Check your sources, again

In May 2024 I wrote a post for my blog titled “Check Your Sources.” It grew out of discovering a discrepancy in the online resource Blue Letter Bible. Probably most of us tend to trust what we consider reliable resources; probably most of us do not question the resource unless and until we run into a problem.

Later in May I read at John M. Asquith’s site a claim that the Wycliffe Bible was not translated from Jerome’s Vulgate. Because of researching this claim, I discovered another resource I use has some unexpected question marks surrounding it. When researching a “disputed” King James Bible reading, I check the translations of prior English Bibles. This includes the wording of the Wycliffe translation (available on HathiTrustOrg). There seems to be some question about what we have commonly accepted as the “Wycliffe Bible.” In 1850 Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden produced a “Wycliffe Bible.” Scholars (and the rest of us) have generally (or carelessly) accepted the work of Foshall and Madden as the work of Wycliffe. Yet, “some surprising discrepancies and inadequacies in their work have been discovered.” We may too uncritically refer to what the “Wycliffe Bible” says. Perhaps too little effort has gone into ferreting out what is the original work of John Wycliffe. Swedish scholar Sven L. Fristedt at the University of Stockholm produced three volumes on the subject of The Wycliffe Bible: Part I, The Principal Problems with the Forshall and Madden Edition; Part II, The Origin of the First Revision as Presented in De Salutaribus Documentis; Part III, Relationships of Trevisa and the Spanish Medieval Bibles. Nevertheless, these works appear to be little-known to the wider audience of Bible researchers.

“The Early Version of the Old Testament up to Baruch iii.20 (EV I) is contained in MS E (Bodl. 959), the manuscript that FM [Forshall and Madden] take to be the original copy of the translator or translators. FM did not, however, print their text from E, nor did they explain their choice of manuscripts, either here or elsewhere.” The Wycliffe Bible

Fristedt concludes that the FM edition does not represent “the most reliable reproduction of the original translation.” At the least, greater care should be taken in referring to what “the Wycliffe Bible” says. (And even the Forshall and Madden edition has two versions.) Wiping the egg from his face, again, he passes along a lesson learned (again).

• Always check your sources.