Bible Translator Myles Coverdale on This Day in History

 

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This Day in History: English ecclesiastical reformer and Bible translator Myles Coverdale died on this day in 1569. In 1535, Coverdale produced the first complete printed translation of the Bible into English.

Coverdale was also involved in translating The Matthew's Bible (1537), The Great Bible (1539) and The Geneva Bible (1557).

On inspecting my copy of Coverdale's Bible at Exodus 3, I notice that Coverdale does not translate ‘ehyeh asher ehyeh’ in verse 14 as "I am that I am." He instead translates this as "I wyl be what I wyll be', and in doing so breaks the connection to John 8:58 where Jesus says "I am." (Many use the connection between these two Scriptures as proof that Jesus is Jehovah). Coverdale may have drawn on William Tyndale's translation of Exodus 3:14 where he writes, "I wilbe what I wilbe."

While your mainstream standard Bible may say "I am that I am" many of them will feature the truer reading in the margins or footnotes [American Standard Version - "I WILL BE"; NIV Study Bible - "I WILL BE"; Revised Standard Version - "I WILL BE"; New Revised Standard Version - "I WILL BE"; New English Bible - "I WILL BE"; Revised English Bible - "I WILL BE"; Living Bible - "I WILL BE"; Good News Bible - "I WILL BE."].

Many alternative Bibles do not translate Exodus 3:14 as I AM, but rather "I will be," such as The James Moffatt Translation and Smith & Goodspeed's An American Translation. The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation By Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler says that Exodus 3:14 is "probably best translated as 'I Will Be What I Will Be'" and Robert Alter in his Hebrew Bible concludes as well that "I Will Be Who I Will Be" is the most plausible construction. Frederic Huidekoper in his "Genesis, Chapters I.-XI.: In Parallel Columns" also believes "I Will Be What I Will Be" "is the only translation." https://tinyurl.com/se9cupw . Even Walter Martin in his The Kingdom of the Occult at footnote 25 in the Eastern Mysticism and the New Age section that "the original words literally signify 'I will be what I will be.'"

"There is high probability that ehyeh is mistranslated as “I am” (as was pointed out by M. Buber in the New Bible Dictionary)." Source

See also: I Am, or, I Will Be at Exodus 3:14?

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The Coverdale Bible on This Day in History

Old English Bibles to Download, (AV1611, Tyndale, Matthews, Coverdale etc)

This Day in History: The Coverdale Bible was printed on this day in 1535. It was compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete Modern English translation of the Bible (not just the Old Testament or New Testament), and the first complete printed translation into English. Before the King James Bible in 1611 the English speaking world had other Bibles as well, such as the Matthews Bible, the Taverner's Bible (more correctly called "The Most Sacred Bible whiche is the holy scripture, conteyning the old and new testament, translated into English, and newly recognized with great diligence after most faythful exemplars" by Rychard Taverner), the Great Bible (named for its size), the Bishops’ Bible and the Catholic Douay/Rheims Bible. The Bible that was first brought to America on the Mayflower was the Geneva Bible. All English translations of the Bible printed in the sixteenth century included a section or appendix for Apocryphal books (which the Catholics call the Deuterocanonical books) which usually include Baruch, the Prayer of Manasseh, the books of the Maccabees, 1 Esdras & 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach) the 151st Psalm etc. 

Coverdale Bible Video

These older Bibles were based on late manuscripts of the Greek, and some Bible translators simply translated from the Latin or the German. In the 1800's there were Bible translations that sought to correct that by using older newly found manuscripts, and these included official revisions of the King James (Authorized) Bible, such as the English Revised Version (1881) and the American Standard Version (1901). The public never really embraced these Bibles, still preferring the old King James version.  

See also: The History of the English Bible, 125 PDF Books on DVDrom

This Kindle book is now available on Amazon by clicking here...and it is only 99 cents