1560 GENEVA BIBLE *FIRST EDITION* The Breeches Bible

Description

PRESENTING FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION EXQUISITE GENUINE 465 YEAR OLD FIRST EDITION OF THE HISTORIC GENEVA BIBLE PRINTED BY ROULAND HALL AT GENEVA, SWITZERLAND IN 1560. Quarto, 9 3/4″ x 7″ x 2 1/2”,  HERBERT #107, D & M #77 ,STC # 2093. Known as the Breeches Bible for its rendering of Genesis 3:7 

” Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knewe that they were naked, and they sewed figge tree leaues together, and made them selues breeches. “

 

SHORT DESCRIPTION

The General title supplied in fine facsimile, lacks all three leaves of the preliminaries, has all 26 engravings within the text and all 5 maps, Old Testament and Apocrypha are complete without facsimiles. New Testament Title page dated 1560 is original and the New Testament is complete without facsimiles, both tables at the end are incomplete and defective.

 

COLLATION AND CONDITION 

 

GENERAL TITLE PAGE, 1 page, supplied in fine facsimile on sympathetically aged cotton linen paper. Imprinted at Geneva by Rouland Hall, MDLX. Features a wonderful engraving of the scene at the Red Sea surrounded with the passages Exodus 14:14, Psalm 34:19 and Exodus 14:13. Verso is blank.

 

(lacking the following three leaves of the preliminaries)

 

THE OLD TESTAMENT, foliated 1- 385b, 63 lines of Roman type to the full page in double columns. Beautiful floriated and historiated initials begin each book along with the arguments. Within the text features the full complement of 26 engravings such as: The situation of the Garden of Eden, The flood, The crossing of the Red Sea, the Tabernacle and the Temple with their furniture, Solomon’s throne and Ezekiel’s vision. Also found here are 3 maps as called for at: Numbers 23, Joshua 15 and the end of Ezekiel. ( the remaining 2 maps are listed below where they are found in the n.t.) Leaves 1 & 2 with repaired blank outer margins resulting in the loss of a few letters of the printed notes only. Leaves 196-202 with quarter sized stains to the blank footer margins. Leaf 217 stained to the upper half most likely from an ancient floral pressing. Top and bottom of the verso of leaf 238 is smudged. Leaf 263 has a stain in the center approx. 1” x 2”,  Leaf 286 has a stain in the lower left column approx. 1” x 2”. The paper is clean, crisp and bright with only very minor staining and soiling. There are no loose, missing or torn pages. The edges are straight, the gutters are clean, the corners are strong.  The footer and fore edge margins are excellent while the occasional header margins are trimmed touching and also into the running headlines but without obscuring the words. A Very Good example, .COMPLETE.

 

THE APOCRYPHA, foliated 386-474, 63 lines of Roman type to the full page in double columns.Beautiful floriated and historiated initials begin each book. The paper is clean, crisp and bright with only very minor staining and soiling. There are no loose, missing or torn pages. The edges are straight, the gutters are clean, the corners are strong.  The margins are very good all around. A Very Good example, .COMPLETE.

 

THE NEW TESTAMENT TITLE PAGE, 1 page, folio #1. Imprinted at Geneva by Rouland Hall, MDLX. Features a wonderful engraving of the scene at the Red Sea surrounded with the passages Exodus 14:14, Psalm 34:19 and Exodus 14:13. Verso is blank. Lightly stained, Good. COMPLETE.

 

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE HOLIE LAND, 3 pages, The double page map of the places found in the four evangelists. Map #4 of five found in this edition. Clean and crisp, verso is blank. Very Good, COMPLETE.

 

THE NEW TESTAMENT, foliated 2- 122 , 63 lines of Roman type to the full page in double columns.Beautiful floriated and historiated initials begin each book along with the arguments. Leaf 7 has a somewhat crudely repaired tear without loss of the text, Leaves 50-63 have minor chipping to the upper blank corner tips. Map # 5 the description of the countries and places mentioned in Acts bound at the end of the text. Leaf 74 has the lower blank corner repaired with loss to a few letters of the notes. Leaf 91 printed slightly skewed. Leaf 94 misnumbered as 84 without a break in the collation. Leaves 120-122 faintly stained. The paper is clean, crisp and bright with only very minor staining and soiling. There are no loose, missing or torn pages. The edges are straight, the gutters are clean, the corners are strong.  The footer and fore edge margins are excellent while the occasional header margins are trimmed touching the running headlines. A Very Good example, COMPLETE.

 

(The following two tables (concordances) are incomplete. The first table lacks the last page. The second table lacks the first page, the next two leaves , the final four leaves and all thereafter. Their condition is fair to poor with various faults including tear outs with loss, cropped outer margins, chipped corners and edges etc.)

 

ABOUT THE BINDING

This Bible is bound in a full brown leather Victorian binding that has been neatly rebacked featuring a new burgundy morocco label. All joints are unsplit, uncracked and holding firmly. The plain end papers appear to be 18th century and features the inscription of Jacob Elton who was possibly a British Naval Captain. The text block is firm, square and unshaken with its fore edges dyed red as was the practice of Victorian binders. The custom fitted brown half leather clamshell case was recently made and features a maroon morocco label and is titled directly to the foot  “1560 GENEVA”.

 

ABOUT THE GENEVA BIBLE

The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower (Pilgrim Hall Museum and Dr. Jiang have collected several bibles of Mayflower passengers). The Geneva Bible was used by many English Dissenters, and it was still respected by Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers at the time of the English Civil War, in the booklet “Cromwell’s Soldiers’ Pocket Bible”.

This version of the Bible is significant because, for the very first time, a mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible was made available directly to the general public which came with a variety of scriptural study guides and aids (collectively called an apparatus), which included verse citations that allow the reader to cross-reference one verse with numerous relevant verses in the rest of the Bible, introductions to each book of the Bible that acted to summarize all of the material that each book would cover, maps, tables, woodcut illustrations and indices.

Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers strongly preferred this version to the Great Bible. In the words of Cleland Boyd McAfee, “it drove the Great Bible off the field by sheer power of excellence”.

During the reign of Queen Mary I of England (1553–58), a number of Protestant scholars fled from England to Geneva, Switzerland, which was then ruled as a republic in which John Calvin and, later, Theodore Beza, provided the primary spiritual and theological leadership. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who supervised the translation now known as the Geneva Bible, in collaboration with Myles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman, Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, and William Cole; several of this group later became prominent figures in the Vestments controversy. Whittingham was directly responsible for the New Testament, which was complete and published in 1557, while Gilby oversaw the Old Testament.

The first full edition of this Bible, with a further revised New Testament, appeared in 1560, but it was not printed in England until 1575 (New Testament) and 1576 (complete Bible). Over 150 editions were issued; the last probably in 1644. The very first Bible printed in Scotland was a Geneva Bible, which was first issued in 1579. In fact, the involvement of Knox and Calvin in the creation of the Geneva Bible made it especially appealing in Scotland, where a law was passed in 1579 requiring every household of sufficient means to buy a copy.

Some editions from 1576 onwards included Laurence Tomson’s revisions of the New Testament. Some editions from 1599 onwards used a new “Junius” version of the Book of Revelation, in which the notes were translated from a new Latin commentary by Franciscus Junius.

The annotations which are an important part of the Geneva Bible were Calvinist and Puritan in character, and as such they were disliked by the ruling pro-government Anglicans of the Church of England, as well as King James I, who commissioned the “Authorized Version”, or King James Bible, in order to replace it. The Geneva Bible had also motivated the earlier production of the Bishops’ Bible under Elizabeth I, for the same reason, and the later Rheims-Douai edition by the Catholic community. The Geneva Bible remained popular among Puritans and remained in widespread use until after the English Civil War. The Geneva notes were surprisingly included in a few editions of the King James version, even as late as 1715