
Wyclif and his disciples, feeling the need of the support of the Bible in
their work as reformers, took up and completed the task of translating
it entirely into the English tongue of the common people. This rude but
vigourous version was revised and improved by John Purvey. It rested
mainly upon the Latin version of St. Jerome. At the beginning of the
sixteenth century William Tindale made an independent translation of
the New Testament from the original Greek, a virile and enduring piece
of work, marked by strength and simplicity, and setting a standard for
subsequent English translations. Coverdale’s version of the Scriptures
was published in 1535, and was announced as made “out of Douche and
Latyn”; that is to say, it was based upon the German of Luther and the
Zurich Bible, and upon the Vulgate of St. Jerome; but it owed much to
Tindale, to whose manly force it added a certain music of diction and
grace of phrase which may still be noted in the Psalms as they are
rendered in the Anglican Prayer-Book. Another translation, marked by
accurate scholarship, was made by English Puritans at Geneva, and still
another, characterized by a richer Latinized style, was made by English
Catholics living in exile at Rheims, and was known as “the Douai
Version,” from the fact that it was first published in its complete form
in that city in 1609-1610.
Meantime, in 1604, a company of scholars had been appointed by King James
I in England to make a new translation “out of the original tongues, and
with the former translations diligently compared and revised.” These
forty-seven men had the advantage of all the work of their predecessors,
the benefit of all the discussion over doubtful words and phrases, and
the “unearned increment” of riches which had come into the English
language since the days of Wyclif. The result of their labours, published
in 1611, was the so-called “Authorized Version,” a monument of English
prose in its prime: clear, strong, direct, yet full of subtle rhythms
and strange colours; now moving as simply as a shepherd’s song, in the
Twenty-third Psalm; now marching with majestic harmonies, in the book
of Job; now reflecting the lowliest forms of human life, in the Gospel
stories; and now flashing with celestial splendours in the visions of
the Apocalypse; vivid without effort; picturesque without exaggeration;
sinewy without strain; capable alike of the deepest tenderness and the
most sublime majesty; using a vocabulary of only six thousand words to
build a book which, as Macaulay said, “if everything else in our language
should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty
and power.”
The literary excellence of this version, no doubt, did much to increase
the influence of the Bible in literature and confirm its place as the
central book in the life of those who speak and write the English tongue.
Consider a few of the ways in which this influence may be traced.