Puritan History

Rheims-Bishops’ Parallel New Testament, Third Edition

Collection ID

BIB.005046

Type

Bible - Printed Book

Date

1617

Geography

England

Language

English

Medium

Printed on Paper

Dimensions

13.7 × 9.5 × 2.6 in. (34.8 × 24.2 × 6.7 cm)

Exhibit Location

Not on View

William Fulke created the Rheims-Bishops’ Parallel New Testament in an effort to refute Catholic scholars, but inadvertently aided their cause. In 1582, Gregory Martin and other exiled scholars at the English College in Douay, France, had produced the Rheims New Testament, an English translation of the Latin Vulgate. Martin accused Protestant scholars of purposefully introducing errors in their Bible translations. Fulke, a Puritan minister and theologian, responded with this parallel New Testament in 1589, which placed the Rheims translation side by side with the text of the Protestant Bishops’ Bible. The format allowed him to refute the Rheims text line by line. In publishing his work, however, Fulke unintentionally made the Rheims New Testament more widely available to Catholics in England. This copy is a third edition printed in 1617.

Printed in 1617 by Thomas Adams, London, England. Purchased around 2008 by Sidney Ohlhausen, private collector, Houston, Texas;[1] Purchased in 2015 by Tenny Family Bible Collection, private collection, Krum, Texas; Donated in 2020 to Museum of the Bible, Washington, DC.

Notes: [1] Information from Sidney Ohlhausen via email, December 2020.

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