DALLAS, TX.- The history of the Bible in English is also a history of contested authority: who could translate Scripture, who could print it, who could read it and which version church and crown would sanction. More than 70 early Bibles and devotional works from the Estate of Robert Funk, Oklahoma, will bring that history into unusually concentrated view in Heritage’s Oct. 14 Rare Books Signature® Auction.
Extending from the English Reformation through the Restoration, the Funk Collection encompasses the principal textual traditions that shaped the English Bible, among them the translations associated with William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, John Rogers’ “Matthew’s Bible,” the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the King James, or Authorized, Version. It also includes the first Bible printed in Scotland, rare and bibliographically complex variants, small-format Bibles intended for private devotion and sumptuously decorated bindings from the golden age of English bookbinding.
Together, the books record more than a century of religious and political change: Henry VIII’s break with Rome and establishment of the Church of England; the extension of Protestant reform under Edward VI; the restoration of Catholicism and persecution of Protestants under Mary I; the return of Protestant rule and flourishing of print culture under Elizabeth I; and, ultimately, the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.
“To encounter so many of the formative editions of the English Bible within a single collection is to see translation, theology, politics and the history of the book unfolding together,” says Roberta Kramer, Heritage’s Senior Vice President. “Robert Funk assembled these works with discernment and serious bibliographical knowledge. The result is a collection that will speak not only to collectors of early printed books, but also to scholars and institutions concerned with the Reformation, English history and the transmission of Scripture.”
At the foundation of that history stands William Tyndale, whose New Testament, first printed in exile in Worms in 1526, was produced in a small format that aided its circulation among Continental reformers and its clandestine entry into England. Tyndale’s language would prove extraordinarily durable. Such phrases as “Give us this day our daily bread,” “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “I am the good shepherd,” and “Fight the good fight of faith” entered the English biblical tradition through his translation.
Tyndale’s work became the basis for later English versions and was revised and expanded through the efforts of Coverdale and Rogers. Rogers published under the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew,” and the resulting Matthew’s Bible drew extensively upon Tyndale and Coverdale. In time, Tyndale’s influence would pass through successive translations into the Authorized Version of 1611.
The Funk Collection contains three significant Tyndale editions. The rarest is a 1549 folio printed by John Day and William Seres and bound in gilt-decorated 18th-century vellum. Its Book of Revelation contains 20 small woodcuts, each accompanied by a rhyming couplet printed beneath or beside the image. Heritage’s specialists have traced only two other copies offered at public auction.
A second 1549 folio, published in London by Thomas Raynalde and William Hyll, carries a direct association with the bibliographical study of Tyndale. An inserted leaf bears an inscription by Francis Fry, whose 1878 Bibliographical Description of the Editions of the New Testament, Tyndale’s Version in English established a sequence of editions by locating and collating surviving copies. Fry identifies the volume as the second edition.
The third is the first quarto edition of Tyndale’s New Testament, published in London. Printed and revised by Richard Jugge in 1552, with a title page bearing a portrait of Edward VI, it is generally regarded as the last English New Testament printed in England before Mary I’s accession in July 1553 and the ensuing suppression of Protestant biblical texts.
The collection also includes a rare first edition of Richard Taverner’s Bible, printed in London in 1539 by John Bydell and Thomas Barthlet. Although Taverner’s translation exerted less influence on later English Bibles than Tyndale’s, it introduced or helped establish vocabulary including “parable” and “Passover.” Heritage has identified only five other copies at auction, each less complete than the Funk copy.
Also published in 1539 was the Great Bible, the first authorized version printed in England and sanctioned for official church use after Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Compiled under Coverdale’s direction from earlier English translations, it was intended to make Scripture publicly accessible throughout the realm. The Funk Collection’s edition, published in 1549 during Edward VI’s reign, contains numerous woodcut illustrations, including the Sacrifice of Isaac and Jacob’s Ladder, as well as divisional title-page borders depicting scenes from the lives of Mary, Christ and the Prophets.
The Geneva Bible represents a different relationship between text and reader. First published in Geneva in 1560 by English Protestant exiles and first printed in England in 1575, it was designed for close study, with verse divisions, maps, tables, summaries and extensive marginal notes. Its influence extended well beyond Britain to the English colonies in North America. The Funk Collection includes 16 Geneva Bibles, led by a rare copy of the first folio edition printed in England in 1576.
Among the collection’s most historically important Scottish books is the 1579 Geneva Bible printed in Edinburgh by Alexander Arbuthnot and Thomas Bassandyne – the first Bible printed in Scotland. Its production followed action by Scotland’s General Assembly and Parliament intended to place vernacular Bibles in churches and in households above a prescribed level of means. Often called the Bassandyne Bible, the edition occupies a central place in the histories of Scottish printing, religious practice and literacy.
The Scottish sequence continues with the first folio edition of the King James, or Authorized, Version printed in Scotland. Robert Young produced the edition in Edinburgh in 1633 after becoming the king’s printer in Scotland, in association with Charles I’s Scottish coronation that year.
The collection concludes with Bibles whose significance resides as much in their bindings as in their texts. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, English bookbinding entered an era distinguished by increasingly elaborate design and technical virtuosity. Two volumes in the Funk Collection are bound in the manner associated with the Queen’s Binders, a largely anonymous group of late-17th-century craftsmen whose work is linked to aristocratic and royal patrons including Catherine of Braganza and Mary of Modena.
The two works – a Cambridge Bible printed by John Field in 1666 and an Oxford Bible printed by Thomas Guy in 1681 – are ornamented with colorful floral leather onlays, intricate gilt tooling and strapwork. Their bindings demonstrate how the Bible could function simultaneously as sacred text, instrument of private devotion and object of exceptional craftsmanship.
“The collection is remarkable not simply for the rarity of individual editions, but for the intellectual coherence of the whole,” says Kramer. “Funk understood these Bibles as physical witnesses to changing ideas about faith, language, sovereignty, readership and the book itself. It is a privilege to present them on behalf of his estate.”
