1535 French Olivetan Bible

[VirginiaHuguenot]

The 1535 (French) Olivetan Bible is available online in part here:

Links and Downloads Manager - Translations & Manuscripts - 1535 French Olivetan Bible - The PuritanBoard

John Calvin's Preface is available (in English) online here:

Links and Downloads Manager - Translations & Manuscripts - Preface to the 1535 French Olivetan Bible -- John Calvin - The PuritanBoard

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence, p. 279:

Not only is the whole work [the 1557 Geneva New Testament] anonymous; but how much Calvin associated himself with this New Testament, if he did at all, is also unclear. He apparently wrote an eight-page introductory Epistle, declaring with good Epistle-to-the-Romans force ‘that Christ is the end of the Law’, an important endorsement of this new work. Yet this Epistle Dedicatory is a translation of a piece written twenty years before, and Calvin’s second published work, his Preface (in Latin) to the New Testament in Olivetan’s Bible of 1535, the first French Protestant Bible (Olivetan was Calvin’s cousin).

 

[Sebastian Heck]

At least Frans P. Van Stam is of the opinion that the 'Preface' is not by Calvin but by Olivetan himself, as he argues in “Der Autor des Vorworts zur Olivetan-Bibel 'A tous amateurs' aus dem Jahr 1535.” in: Dutch Review of Church History , vol. 84, edited by Wim Janse, 248-67. Leiden: Brill, 2004, and most recently argued again at the Calvin Conference in Putten, Netherlands in November.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Wulfert De Greef discusses questions of authorship and related issues in The Writings Of John Calvin: An Introductory Guide (2008 ed.), pp. 71-73:

In the foreword of February 12, 1535, Olivetanus dedicates his translation not to some important person, but to "the poor church." The translation, which was published by Pierre de Wingle in Serrières near Neuchâtel, was presented to the synod of the Waldenses in Chanforans in September 1535.4

The Latin foreword, which appears only in the edition of 1535, is by Calvin and has as its title Iohannes Calvinus caesaribus, regibus, principibus, gentibusque omnibus Christi imperio subditis salutem (CO 9:787-90).5 In the foreword Calvin pleads for the Bible in the vernacular so that all believers will be able to have a direct knowledge of what Scripture says. He talks about "impious voices" (the Sorbonne) who deprive simple folk of the Word of God or at least of direct contact with the Word. That is in conflict with true piety and with the intention of God, who has always been pleased to reveal himself to the poor and chose his prophets and apostles from among shepherds and sinners. Calvin also criticizes the priests and bishops who, as shepherds of the sheep, withhold the real food (the Word of God and offer contaminated fare instead (their own ideas). He declarese the bishop of Rome and his priests to be guilty because they have hidden the light under a bushel.

A second foreword precedes the New Testament. It is anonymous and written in French, but after 1545 it was associated with Calvin.6 The heading of this foreword reads: A tous amateurs de Iésus Christ, et de son S. Évangile, salut (CO 9:791-822; a Latin version was published by Theodore Beza in 1576 in his Johannis Calvini epistolae et responsa).7 In this foreword Christ is extolled as the mediator of the new covenant that is the fulfillment of the old. We cannot do without the gospel. Without it we are not Christians. In their introduction to this foreword, Irena Backus and Claire Chimelli point out its relationship to two other writings.8 In form it resembles the Latin foreword to the Vulgate published by Robert Estienne in 1532.9 In content it more closely resembles Heinrich Bullinger's 1534 treatise on the covenant.10

The foreword of 1535 (A tous amateurs) is missing in the editions of 1539 and 1543. However, a work by Calvin and Pierre Viret that dealt with the Bible, did appear in Geneva in 1543. This work consisted of two letters, one by Calvin and one by Viret. The letter by Calvin is very similar to A tous amateurs. According to the title, Calvin intends to show that Jesus Christ is the end of the law and the sum of all that it is necessary to look for in Scripture.11 A tous amateurs was included again in the edition of the Bible published in Geneva in 1544, but with a small addition taken from the letter of 1543. From 1551 on, the title of the foreword read: Epistre aux fidèles monstrant comment Christ est la fin de la loy.

Olivenatus' Bible translation of 1535 also contains the clause V.F.C. à nostre allié et confédéré le peuple de l'alliance de Sinai, Salut (V.F.C. to our ally and confederate, the people of the covenant of Sinai, Greetings). The initials V.F.C. have been understood as an abbreviation for Votre Frère Calvin (Your Brother Calvin),12 but they have also been connected with Viret, Farel, and Calvin. More recently, the research of Bernard Roussel has concluded that V(=W)olfgang Fabricius Capito was meant, although not everyone holds that view.13

4. See The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3, The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S.L. Greenslade (New York, 1978), 117-20; Eugénie Droz, "Calvin collaborateur de la Bible de Neuchâtel," in idem, Chemins de l'bérésie: Textes et documents, 4 vols. (Geneva, 1970-76), 1:102-17; Jügen Quack, "Calvins Bibelvorreden (1535-1546)," in Evangelische Bibelvorreden von der Reformation bis zur Aufklärung (Gütersloh, 1975), 89-116.
5. The Latin text is reprinted as Letter 20, with introduction and notes, in COR Epistolae (Geneva, 2005), 1:105-13. For the Latin text, see also "Iohannes Calvinus, Cesaribus, Regibus, Principibus, gentibusque omnibus Christi Imperio subditis Salutem," in Le Livre et la Réforme, ed. Rodolphe Peter and Bernard Roussel, a special volume (n.s. 50) of the journal Revue française d'historie du livre (1986; repr., Bordeaux, 1987). Roussel provides the Latin text (258-60), the textual variants compared with the text in the Calvini opera (261), and a French translation of the foreword (244-56): "Jean Calvin aux Empereurs, aux Rois, aux Princes et à tous let Peuples assujettis au pouvoir de Christ, salut!" In the notes Roussel refers to a debate between the Scottish canon Alexander Alesius and Johannes Cochlaeus, with which Calvin was familiar. The translation by Roussel, without notes, is also printed in Olivétan, traducteur de la Bible: Actes du colloque Olivétan Noyan, mai 1985, ed. Georges Casalis and Bernard Roussel (Paris 1987), 163-68. For an ET, see Appendix 4, "John Calvin's Latin Preface to Olivetan's French Bible (1535)," in John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536 edition), ed. Ford Lewis Battles, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, 1986), 373-77.
6. Frans Pieter van Stam thinks that Olivétan was the author of this foreword. See his article, "Der Autor des Vorworts zur Olivétan-Bibel A tous amateurs aus dem Jahr 1535," NAKG 84 (2004): 248-67.
7. The French text of the letter, with a German translation, can also be found in Calvin-Studienausgabe, vol. 1/1, Reformatische Anfänge (1533-1541) (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1994), 34-57 (introduction by Ernst Saxer, 27-32); Jean Calvin, Épître à tous amateurs de Jésus-Christ. Préface à la traduction française du Nouveau Testament par Robert Olivétan (1535) (le plus ancien texte français de Calvin qui ait été imprimé) avec Introduction sur une édition française de l'Institution dès 1537? ed. Jacques Pannier (Paris, 1929), 36-55. For a modern French edition of the letter with an introduction, see Irena Backus and Claire Chimelli, eds., La vraie piété, divers traités de Jean Calvin et Confession de foi de Guillaume Farel (Geneva, 1986), 13-38 (this text is reprinted, with notes, in Olivétan, traducteur de la Bible, 177-89).
8. La vraie piété, 17-23.
9. Biblia: Breves in eadem annotationes ex doctissimis interpretationibus et Hebraeorum commentariis (Paris, 1532).
10. De testamento seu Dei unico et aeterno Heinrychi Bullingeri brevis exposito (Zurich, 1534).
11. For the text of the letter (and an introduction), see Calvin: Oeuvres choisis, ed. Olivier Millet (Paris, 1995), 25-50. The complete title of the two letters reads: Deux épistres, l'une demonstre comment nostre Seigneur Iésus Christ est la fin de la loy, et la somme de tout ce qu'ill faut chercher en l'Escriture. Composée par M. I. Calvin. L'autre, pour consoler les fidèles qui souffrent pour le nom de Iésus, et pour les instruire à se gouverner en temps d'adversité et de prospérité, et les confirmer contre les tentations et assautz de la mort. Composée par M. P. Viret.
12. Droz, Chemins de l'hérésie, 1:108-15 (with a facsimile from the Neuchâtel Bible!).
13. See Dominque Barthélemy, Henri Meylan, and Bernard Roussel, Olivétan: Celui qui fit passer la Bible d'hébreu en français,, Textes de Calvin and d'Olivétan (Biel, 1986); Achim Detmers, Reformation und Judentum: Israel-Lehren und Einstellungen zum Judentum von Luther bis zum frühen Calvin Stutgart (Kohlhammer, 2001), 268-76. Detmers concludes: "Es dar somit als nachgewiesen gelten, dass die genannte Vorrede nicht von Calvin stammt, sondern von seinem späteren Strassburger Kollegen Capito" (276). Victor E. d'Assonville addresses the "bis heute ungeklätern Verfasserschaft" in Der Begriff "Doctrina" bei Johannes Calvin: Eine theologische Analyse, Rostocker theologische Studien, vol. 6 (Münster, 2001), 48 n. 21. W.H. Neuser, "The First Outline of Calvin's Theology: The Preface to the New Testament in the Olivétan Bible of 1535," Koers: Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 66 (2001): 18, is of the opinion that Calvin is the author: "For me it is beyond all doubt that both prefaces, the one to the gentiles and the one to the Jews, were written by Calvin."
14. See Van Stam, "Der Autor des Vorworts," 250; and Robert White, "An Early Reformed Document on the Mission to the Jews," WThJ 53 (1991): 93-108.

 

[Sebastian Heck]

so what do you think?

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

so what do you think?

I think I need to read Van Stam before commenting further, but as of now I think there are good reasons to believe Calvin authored the preface in question.

 

[TimV]

Sorry to bring this old thread up, but I can't access the Olivetan Bible mentioned in the OP. Does anyone know where I can find one online?
Thanks

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Sorry to bring this old thread up, but I can't access the Olivetan Bible mentioned in the OP. Does anyone know where I can find one online?
Thanks

The link works for me. The Olivetan Bible referenced through the link is not complete but I am not aware of any other edition available online at this time.

 

[TimV]

It says I'm not allowed access to that page. Could a Mod please grant me access?
Thanks