# ? about KJV and The Geneva.



## etexas (Jan 15, 2008)

I wanted to ask this since it touches on a couple of threads going (I did not want to jack them though), I know that after the AV was released in 1611, many Puritans detested it and it was nearly a century before it was embraced by the Reformed. What caused the Geneva to fade into the background and the AV to gain wide acceptance?


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## Blueridge Believer (Jan 15, 2008)

etexas said:


> I wanted to ask this since it touches on a couple of threads going (I did not want to jack them though), I know that after the AV was released in 1611, many Puritans detested it and it was nearly a century before it was embraced by the Reformed. What caused the Geneva to fade into the background and the AV to gain wide acceptance?




Mainly because it was made illegal to print it from what I understand. The A.V. was forced upon them. It worked out for the best though it seems. God has powerfully used the Authorized Version.


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## etexas (Jan 15, 2008)

Blueridge Baptist said:


> etexas said:
> 
> 
> > I wanted to ask this since it touches on a couple of threads going (I did not want to jack them though), I know that after the AV was released in 1611, many Puritans detested it and it was nearly a century before it was embraced by the Reformed. What caused the Geneva to fade into the background and the AV to gain wide acceptance?
> ...


True. But it was published in folio in the Colonies (in small numbers, big collectors items!) and could have made a comeback after the Revolution, as an AV guy I "chalk it up" to Providence.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 15, 2008)

English Annotations (1645):



> In the yeere 1560. were the _Geneva_ Interpretations, and Annotations fet forth. And _Ann_. 1577. there was an _Englifh_ Edition of the Bible publifhed by divers Bifhops in a large Volume, yet that from _Geneva_ was more generally ufed, and more efteemed then any of thofe that went before it, untill the yeere 1612. when the laft Tranflation procured by King _James_ was fift imprinted, which for the Text thereof, may give better fatisfaction to fuch as have abilitie, to compare the Originall of both Teftaments and their Tranflations together.



Matthew Poole's Annotations (1685):



> After this, King James coming to the crown, being a prince of great learning and judgment, and observing the different usage of some words in his age from the usage of them in King Henry VIII. or in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and also the several mistakes (though of a minute nature) in those more ancient versions, was pleased to employ divers learned men in making a new translation, which is that which at this day is generally used. With what reverence to former translators, what labor, and care, and pains they accomplished their work, the reader may see at large in their preface prefixed to those copies that are printed in folio, and in their epistle to King James in our Bibles of a lesser form; of which translation (though it may not be without its more minute errors) yet I think it may be said that it is hardly exceeded by that of any other church.
> ...
> The ancientest notes we have in English were those ordinarily known by the name of the Geneva Notes, after two years labour finished 1560, by those good men who, flying from Queen Mary’s persecution, took sanctuary there. A work so acceptable to protestants in the beginning of our Reformation, that their Bible with those Notes annexed was (as is observed by the authors of our Late English Annotations1) printed above thirty times over by Queen Elizabeth’s printers and their heirs and successors. There wanted not one indeed who fifty years after boldly reflected on that excellent work in the most public pulpit of our University of Oxford; but how grateful his reflections were to the University at that time may be read in the preface to the English Annotations: he was in the same pulpit checked and confuted by the doctor of the chair, and suspended by the governors of the University.2 The labours of Erasmus in his Paraphrase on the New Testament were so acceptable, that by public order they were to be in every church exposed to public view and use, and (if we mistake not) ought to be so still. After these, were published Diodate’s Notes written in Italian, since translated into English.3 About the year 1640 some deliberations were taken for the composing and printing other English notes (the old Geneva Notes not so well fitting our new and more correct translation of the Bible).


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## etexas (Jan 15, 2008)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> English Annotations (1645):
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thank you Andrew! BUT how does it explain the rise of the AV among the Reformed in America?


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## Thomas2007 (Jan 15, 2008)

You'll find a detailed answer to this question in:

Harry Stout, "Word and Order in Colonial New England," in eds., Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, The Bible in America (New York, 1982)

While the English Puritans overwhelming held to the Geneva Bible, they did so for the same reasons the Colonial Puritans overwhelming adopted the Authorized Version, save the former were in protestation to the Anglican Church and the latter were remote and independent from it working to establish a Christian social order upon explicitly Reformed grounds. Both, however, were in unison advancing the Reformation.

The Geneva Bible, while a great Bible, is the work of a de-enfranchised middle class escaping persecution of Blood Mary. Hence, the English Reformers although restored in their social standing under Elizabeth I were under James I still fighting against Romanism's in the Anglican Church. Adopting the Authorized Version to them was a concession to Anglicanism, whereas the Colonial Puritans, contrariwise, were not, but they needed theological connection to their Feudal head and the Authorized Version provided them the Scriptures in their highest legal estate, in order to comprehensively outwork Christianity and frame the social order in total upon it.

You'll find, then, in the earliest social constitutions of Colonial America where the Authorized Version is copied verbatim and also quoted verbatim in judicial records. It was the Kings Bible and they were establishing Christian colonies under charter from their King - but remote and independent from the intertwined Roman/Protestant situations of England. They were able to put the vast majority of their energies into positive growth in terms of the Reformed Faith and not expend so much in defense against error that their English counterparts were engaged in. 

This is a big reason why the Authorized Version, in particular, is so critical to the Church in America today. When a Church is properly organized at common law, as a free and independent jurisdiction, the Authorized Version is imputed by the civil law as its visible head and governor, since it is established at common law. She, then, has an Apostolic witness that the civil magistrate cannot resist:

"But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name's sake. And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer: For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." Luke 21:12-15

Paul then adds in Romans 15:6-7, "That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God."

The rejection of the Authorized Version, by the modern Church, is precisely why she no longer has an Apostolic witness, because she is now spending all of her time mediating on what she will say, instead of concentrating on being in one mind and one mouth, receiving what Providence has provided us and declaring "Thus saith the Lord..." In turn, the rulers we are brought before today no longer have any legal requirement to receive our testimony, and hence they resist it.

Thomas


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## etexas (Jan 15, 2008)

Thomas2007 said:


> You'll find a detailed answer to this question in:
> 
> Harry Stout, "Word and Order in Colonial New England," in eds., Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, The Bible in America (New York, 1982)
> 
> ...


Cool! Thank you Thomas. This gives me a handle on what I was seeking in my original post. Perhaps I did not phrase it well. Pax.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jan 15, 2008)

etexas said:


> Thank you Andrew! BUT how does it explain the rise of the AV among the Reformed in America?



As these quotes show, highly respected biblical annotators from the Westminster Assembly, and English Puritan circles, thought very highly of the KJV. Its eloquence and worth as a translation had to prove itself, by overcoming the hurdle of Puritan affinity for the Geneva Bible, which was helped by Archbishop Laud's censorship of the Geneva Bible (the last Geneva Bible printing was in 1644 in Amsterdam, making it inaccessible to many on both sides of the pond), but prove itself it did. The KJV is the text also used in the formulation of the Westminster Standards. These men and these documents were certainly influential in America, even beyond Puritan spheres. And while the Geneva Bible was associated with Separatists, the KJV could be read by both Tories and Whigs. 

Adam Nicholson, _God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible_, p. 230:



> It is one of the strangest of historical paradoxes that the King James Bible, whose whole purpose had been nation-building in the service of a ceremonial and episcopal state church, should become the guiding text of Puritan America. But the translation's lifeblood had been inclusiveness, it was drenched with the splendour of a divinely sanctioned authority, and by the end of the seventeenth century it had come to be treasured by Americans as much as by the British as one of their national texts.


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