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The story of the Bible: How it came to us

Author:	Henry Wansbrough
Published By:	Darton, Longman and Todd (London)
Pages:	140
Price:	£10.95
ISBN:	0 232 52641 9

Reviewed by Julian Reindorp.

Henry Wansbrough, the translator and editor of the New Jerusalem Bible and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, tells the story of how the Bible came to be formed, why some writings and not others were accepted, its eventual translation into Latin and how this version was the standard text for a thousand years.  He describes the struggles behind the first Bible in English and then the later work behind the King James Version.  He comments on the modern versions of the Bible and the final chapter is about the influence of Vatican 11.  He writes very clearly, the contents are laid out in detail under the chapter headings, there are notes, a full bibliography and an index.

He begins by describing a seminar in an American university where the students began with the assumption that the printed and embossed book they held in their hands somehow originated in English.  He describes the Jesus seminar as a group of ‘like minded North American fellows, not including any from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke or any Catholic university. In no way does it represent a cross-section of scholars.’

I found this an easy and stimulating read.  As so often politics affected the work of translation.  The unsuccessful Peasants revolt of 1382 twinned the right of every person to read the Bible with the right to other civil liberties.  This set back translation  into English by more than a century.  I did not realize that the genius of William Tyndale meant that 80% of the books which he translated were adopted word for word in the Authorised version some seventy years later.  The first English Bible was almost single- handedly the achievement of Tyndale as the Latin had been of Jerome.  You catch something of Tyndale’s skill when you see his version of the Beatitudes alongside others.  The origins of the Bible Society and the Bibles’ use in the missionary movements are well illustrated.

This is a balanced, accessible and entertaining account of how the Bible has reached us.