Protestant Bible

The contents page in the King James Bible, 1769 edition.

A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestants. Such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament (according to the Jewish Hebrew Bible canon, known especially to non-Protestants as the protocanonical books) and the 27 books of the New Testament for a total of 66 books. This is often contrasted with the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, which includes seven deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament.^[1] The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify the seven Catholic deuterocanonical books as part of the Apocrypha.

The practice of including only the Old and New Testament books within printed bibles was standardized among Protestants following the 1825 decision by the British and Foreign Bible Society.^[2]

Early Protestant Bibles

The contents page in the Coverdale Bible

From the Reformation, Protestants have usually excluded the books which Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider to be Deuterocanonical, viewing them as non-canonical. However, prior to an 1825 British and Foreign Bible Society decision, most Protestant Bibles did include these additional books within the same printed bibles. It was usually to be found in a separate section under the heading of Apocrypha and sometimes carrying a statement to the effect that the such books were non-canonical.

The German Luther Bible of 1522 did include the Apocrypha within its boards. However, unlike in previous Catholic Bibles which interspersed the books of the Apocrypha throughout the Old Testament, Martin Luther placed the Apocrypha in a separate section after the Old Testament. The books of the Apocrypha were not listed in the table of contents of Luther's 1532 Old Testament and, in accordance with Luther's view of the canon, they were given the well-known title: "Apocrypha: These Books Are Not Held Equal to the Scriptures, but Are Useful and Good to Read" in the 1534 edition of his bible.^[3]

In the English language, the incomplete Tyndale Bible published in 1525, 1534 and 1536, contained the entire New Testament. Of the Old Testament, although William Tyndale translated around half of its books, only the Pentateuch and the book of Jonah were published. The first complete Modern English translation of the Bible, the Coverdale Bible of 1535, also included the Apocrypha. Like Luther, Miles Coverdale placed the Apocrypha in a separate section after the Old Testament.^[4]

Several translations of Luther's Bible were made into Dutch. The first complete Dutch Bible was printed in Antwerp in 1526 by Jacob van Liesveldt.^[5] However, the translations of Luther's Bible had Lutheran influences in their interpretation. At the Calvinistic Synod of Dort in 1618/19, it was therefore deemed necessary to have a new translation accurately based on the original languages. The synod requested the States-General of the Netherlands to commission it. The result was the Statenvertaling or States Translation which was completed in 1635 and authorized by the States-General in 1637. From that year until 1657, a half-million copies were printed. It remained authoritative in Dutch Protestant churches well into the 20th century.

The Bear Bible's title-page printed by Mattias Apiarius, "the bee-keeper". Note the emblem of a bear tasting honey.

Protestant translations into Spanish began with the work of Casiodoro de Reina, a former Catholic monk, who became a Lutheran theologian.^[6] With the help of several collaborators,^[7] de Reina produced the Biblia del Oso or Bear Bible, the first complete Bible printed in Spanish based on Hebrew and Greek sources. Earlier Spanish translations, such as the 13th-century Alfonsina Bible, translated from Jerome's Vulgate, had been copied by hand. The Bear Bible was first published on 28 September 1569, in Basel, Switzerland.^[8][9] The deuterocanonical books were included within the Old Testament in the 1569 edition. In 1602 Cipriano de Valera, a student of de Reina, published a revision of the Bear Bible which was printed in Amsterdam in which the deuterocanonical books were placed in a section between the Old and New Testaments called the Apocrypha.^[10] This translation, subsequently revised, came to be known as the Reina-Valera Bible.

For the following three centuries, most English language Protestant Bibles, including the Authorized Version, continued with the practice of placing the Apocrypha in a separate section after the Old Testament. However, there were some exceptions. A surviving quarto edition of the Great Bible, produced some time after 1549, does not contain the Apocrypha although most copies of the Great Bible did. A 1575 quarto edition of the Bishop's Bible also does not contain them. Subsequently, some copies of the 1599 and 1640 editions of the Geneva Bible were also printed without them.^[11] The Souldiers Pocket Bible, of 1643, draws verses largely from the Geneva Bible but only from either the Old or New Testaments.

19th century developments

In 1826,^[12] the National Bible Society of Scotland petitioned the British and Foreign Bible Society not to print the Apocrypha,^[13] resulting in a decision that no BFBS funds were to pay for printing any Apocryphal books anywhere. Since that time most modern editions of the Bible and re-printings of the King James Bible omit the Apocrypha section. Additionally, modern non-Catholic re-printings of the Clementine Vulgate commonly omit the Apocrypha section. Many re-printings of older versions of the Bible now omit the apocrypha and many newer translations and revisions have never included them at all.

Excluded books

A Protestant Bible excludes the books and passages of the Christian Old Testament that are not part of the Hebrew Bible canon, which Catholics and Eastern Christians consider to be deuterocanonical. Without these books there is a 400-year intertestamental period in the chronology of the Christian scriptures between the Old and New Testaments. This period is known to Protestants as the "400 Silent Years" because it is believed to have been a span where God made no additional canonical revelations to his people.^[14] .

Included books

Protestant Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament (according to the Jewish Hebrew Bible canon, known especially to non-Protestants as the protocanonical books) and the 27 books of the New Testament for a total of 66 books. These books with their commonly accepted names among the Protestant churches are given below. Note that "1", "2", or "3" as a leading numeral is normally pronounced in the United States as the ordinal number, thus "First Samuel" for "1 Samuel".^[15]

Notable English translations

Most Bible translations into English conform to the Protestant canon and ordering while some offer multiple versions (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) with different canon and ordering. Notable English translations include:

A 2014 study into the Bible in American Life found that of those survey respondents who read the Bible, there was an overwhelming favouring of Protestant translations. 55% reported using the King James Version, followed by 19% for the New International Version, 7% for the New Revised Standard Version (printed in both Protestant and Catholic editions), 6% for the New American Bible (a Catholic Bible translation) and 5% for the Living Bible. Other versions were used by fewer than 10%.^[16] A 2015 report by the California-based Barna Group found that 39% of American readers of the Bible preferred the King James Version, followed by 13% for the New International Version, 10% for the New King James Version and 8% for the English Standard Version. No other version was favoured by more than 3% of the survey respondents.^[17]

See also

• Biblical canon
• Christian biblical canons
• Sola scriptura

References