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Preview
Date
1385
Source
University Special Collections
Digitization Date
March 18, 2022
Archives Collection
Bible Heritage Collection
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Photo Credit
Scott Huck
Screen Reader Description
Color photograph of two pages from a manuscript Bible
Keywords
Cedarville, Biblical Heritage Gallery, Wycliffe
Comments
This copy of the Wycliffe New Testament is a black and white photographic reproduction of the original. This reproduction, produced in 1985 to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the 1385 original, is the only photographic facsimile that has ever been done and shows what the original hand-written Wycliffe manuscript Bible looked like both in the text and the size. This facsimile was produced from manuscript Rawlinson 259 housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England.
Called the “Morning Star of the Reformation,” John Wycliffe was responsible for the first significant translation of the Scriptures into English. Born in the mid-1320s, Wycliffe spent many of his years arguing against the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. Wycliffe was convinced in his day that there was a need to turn to the Scriptures as the primary rule of life. In order to do that, since the Scriptures of the Church of his day were in Latin, those Scriptures had to be translated into the common language of the day, which for him was English. So he and several of his colleagues began the translation work in the 1370s. The first Wycliffe New Testament appeared in 1382. Because Wycliffe lived nearly a century before Gutenberg invented the moveable-type printing press, all of his New Testaments and Bibles were handwritten manuscripts, produced one at a time. It took 10 months to reproduce one copy. His work created a thirst for the Bible in the language of the common man. That thirst led to the insatiable desire for Bible translations that came to being in England in the 16th century, starting with the translation work of William Tyndale and the first printed English New Testament in 1525.