English Translation of the Bible
"The story of the English Bible begins with the introduction of Christianity into Britain'? ?the missionary work proceeded almost entirely by means of the spoken word."# Some interlinear translations into Old English began to appear in the ninth and tenth centuries. "The Norman conquest of England (A.D. 1066) marked the end of the production of Scripture translation into Anglo-Saxon and Old English."# Latin was still the language of the clergy but not the people. It wasn't until the fourteenth century until English translation of parts of the Scripture began to reappear. The early church needed few translations. Believers copied and circulated Scriptures in Greek that everyone could read. But during the 4th century, Latin began to replace Greek as the common language. Several Latin translations, often inaccurate, leaked into circulation.# The Church needed an official translation. The first complete English Bible that is known of was due in part to the influence of one man.
John Wycliffe, a man who lived approximately 200 years before the Reformation was a man ahead of his time. Historians have called him the "Morning star of the Reformation." Wycliffe, who was born around 1330, criticized abuses and false teachings
in the Church.# During the sixteenth century in England, the only version of the Bible that someone could find was in Latin (and possibly some parts in French). A common person, who was most likely illiterate, could not find and read a Bible in his own language. Two hundred years earlier, common people were not only discouraged from reading the Bible, but a vernacular translation of the Bible did not even exist. John Wycliffe was the first pers ...