Despite the importance of Coverdale's and Matthew's Bibles, and other early sixteenth-century renderings of the Scriptures into English, it soon became evident that they were capable of improvement; and among those who undertook this task was one Richard Taverner. His chief qualifications for the work seem to have been that he possessed a due sense of the importance of his undertaking, and that he was a deep student of Greek, though his knowledge of Hebrew was somewhat scanty. It has been said of Taverner's rendering that his "scholarship appears on every page in many minute touches," but, on the whole, his revision, which appeared in the year 1539, is of secondary importance, though providing another stage in the development of our English Bible.
Of far wider interest and of more outstanding merit, is the famous Genevan Version commonly known as the "Breeches Bible," from its quaint statement in Genesis 3:7 that Adam and Eve "sewed figge tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches" (A. V. "aprons"). During the reign of Queen Mary I of England, who was strongly opposed to the progress of the Reformation in her realm, many of the reformers were driven into exile, and settled at Geneva, where, under the leadership of John Knox, they were free to develop their doctrines and practice their principles. Another of the group was a certain William Whittingham, who had married John Calvin's sister, and who succeeded Knox as pastor of the British congregation in Geneva. Whittingham had long been interested in Bible translation, and in the year 1557 he published a scholary rendering of the New Testament—a rendering which formed the nucleus of the Genevan Version and which is also noteworthy for the fact that for the first time in an English Testament there were not only chapter divisions but also numbered verses, while words inserted in English to complete the sense of the original Greek appeared in italics, as they now do in our Authorized Version. Then, in 1560, there appeared the complete Genevan or "Breeches Bible," which continued the task of New Testament revision which Whittingham had taken up, besides providing a new edition of the Old Testament, including, among other happy renderings, the familiar words: "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth" (Ecclesiastes 12:1).
The "Breeches Bible" is supposed to have resulted from the combined labors of several of the Genevan exiles, but while Knox, Calvin, Miles Coverdale, and others may well have had a part in it, there seems little doubt that the guiding spirit of the enterprise was Whittingham himself, who was ably assisted by two brother Englishmen, Thomas Sampson of Chichester, and Anthony Gilby of Cambridge. This Genevan Version represented an attempt not only to publish a new and better rendering of the Bible, but also to provide a volume more portable and less expensive than the often ponderous translations which had preceded it. The success of this endeavor may partly be judged from the fact that the "Breeches Bible" passed through no less than one hundred and sixty editions.
