Geneva Bible (1560)
The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, hand-sized, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is evident in the way its verse divisions have endured to this day.
The Printing Revolution
The first thing one notices about the Geneva Bible is the small size: it fits in your hand. Second, it’s written not in Latin, but in English. Its design is both portable and accessible for the lay reader.
The title page indicates that it is translated not from Latin but from the original languages, reflecting up-to-date scholarship, with “most profitable annotations upon all the hard places.”
Contrast the readable typeface of this Bible to the gothic fonts of the other Bibles. Its clear, readable type appealed to lay readers. In contrast to large altar Bibles like Gutenberg’s or Koberger’s, the small typeface made the Geneva Bible portable and affordable. The Geneva Bible was made not to sit on an altar, but to be taken in hand and read, and carried to church and to the pub.
On a typical page one might notice introductory comments at the beginning of any biblical book. The text is broken up by numbered verses. These are the first verse divisions to appear in an English Bible. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is reflected in the fact that its verse divisions endure; they’re the ones used today.
Marginal explanations on all the “hard places” didn’t hesitate to promote the theology of the Protestant Reformation.
The verse divisions and cross-references encouraged a profound change in the act of reading. Readers began to pay less attention to the art of storytelling, reading from a single unbroken text, and to place more emphasis on comparing and contrasting short passages from diverse contexts, moving back and forth between different chapters and verses at will.
Across Europe, vernacular publications energized emerging nationalist and religious movements. The Protestant Reformation, like the “Scientific Revolution,” would hardly be conceivable apart from printing. Many therefore suggest that the printing press then caused greater cultural changes in Europe than the computer has yet wrought in ours, until we see political transformation on a super-continental or global scale equivalent to the Reformation.
For all these reasons, the Geneva Bible represents the subversive potential of the Printing Revolution. Lay study of the Geneva Bible, often in small groups at local pubs, helps explain why English translations of the Bible vexed Henry VIII. The king lamented that ordinary peasants, instead of accepting what they were taught by bishops, now disputed, rhymed, sang and jangled the scripture in every alehouse and tavern across the land.
Biblical Interpretation
Employing the principle of accommodation, the Reformer Jean Calvin elsewhere commented on Psalm 78:65, which depicts God as a drunken man: “The figure of a drunken man may seem somewhat harsh, but the propriety of using it will appear when we consider that it is employed in accommodation to the stupidity of the people. Had they been of a pure and clear understanding, God would not have transformed himself and assumed a character foreign to his own.”
