Librarians' Christian Fellowship

The Conference began with a time of worship, led by Mary Wood. focusing on the theme of ‘God speaks...’ The Biblefresh prayer, which focuses on The Word was included – especially relevant to a gathering of librarians!

The Annual General Meeting came next. Key points this year were:

• A review group has been set up to consider how to address the decline in LCF membership and will report to the LCF’s Executive Committee in November. Recommendations will be made to the AGM in April 2012.
• Gordon Harris was succeeded as President by Margaret Keeling. Both Gordon and Kirsty Robinson, a previous Chair, were elected Life Vice-Presidents.
• Nick Horley, the Treasurer, reported a modest surplus over the past year.

Kirsty Robinson, Gordon Harris and Margaret Keeling

The two conference presentations were chosen to fit in with the national celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible.

Firstly, Dr Rob Cotton, Network Manager at Biblefresh focused on our relationship with the most important book in our lives. He likened this to the changing relationship between a married couple: the excitement of newly weds; the familiar and more predictable later stage; the wish for a more refreshing and productive relationship.

A recent survey carried out by the Bible Society reported that only 3 in 10 church attenders read the Bible for themselves and that church leaders have a much more optimistic perception of Bible teaching at church than those in the pew. The Biblefresh project is concentrating on making the Bible accessible to everyone giving people confidence in and a passion for reading the Bible. It is encouraging Bible reading in 4 main ways:

• Reading – many special Bible reading initiatives are being promoted, such as communal reading, listening to the words via an iPod or CD, and study groups.
• Training – helping leaders to teach other people, using many different methods.
• Translation – this is focused on the Bible needs of the Bissa people in Burkina Faso, with funds being raised to pay for the Bible to be translated (some UK churches are sponsoring the translation of individual books).
• Experiences - making the Bible more real to more people, using events, competitions and partnerships within local communities.

The King James Bible put the word of God into the hands of ordinary people in a language they could understand for the first time; 400 years on, the Biblefresh vision is the same: to make the Bible fresh to everyone

Our second speaker was Dr Pete Wilcox, Canon Chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral. His talk covered the centuries leading up to the publication of the King James Bible.

John Wycliffe, sometimes known as the ‘Morning Star’, as he’s considered to herald the dawn of Reformation thinking completed the earliest surviving translation of the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate in the late 14th century.

Rob Cotton and Pete Wilcox

In the 15th century vernacular versions of the Bible were being freely published in France and Italy, but in England translation of the Bible into English was made a capital offence, so it is astonishing that Lichfield Cathedral possesses a 1410 manuscript of the Wycliffe Bible; it is a beautiful artefact and was probably commissioned on the black market at great risk to both maker and buyer; it is one of the first Bibles to include study notes.

The next Bible translator of note was William Tyndale, an intellectual giant whose ambition to translate the Bible into English from the original Hebrew and Greek provoked opposition. He fled to Europe, where he managed to complete the New Testament, but only parts of the Old Testament.

Tyndale was not only a gifted translator, but had a superb mastery of English, resulting in a translation of great beauty and simplicity. It is estimated that 90% of the King James Bible is taken directly from Tyndale, where his translation exists. Tyndale was executed for heresy in 1536, but ironically the following year Henry VIII took England out of the Roman Catholicism, and by 1539 every church in England was ordered to have a copy of the Bible in English.

This was the Great Bible, based on the version of Myles Coverdale, who’d begun work soon after Tyndale’s death. Coverdale supplemented Tyndale’s translation (where one existed) with translations from the German and Latin, as he knew no Hebrew or Greek.

The political vagaries of the next few years had an unexpectedly favourable effect on the Bible in England. Persecution during the reign of Mary Tudor forced many Protestant thinkers to flee abroad, particularly to Geneva, where they came in contact with teachers of Hebrew; this resulted in the Geneva (or Breeches) Bible, printed with numbered verses, a more modern and attractive typeface and study aids, such as alternative readings. It was Shakespeare’s favourite version.

The Elizabethan Protestants weren’t happy with this version, but being rooted in both the Puritan and the Anglo-Catholic traditions they couldn’t agree on the best way of producing a new Bible translation, and their Bishops’ Bible of 1568 was very uneven in quality.

In 1604 King James I initiated a new version of the Bible. 47 scholars worked in 6 ‘companies’, each concentrating on one section of the Bible; their brief was not to make a new translation but to take the best of those already in existence. Tyndale’s version was used as a basis although his name was omitted from the introduction for political reasons. The finished product was a classic compromise in terms of physical style, reverting to the older ‘Gothic’ typeface, but retaining the Geneva Bible’s use of numbered verses. And this is the version, minus its vagaries of spelling which has captured the hearts of so many throughout the world.

Answering questions after the talk, Dr Wilcox recommended: Biblos.com as an easy way of comparing many versions of the Bible.

The Conference closed with a vote of thanks given by Margaret Keeling to the speakers and also to Gordon Harris for his 9 years as LCF President.

This is an abbreviated version of a report written by Diana Guthrie for Christian Librarian.