The Bible in medieval Europe

One of the earliest translators of the Bible in England was John Wycliffe in the 14th century. We see that all translations including Wycliffe’s becoming political in a certain sense. The motivation behind these translations was the desire to do away with exploitative middlemen and make God accessible to the common man. In a certain way, these are also the initial steps on the road to democracy where the power is invested in the commons. Maybe that is why the initial translators of the Bible had to face such persecution. But this did not deter the translators, as we see that by the end of the 16th century, the Bible had been translated into most of the European languages. The Hebrew Pentateuch was printed in 1482 and the first complete Hebrew Bible in 1488. The Dutch scholar and philosopher Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament in Basle in 1516. This served as the source text for Martin Luther’s German translation in 1522. Danish, Swedish and Czech translations appeared by the end of the 16th century. These translations also had a didactic aim, which was to spread the word of God far and wide. Erasmus in fact expressed this wish when he declared that he wanted all ordinary men and women like the ploughman and the wayfarer to sing the hymns and verses from the Bible, when they were doing their chores of daily life.

This liberated the Bible from the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church, and we see the rise of Protestantism in Europe. Martin Luther is the most prominent of all these rebels. We also see that because these translators were very particular in passing across the message of the Bible without any distortions, the concepts of fidelity and equivalence became very important in the context. They were also concerned about developing a good literary style for the vernacular. Luther advised translators to use vernacular proverbs and sayings if that helped in making the meaning clear. This enhanced the power of the vernacular, not just in terms of the vocabulary but also in terms of prestige.