Hill 1993

Hill, Christopher. The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1983.

A Biblical Culture

"The vernacular Bible became an institution in Tudor England -- the foundation of monarchical authority, of England's protestant independence, the text-book of morality and social subordination." (4)

William Bradshaw in his English Puritanisme (1605) insisted that Biblical scholars 'ought to follow those rules only that are followed in finding out the meaning of other writings': no more allegorizing, no more interpretation of the text in the light of ecclesiastical tradition. The Treatise of the Corruptions of Scripture (1612) by Thomas James, Bodley's first Librarian, was a landmark here. Since the Bible was the ultimate arbiter, an authoritative text must be established by the severest schlarly tests. The authority of the Fathers, to which Romanists appealed, could be disregarded. James denounced all 'indices expurgatorii', and is said to have used the papal Index to help him decide which books to buy for the Bodleian Library." (13)

"Radical protestants made a special point of publishing cheap editions of the Bible. In Edward VI's reign the Bible and the Apocrypha were issued in six octavo parts. The Geneva Bible was usually printed in italic, not old-style black letter. It was cheap, relatively small and pocketable; failure to produce cheap editions of the Bishops' Bible of 1568 helped to make the Geneva Bible the Bible of the people." (18)

"We must not attribute too much to printing. Mediaeval sermons and miracle plays had rawn on the Bible to inculcate political and social lessons. But now the printed word could be pondered over and re-read, both privately and in group discussions." (37)

"We should not think of the Bible just as a book to be read, or to listen to. It was everywhere in the lives of men, women and children. Not only in the church services they had to attend, but in the ballads they bought and sang, and in their daily surroundings. Where today we should expect wallpaper, almost all houses had hangings to keep out draughts and to cover the rought walls. These often took the form of 'painted cloths', 'the real poor man's pictures', among which Biblical scenes seem to have preponderated." (38) -- Deuteronomy XI.20

Before 1640

"Those sins which the marginal notes to the Geneva Bible especially emphasized were idolatry and persecution." (50)