One of the things Museum of the Bible is developing for the DC museum are “Premium Interactives.” On the Impact Floor, there will be a huge tapestry that will “narrate” the history and influence of the Bible in America. One part of it will show ships from different nations and nationalities arriving in North America. The interactivity will occur when visitors use tablets to “zoom” into the different ships and learn more about the people who came on them—including information about the Bibles these people would have used and brought with them. Producing this content is the responsibility of the Curatorial Department and the writers and editors. So Norm Conrad (Curator of Americana and English Bibles), Ashley Carter (Curatorial Department Assistant), Allison Brown (Writer/Editor), and I began researching and writing about the first Bibles that came to America. Here are some interesting things that we found out during our research.
Since we are talking about the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, you might think that there is a lot of documentation. Yet, reliable information is quite rare, especially when you have a research question as specific as “What Bible (or Bibles) did the first American colonists bring with them and use?” For the most part, you cannot give much more than statements of probability—and they have to be presented that way and not as facts.
One of the things we did find is that it is very likely that the first Bible which came to North America was the Latin Vulgate. Christopher Columbus was, like almost all of the early explorers, Catholic. His letters and logs show his passion for the Bible and feature many quotes from it. Since the official Bible of the Catholic Church was the Vulgate, it is very likely that he had one on his ship when he came to America. Although there is no proof of it, this supposition becomes even more probable for his second voyage when he was accompanied by missionaries. But while Catholic services at this time were read from Latin Bibles, it is entirely possible that something like a Spanish psalter for personal devotion also reached America. The first complete Spanish Bible translation, however, dates only to 1569.
But before Spanish explorations, Norse settlers could have brought Latin Bibles to America, too. Leif Eriksson, who is said to have reached the continent around AD 1000, was a convert to Christianity. Later, the pope appointed bishops for the Norse colony of Vinland (which was probably located somewhere along the east coast of North America).[1]
After the Latin version, the next Bible that came to America was most likely a French one. Protestant Huguenots, fleeing from religious oppression in France, established their first small settlement in America in 1564, Fort Caroline (located near Jacksonville, Florida). It is likely that they brought either Olivétan’s 1535 version or a revision of it, the so-called French Geneva Bible of 1560. Apart from that, there might have been some Germans in this settlement, too, who could have brought Luther Bibles.
An English Bible translation was probably the next translation to reach the “New World.” Which exact version, however, is subject to much debate. The most likely candidates are the Anglican Bishops’ Bible and the “Protestant” Geneva Bible (which featured study notes critical of both ecclesiastical and secular authorities). The political and religious affiliations of early English colonists, like Walter Raleigh and Ralph Lane, however, seem to point more towards the Bishops’ Bible than the Geneva Bible.
Besides careful research, it is important to produce texts that are easily understood. I have been told that, as a rule of thumb, you should write texts that an 8th grader could easily comprehend. Condensing the information into a pedagogically-appropriate form is sometimes more difficult than doing the research. Whenever Norm did not distract us with political issues (our meeting on the day of the first presidential debate was not the most productive one), or we were not talking about food, we did quite a good job. I am very much looking forward to seeing what has become of the material once the museum opens.
Other interesting facts:
- The first Bible printed in America was neither Latin, Spanish, English, French, nor German. It was not a European language at all—it was in the Native American language Wampanoag.
The “Wicked Bible”
- In 1631, Robert Barker and Martin Lucas published a reprint of the King James Bible that became infamously known as the “Wicked Bible.” This name comes from a printing mistake. In the Ten Commandments, the word “not” was missing in “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” reading “Thou shalt commit adultery” instead. The printers had to pay an extremely high fee (about £45,000/$57,325) today), and most copies were immediately destroyed. A few, however, have survived, and—you guessed it—the museum owns one of them.
[1] We found this in the following book: Simms, P. Marion, The Bible in America, New York 1936. Although were not sure about the reliability of some of his claims, in general his arguments make sense. Other sources we used a lot are: Noll, M., In the Beginning Was the Word. The Bible in American Public Life. 1492-1783, Oxford 2015; Daniell, D., The Bible in English, New Haven 2003.