Geneva Bible
The Geneva Bible was a Protestant translation of the Holy Bible into English.
During the time when England was ruled by Queen Mary I, who persecuted Protestants, a number of Protestant scholars fled to Geneva in Switzerland, which was then ruled as a republic by John Calvin and Theodore Beza. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who supervised the translation. The first edition of this Bible appeared in 1560. It was revised substantially in 1576 and again in 1599. Like most English translations of the time, it was translated out of the original Greek and Hebrew, and was substantially based on the earlier English translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale.
It has also been known as the "Breeches" Bible, after Genesis 3:7, "Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knewe that they were naked, and they sewed figge tree leaues together, and made them selues breeches." By contrast, the King James Version translates the Hebrew word "chagor" in this verse as "apron."
The Geneva Bible was annotated by Laurence Tomson, who based his notes on Beza's 1574 Latin translation of the Bible. As such, it was the first annotated study Bible to appear in English, and the annotations made it more useful for private Bible reading than for public worship. This was the Bible read by William Shakespeare, by John Donne, and by John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. It was the Bible that was brought to America on the Mayflower and used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Bishops' Bible, the translation authorised by the Church of England under Elizabeth I.
The annotations were Protestant in character, and as such were disliked by King James I of England, who commissioned the Authorised Version or King James Bible to replace it. The Geneva Bible remained popular among Puritans and remained in widespread use until after the English Civil War.
Links
The Original Facsimilies for the Old Testament
http://www.thedcl.org/bible/gb/index.html
Footnotes
http://www.reformedreader.org/gbn/en.htm
The Original Text
http://www.bibles.org.uk/pdf/bibles/
Modern Spelling with Footnotes for the Gospels
http://www.genevabible.org/Geneva.html
The Original Text and Footnotes for the later Hebrew Prophets an The later New Testament
http://www.computervirus.bz/free_geneva.html
