The Bible and the Caveman
For over a thousand years the only Bible Christians knew was one they couldn’t read or understand. The Latin Vulgate translation was the work of Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius (Hieronymus is Latin for Jerome: St. Jerome) who wrote the Latin translation during the 30 years he lived in a cave under the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This meant that, after Latin began to die as a common language after the fall of Rome in 476 A.D., the Bible generally became inaccessible to men and women - for 1,000 years! Until John Wycliff and William Tyndale! St. Jerome died September 30, 420 (see Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished portrait of St. Jerome above, now in the Vatican Museum).
King Henry VIII was a mixed bag for the Reformation in England. He was a staunch Catholic in most beliefs and practices, but he saw the reformers as helpful in support of the divine right of kings to rule over the church (Erastianism). With the encouragement of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer and others he ordered that an English-language Bible be placed in every church in the nation.
The book written for this purpose was The Great Bible (1538). The Great Bible was principally the work of the English reformer Miles Coverdale who used almost all of William Tyndale's unfinished English translation. The King who has Tyndale killed for his English translation only two years earlier (1536) was now promoting the same English translation!
The Bible in English was a religious and cultural tsunami in England. It cannot be overestimated how making the Bible available in the language of the people empowered common men and women to know God as he is revealed in Holy Scripture. For so long the Bible was kept under lock-and-key by clerics and popes who doled out portions that would increase the power of their office. When people read the Bible for themselves, then and today, they are led to consider the character and story of God, and his solution for the guilt, shame and restlessness that every man, woman and child carries with them before they know the rest and salvation that God supplies.
“That by patience and comfort of thy Holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.”