Coverdale’s Bible
BIBLIA: The Bible, that is, the Holy Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully translated in to Englyshe (1535)
Miles Coverdale — who did not have the languages and did it anyway
The first complete English Bible, made by a man who was honest about not having the languages and did it anyway.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 780
- Stat total
- 980
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
The whole of it, Genesis to Revelation, in English, complete. The first time that sentence had ever been true of a printed book.
Second-hand, and it never stopped being the charge against him: Latin and German at his elbow instead of Hebrew and Greek. It argues less forcefully than the three that went to the originals.
The easiest of the four to attack on scholarship, and its defenders have always answered the same way — it was there, and finished, and nothing else was.
Licensed, eventually, and read everywhere; his Psalter has been in continuous liturgical use in English longer than any other translation of anything.
Cited for this book
Tyndale finished the New Testament and half the Old and was killed before he could finish. Coverdale finished the job with what he had: no Hebrew, very little Greek, and the Vulgate, Luther’s German and Tyndale’s English open on the desk. Printed abroad in 1535 and dedicated to Henry VIII — the same king whose bishops had burned Tyndale’s. Scholars have been condescending about it for four hundred years, and English cathedrals have sung his Psalms every day of those four hundred years.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The First Complete One | History | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 44 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 48 | The Psalter They Still Sing | Spirituality | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 52 | Into Their Own Tongue | Exegesis | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 56 | A Boy That Driveth the Plough | Bible | Argument | 88 | 95% | 10 |