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The Geneva Bible

The Geneva Bible

The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament (Geneva, 1560)

English refugees in Geneva — Whittingham, Gilby, Sampson and others

Small, cheap, numbered in the margin, and full of somebody explaining the hard bits — which nobody had ever thought to do before.

Catch rate
Not found in the wild
Base research
940
Stat total
1100

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.

Stamina280
Contend260
Defend270
Popularity290
Total1100

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 280

The whole Bible, from the originals, with the Apocrypha set apart and three hundred thousand words of notes. There is more here than in any other book a reader can carry.

Contend 260

Made by men who had watched their friends burn and had gone abroad to do this instead. It does not hedge.

Defend 270

Translated from Hebrew and Greek by a committee of scholars with Beza next door and Estienne’s texts on the table. Very hard ground to attack.

Popularity 290

The fastest Bible ever made, and that is a design fact rather than a compliment: verse numbers, roman type instead of black letter, italics for words the translators had supplied, and small enough to hold in one hand.

Cited for this book

Made in Geneva by English refugees from Mary’s burnings, and it invented the study Bible: verse numbers so a sentence has an address, notes on the hard verses for people with no minister to ask, italics marking every word the translators supplied, and a page you could read without a lectern. Shakespeare’s Bible, Cromwell’s army’s Bible, the Mayflower’s. James I hated the notes — one says a midwife did right to disobey a king — and ordered a translation carrying none.

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

LvMoveTypeCat.PwrAccPP
1Chapter and VerseBibleArgument92100%10
1Random VerseBibleArgument10100%30
44Chapter…BibleScripture12
48The Marginal NoteExegesisArgument86100%10
52Two Hundred EditionsHistoryArgument88100%10
56Where the Word Is PreachedEcclesiologyArgument93100%5
60The Secret TestimonyPresuppositionArgument88100%10
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