Textus Receptus Bibles
Coverdale Bible 1535
| 17:1 | And there cam one of the seue angels, which had the seuen vialles, and talked with me, sayenge vnto me: Come, I wil shewe the the iugdment of the greate whore, that sytteth vpon many waters, |
| 17:2 | with whom the kynges of the earth haue commytted whordome, and the inhabiters of the earth are dronken with the wyne of her fornicacion. |
| 17:3 | And he caryed me awaye into the wildernes in ye sprete. And I sawe a woman syt vpon a rose colored beest, full of names of blasphemie, which had seue heades & ten hornes. |
| 17:4 | And ye woman was arayed in purple and rose color, and decked with golde, precious stone, and pearles, and had a cupp of golde in her honde, full of abhominacions, and fylthines of her wordome. |
| 17:5 | And in her forhed was a name wrytte, a mistery; greate Babilon the mother of whordome, and abominacios of the earth. |
| 17:6 | And I sawe the wyfe dronke with the bloude of sayntes, and with the bloud of the witnesses of Iesu. And when I sawe her, I wondred with greate mervayle. |
| 17:7 | And the angell sayde vnto me: wherfore meruayllest thou? I wyl shewe the the mistery of the woman, and of the beest that beerith her, which hath seuen heades, and ten hornes. |
| 17:8 | The beest that thou seest, was, and is not, and shall ascende out of the bottomlesse pytt, and shal go in to perdicion, and they that dwell on the earth shal wondre (whose names are not wrytten in the boke of life from the begynnynge of the worlde) when |
| 17:9 | And here is a mynde, that hath wissdome. The seuen heades are seuen mountanes, on which the woman sytteth: |
| 17:10 | they are also seuen kynges. Fyue are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come. When he commeth, he muste continue a space. |
| 17:11 | And the beest that was, and is not, is eue the eyght, and is of the seuen, and shal go in to destruccion. |
| 17:12 | And ye ten hornes which thou sawest, are ten kynges, which haue not yet receaued the kyngdome, but shal receaue power as kynges at one houre with ye beest. |
| 17:13 | These haue one mynde, and shal geue their power and stregth vnto ye beeste. |
| 17:14 | These shal fyght with the lambe, and the labe shal ouercome them: For he is LORDE of all lordes, and kinge of all kinges: and they that are on his syde, are called, and chosen and faithfull. |
| 17:15 | And he saide vnto me: The waters which thou sawest, where ye whore sytteth, are people, and folke, and nacions, and tonges. |
| 17:16 | And the ten hornes, which thou sawest vpon the beest, are they that shal hate the whore, and shal make her desolate, and naked, and shall eate hir flesshe, and burne her with fyre. |
| 17:17 | For God hath put in their hertes, to fulfill his wyll, and to do with one consent, for to geue hir kyngdome vnto the beest, vntill the wordes of God be fulfylled. |
| 17:18 | And the woma which thou sawest, is that greate cite, which raigneth ouer the kynges of the earth. |
Coverdale Bible 1535
The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete English translation of the Bible to contain both the Old and New Testament and translated from the original Hebrew and Greek. The later editions (folio and quarto) published in 1539 were the first complete Bibles printed in England. The 1539 folio edition carried the royal license and was, therefore, the first officially approved Bible translation in English.
Tyndale never had the satisfaction of completing his English Bible; but during his imprisonment, he may have learned that a complete translation, based largely upon his own, had actually been produced. The credit for this achievement, the first complete printed English Bible, is due to Miles Coverdale (1488-1569), afterward bishop of Exeter (1551-1553).
The details of its production are obscure. Coverdale met Tyndale in Hamburg, Germany in 1529, and is said to have assisted him in the translation of the Pentateuch. His own work was done under the patronage of Oliver Cromwell, who was anxious for the publication of an English Bible; and it was no doubt forwarded by the action of Convocation, which, under Archbishop Cranmer's leading, had petitioned in 1534 for the undertaking of such a work.
Coverdale's Bible was probably printed by Froschover in Zurich, Switzerland and was published at the end of 1535, with a dedication to Henry VIII. By this time, the conditions were more favorable to a Protestant Bible than they had been in 1525. Henry had finally broken with the Pope and had committed himself to the principle of an English Bible. Coverdale's work was accordingly tolerated by authority, and when the second edition of it appeared in 1537 (printed by an English printer, Nycolson of Southwark), it bore on its title-page the words, "Set forth with the King's most gracious license." In licensing Coverdale's translation, King Henry probably did not know how far he was sanctioning the work of Tyndale, which he had previously condemned.
In the New Testament, in particular, Tyndale's version is the basis of Coverdale's, and to a somewhat less extent this is also the case in the Pentateuch and Jonah; but Coverdale revised the work of his predecessor with the help of the Zurich German Bible of Zwingli and others (1524-1529), a Latin version by Pagninus, the Vulgate, and Luther. In his preface, he explicitly disclaims originality as a translator, and there is no sign that he made any noticeable use of the Greek and Hebrew; but he used the available Latin, German, and English versions with judgment. In the parts of the Old Testament which Tyndale had not published he appears to have translated mainly from the Zurich Bible. [Coverdale's Bible of 1535 was reprinted by Bagster, 1838.]
In one respect Coverdale's Bible was groundbreaking, namely, in the arrangement of the books of the. It is to Tyndale's example, no doubt, that the action of Coverdale is due. His Bible is divided into six parts -- (1) Pentateuch; (2) Joshua -- Esther; (3) Job -- "Solomon's Balettes" (i.e. Canticles); (4) Prophets; (5) "Apocrypha, the books and treatises which among the fathers of old are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the canon of the Hebrew"; (6) the New Testament. This represents the view generally taken by the Reformers, both in Germany and in England, and so far as concerns the English Bible, Coverdale's example was decisive.