John Milton was not “Geneva Bible Only”

About two years ago I made an effort to root out some World Wide Web claims that folks like John Bunyan and John Milton only used the Geneva Bible. At the time I decided to focus my research on John Bunyan.[i] I found that assertion definitely was untrue concerning Bunyan. I tried to get some sites to correct their error. I found that once a horse is out of the barn, it can be hard to get it back in.

Background.

A PhD at a museum of a major Christian University sent a very gracious reply that they looked into it and agreed that Bunyan’s primary use of the Geneva Bible seemed to be a legend. Yet their website Geneva Bible page continues to perpetuate the legend.

A major purveyor of Bible resources (very well-known, whose name I will not mention at this time) had something on their site about John Bunyan and the Geneva Bible. I received from a representative of this company an obstinate reply, defending their use of the so-called “fact” because it was “widely available online”! In the reply, this representative even copied and included the following statement from a blog: “It was the Bible of Shakespeare and Paul Bunyan and Cromwell’s Army and of our Pilgrim Fathers.” Yes, the person did not care enough to even notice that this quote was defending “Paul Bunyan” (not John Bunyan!) using the Geneva Bible. I’m glad Paul did, if he did! Babe the Blue Ox may have used it too. On the other hand, satisfied with the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox proof, they never considered the documentation I provided.

I corresponded with the then CEO of GenevaBible.com. He referred me to a single source, an undocumented claim found in the article on the Geneva Bible at Harvard Divinity School library. I guess if Harvard posts it, it has to be true! This led to a very polite exchange with a librarian there (at Harvard). I provided 3 or 4 scholarly resources and one primary resource –Bunyan himself – showing that the Geneva was not his primary Bible. Though the correspondent seemed to be listening, that library page nevertheless still says the Geneva Bible was the Bible of John Bunyan.

Whether it is a claim of a KJVO author, a textual scholar, or just Joe Blow, the World Wide Web exacerbates and multiplies myths and mistakes.[ii] It gives them a false weight that makes them seem to be true. I found it on the internet; it must be true.

John Milton.

Since I found this “Geneva Bible Only” to be untrue concerning John Bunyan and the Pilgrims, I expected it was also untrue of John Milton.[iii] However, at the time I did not pursue it further. Now I present here just a little bit of information that I recently came across in A History of the English Bible as Literature by David Norton. Norton is King James Bible historian and is not “King James Only.”

“His work had enormous influence on both literary taste and religious ideas, and was written with intimate and, at times, open familiarity with the KJB. Moreover, Milton proclaimed the literary supremacy of the Bible.” (Norton, pp. 175-176)

John Milton was not a so-called “King James Onlyist.” He read and studied the Bible in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, as well as English. But he certainly was not a “Geneva Bible Onlyist.” It is the King James Bible that was his primary English Bible.

“Now, Milton had owned from childhood, perhaps from his fourth birthday, a small quarto KJB (Barker, 1612) which shows abundant signs of use, and he was obviously thoroughly familiar with its text.” (Norton, p. 176)

Milton regarded the King James Bible “as the most accurate but yet improvable rendering of the original. The Hebrew and the Greek he did regard as dictated by God, as his very few comments on the language as language show.” (Norton, p. 176)

John Milton wrote versifications or metrical paraphrases of the Psalms. Initially they were looser/more poetry driven, but sets of Psalms composed in 1648 and 1653 (after his blindness) “show an increasing fidelity both to the originals and to the KJB…” (This is not now fidelity to the KJB as compared to the Geneva before – no, but more fidelity to the KJB and original Hebrew language, as compared to his earlier Psalms.) “The appearance of fidelity, which is often also a fidelity to the KJB, is bolstered by his inclusion of notes supplying the Hebrew or a literal translation of it.” (Norton, p. 179)

Of his later metrical Psalms, Norton writes “He obviously wants to be faithful to the KJB’s words – arguably he is responding to the power of some of its phrases – and seems to be experimenting to see how nearly they can be read as English poetry.” (Norton, p. 180)

Interestingly to this subject, David Norton does not even mention the Geneva Bible in Chapter 8, “Writers and the Bible I: Milton and Bunyan.”

“[In his later metrical Psalms] He obviously wants to be faithful to the KJB’s words – arguably he is responding to the power of some of its phrases – and seems to be experimenting to see how nearly they can be read as English poetry.” (Norton, p. 180)

Conclusion.

There is a great deal of information that can be found online that contradicts the other online material that promotes the unsourced Geneva Only myth. For example, S. L. Greenslade refers to Milton and Bunyan – even Cromwell – in context of the English indebtedness to the Authorized Version of the Bible (The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, S. L. Greenslade, Editor. Cambridge: University Press, 1963, p. 492). The book earlier noted the KJB’s place of complete dominance in the minds of English people as “the” Bible. “Eventually, however, its [i.e., the King James Bible] victory was so complete that its text acquired a sanctity properly ascribable only to the unmediated voice of God; to multitudes of English-speaking Christians it has seemed little less than blasphemy to tamper with the words of the King James Version.” (Cambridge History of the Bible, p. 168)

If you do not like the King James Bible, that is your choice. It is a free country. But people who tout “the evidence” need to learn to deal with all the evidence.

Sources.

• Norton, David. A History of the English Bible as Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
• Milton, John. The Works of John Milton. Editor, Frank Patterson et al. 18 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931-38. (esp. Vol. XVIII, pp. 274-75 and 559-61)
• Greenslade, S. L., Editor. The Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, Cambridge: University Press, 1963

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[i] “Grace Abounding shows Bunyan’s response to the Bible – which in his case is always the KJB, known with an intimacy few have ever approached – to have had a pathological intensity.” A History of the English Bible as Literature, David Norton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, p. 186.

[ii] A Puritan’s Mind added a disclaimer, which I do not remember being there when I originally found the Brown article on their site: “The following article does contain information which the author of this website disagrees with since they are stated in a “positive light” and not stated with prudence...” I am thankful for this, even though it does not go far enough in disclaiming the “Christian Urban Myth” nature of the article.

[iii] Michael H. Brown is one who gets his facts terribly wrong (seemingly almost deliberately so). As I have previously noticed, Brown asserts, “William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, John Milton, the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and other luminaries of that era used the Geneva Bible exclusively” (p. i). Possibly worse still is those who casually and uncritically blast his erroneous essay around the world and back again.