Printing and the Reformation Bibles

Until the 15th century every Bible was copied by hand. Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz printed with movable metal type; his first great book, about 1455, was a Latin Bible. In 1516 Erasmus published a printed Greek New Testament based on a few late manuscripts; with small changes his text became the Textus Receptus, the “received text”. Chapters are usually credited to Stephen Langton in the 13th century, New Testament verse numbers to the printer Estienne in 1551; earlier readers named passages, like “the burning bush in the Book of Moses” (Mark 12:26).

Printing spread translations from the original languages. Martin Luther’s German New Testament appeared in 1522 and his whole Bible in 1534. In England, John Wycliffe’s circle had translated the Latin Bible about 1380–1382. William Tyndale printed his New Testament from the Greek abroad in 1525–26; copies were smuggled into England and burned, and he was executed near Brussels in 1536. Miles Coverdale completed the first printed English Bible in 1535. English exiles in Geneva made the Geneva Bible of 1560, affordable and full of notes. In 1604 King James I approved a new translation without such notes, and about 50 scholars produced the King James Version of 1611.