This Day in History: King Henry VIII ordered English-language Bibles to be placed in every church on this day in 1541, and the Great Bible was provided for that purpose. The Great Bible was so named because of its size, it stood at 14 inches high. The Great Bible was prepared by Myles Coverdale who included much from the Tyndale Bible. As the Tyndale Bible was incomplete, Coverdale translated the remaining books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha from the Latin Vulgate and German translations, rather than working from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts. The Great Bible was also known by several other names as well: the Cromwell Bible, since Thomas Cromwell directed its publication; Whitchurch's Bible after its first English printer; the Chained Bible, since it was chained to prevent removal from the church. It has less accurately been termed Cranmer's Bible, since although Thomas Cranmer was not responsible for the translation, a preface by him appeared in the second edition.
While this Bible was allowed in churches, you were not allowed to take it home for study.
Other early printed versions were the Geneva Bible (1560), notable for being the first Bible divided into verses and which negated the Divine Right of Kings; the Bishop's Bible (1568), which was an attempt by Elizabeth I to create a new authorized version; and the Authorized King James Version of 1611.
The first complete Roman Catholic Bible in English was the Douay–Rheims Bible, of which the New Testament portion was published in Rheims in 1582 and the Old Testament somewhat later in Douay in Gallicant Flanders. The Old Testament was completed by the time the New Testament was published but, due to extenuating circumstances and financial issues, it was not published until nearly three decades later, in two editions: the first released in 1609, and the rest of the OT in 1610. In this version, the seven deuterocanonical books (also known as the Apocrypha) are amongst the other books, as in the Latin Vulgate, rather than kept separate in an appendix. The Great Bible, as well as the 1611 King James Version also contained the Apocrypha.
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