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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2019
Early modern English Bibles are among the most significant texts in western Christianity. They contained the translation of the Bible into English and its authorisation, they facilitated the Protestant Reformation, and their effects on English Christianity and culture are felt vividly to this day. A vital facet of these editions are paratexts: the titles, summaries, glosses, and other non-canonical additions appended to scripture to aid its organisation and interpretation. Though neglected by literary, historical, and theological scholarship, these paratexts comprised huge portions of early modern Bibles and acted as productive vehicles to disseminate politics and theologies. One such form of paratext are the casus summarii, the chapter summaries that precede many chapters in early modern Bibles. In these summaries, significant biblical events or controversial subjects were condensed, omitted, reframed, rephrased, or otherwise represented to suit the editor’s purposes. This article provides the first survey of the chapter summaries in early modern English Bibles, with a table detailing the extent to which they were copied between editions. The article focuses on the Matthew, Geneva, and KJV Bibles, with additional discussion of the Coverdale, Great, and Bishops’ Bibles. The article addresses notable aspects of this material, including practices of translation, representations of Sodom, the anglicisation of names, and the sexualisation of Eve. By explicating the origins and influences of these summaries, this article facilitates the understanding and study of paratexts and demonstrates their importance to scholarship of early modern Christianity.
1 Parker, Matthew, “Parker’s Note as to the Translators,” in Records of the English Bible (ed. Pollard, A. W.; London: Oxford University Press, 1911) 295–98, at 297.Google Scholar
2 The extent of their controversiality is still subject to debate. See Daniell, David, The Bible in English (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 304–9Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution (London: Penguin, 1993) 62Google Scholar; Green, Ian, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 74–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 I align my definition of “paratext” with that of the ParaTexBib project on early Greek biblical paratexts: “All contents in biblical manuscripts except the biblical text itself are a priori paratexts” (Wallraff, Martin and Andrist, Patrick, “Paratexts of the Bible: A New Research Project on Greek Textual Transmission,” Early Christianity 6 [2015] 237–43, at 239).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 “Report to the Synod of Dort,” in Records of the English Bible (ed. Pollard) 336–39, at 339.
5 “Introduction,” in Records of the English Bible (ed. Pollard) 1–76, at 46.
6 See François, Wim, “Vernacular Bible Reading and Censorship in Early Sixteenth Century: The Position of the Louvain Theologians,” in Lay Bibles in Europe 1450–1800 (ed. Lamberigts, Mathijs and den Hollander, A. A.; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 69–96, at 81–85.Google Scholar
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9 For work on biblical paratexts, See Westcott, Brooke Foss, A General View of the History of the English Bible (ed. Rev. Wright, William Aldis; 3rd ed.; London: MacMillan, 1905)Google Scholar; Mozley, James Frederic, Coverdale and His Bibles (London: Lutterworth, 1953) 84–86, 142–66Google Scholar; Greenslade, S. L., “English Versions of the Bible,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (ed. Greenslade, S. L.; vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of the Bible; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) 141–74Google Scholar; Betteridge, Maurice S., “The Bitter Notes: The Geneva Bible and Its Annotations,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 14 (1983) 41–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Green, Print and Protestantism, 74–79; Westbrook, Vivienne, Long Travail and Great Paynes: A Politics of Reformation Revision (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2001) 143–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daniell, The Bible in English; Molekamp, Femke, “The Geneva and the King James Bibles: Legacies of Reading Practices,” Bunyan Studies 15 (2011) 11–25Google Scholar; eadem, “Genevan Legacies,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530–1700 (ed. Killeen, Kevin, Smith, Helen, and Willie, Rachel Judith; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) 38–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 46–48; Lewis, Jack P., The Day after Domesday: The Making of the Bishops’ Bible (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016)Google Scholar; Pratt, Aaron T., “The Trouble with Translation: Paratexts and England’s Bestselling New Testament,” in The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of Interpretation in Reformation England (ed. Fulton, Thomas and Poole, Kristen; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) 33–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Unless otherwise indicated, the editions cited are the Matthew Bible: The Byble: Which Is All the Holy Scripture; In Whych Are Contayned the Olde and Newe Testament ([Antwerp?], 1537); the Geneva Bible: The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament (Geneva, 1560); and the King James Version: The Holy Bible (London, 1613). Other cited editions include the 1535 Coverdale Bible: Biblia: The Byble; That Is the Holy Scrypture of the Olde and New Testament ([Southwark], 1535); The Great Bible, The Byble in Englyshe: That Is to Saye the Conte[n]t of Al the Holy Scrypture (London, 1540); and the Bishops’ Bible, The Holie Bible (London, 1568).
11 Morey, James H., “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible,” Spec 68 (1993) 6–35Google Scholar, at 6.
12 H. S., A Diuine Dictionarie; or, The Bible Abreuiated Containing the Whole Scripture (London, 1615) n.p.
13 A Diuine Dictionarie was reprinted in 1615, 1616, and 1617.
14 “Preface to Geneva New Testament,” in Records of the English Bible (ed. Pollard) 275–79, at 277–78.
15 As previously cited, except the Geneva Bible: The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament (Geneva, 1561). The summaries in the 1561 revision appear to be identical to the 1560 first edition.
16 For the history of using the VARD software in standardizing early modern texts, see “Publications,” VARD, 12 April 2016, http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/vard/publications/.
17 La saincte Bible en Francoys ([Antwerp], 1534).
18 Berry, Lloyd E. erroneously claims, “Coverdale’s Bible was the first to introduce chapter summaries,” in the introduction to The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007) 3.Google Scholar
19 Horbury, Ezra, “Miles Coverdale as a New Source for the Matthew Bible Notes,” Notes and Queries 65 (2018) 22–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Daniell, The Bible in English, 219.
21 Molekamp, “Genevan Legacies,” 48.
22 “Parker’s Note as to the Translators,” 295–98.
23 Such as on Bible Gateway, whose homepage is in the top 900 websites visited worldwide; Bible Gateway, https://www.biblegateway.com.
24 Chester, Joseph Lemuel, John Rogers: The Compiler of the First Authorised English Bible; The Pioneer of the English Reformation; and Its First Martyr (London: Longman and Green, 1861).Google Scholar
25 Daniell, The Bible in English, 197.
26 La saincte Bible en Francoys ([Antwerp], 1534); La Bible ([Neuchâtel], 1535).
27 Claims that present the Matthew summaries as translated directly from the French are found in Molekamp, “Genevan Legacies,” 42; Westbrook, Long Travail and Great Paynes, 41; Bruce, Frederick Fyvie, History of the Bible in English (3rd ed.; London: Lutterworth, 1979) 66Google Scholar; Ariel Hessayon, “The Apocrypha in Early Modern England,” in Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England (ed. Killeen, Smith, and Willie) 131–48, at 136–37; David Daniell, “Rogers, John (c. 1500-1555), Biblical Editor and Martyr,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23980. Mozley and Greenslade admit a degree of originality to Rogers’s input, but do not address it; see Mozley, Coverdale and His Bibles, 145, and Greenslade, “English Versions of the Bible,” 151.
28 Molekamp, “Genevan Legacies,” 42.
29 Ibid.; also see Mozley, Coverdale and His Bibles, 157.
30 Mozley notes that Rogers’s summaries for Revelation derive from Coverdale, though he does not find them elsewhere; in Mozley, Coverdale and His Bibles, 145–46.
31 Rogers maintains the same spelling of idolatry, “idolatrye,” for all instances aside from its use in the Exod 34 summary. Here, he uses “ydolatrie,” beginning with the “y” as the term does in French.
32 The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments (ed. Forshall, Josiah and Madden, Frederic; 4 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850) 1:85.Google Scholar
33 Eve is named four times in the Bible: twice in the OT (Gen 3:20; 4:1) and twice in the NT (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:13).
34 The Lefèvre Bible summaries call her Eva but Eve in the scripture.
35 The Bible and Holy Scriptures (1560) fol. HHh3r.
36 “The Rules to Be Observed in the Translation of the Bible,” in Records of the English Bible (ed. Pollard) 53–55, at 53.
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40 Wycliffe translates the term as “hill.”
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