463 - The Geneva Bible: The Annotated New Testament 1602 edition

The Geneva Bible: The Annotated New Testament 1602 edition
By Gerald T. Sheppard, ed.
The Pilgrim Press, 1989. 320 pp. $30.00 ($14.95 pb.).

Among earlier English Bibles, the Geneva version (1560) was widely accepted both in the British Isles and among the colonists who came to the New World. One of the features that made it popular was the presence of copious annotations throughout, as well as introductions to each of the biblical books. To be sure, some of the comments were decidedly anti-papal and anti-establishment, but-at least in the eyes of non-conformists-such an orientation enhanced the value of the version.

It is not always recognized that over the years the annotations and introductions were altered to a greater or less extent. In 1576, a revised form of the Geneva Bible was produced by Lawrence Tomson, Secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham (then Elizabeth's Secretary of State) and formerly lecturer in Hebrew at Geneva. This contains a few changes in the translation, the most characteristic being Tomson's pedantic rendering of the Greek definite article by "that" (e.g. Matt. 16.16, "Thou art that Christ"); but the chief difference is the introduction of an English translation of Theodore Beza's summaries of doctrine and exposition of phrases in Beza's Latin Bible. In 1598, the annotations on the Book of Revelation by Francis Junius, a Huguenot divine, were introduced into the Geneva Bible.

The present volume provides a beautifully printed facsimile of a copy of the London 1607 printing of the 1602 edition of the Geneva Bible, containing Beza's and Junius's materials. Introductory essays by Sheppard and other contributors discuss the hermeneutics of the scholarship embodied in the annotations. The volume, therefore, makes available a tool for research in English Protestant and Puritan social and religious history as well the history of biblical exegesis.

Bruce M. Metzger
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, N.J.