The Murderous History of Bible Translations

by Harry Freedman

  John Bockelson, otherwise known as John of Leiden, was twenty-five years old when he arrived in Münster as one of Jan Matthys’s apostles. He had only converted to Anabaptism a couple of months earlier. But he was ambitious, beguiling and thoroughly unscrupulous. Bockelson knew only too well how to make his mark. He set about seeking powerful allies, quickly falling in with the leader of the Guilds, a cloth merchant named Knipperdolling. The two men clicked; Bockelson would in due course marry Knipperdolling’s daughter.

  On 8 February 1534 Bockelson and Knipperdolling ran frenetically through the town, calling upon all to repent of their sins. It had all the makings of a stunt but the effect was electric. The entire population, if the reports are to be believed, was convulsed with an outbreak of hysteria. People swooned in the streets, screaming and foaming at the mouth. As the frenzy reached a climax, a band of armed Anabaptists seized control of the Town Hall.

  Bockelson had manipulated himself into a position of power. He arranged for a call to go out from Münster to other Anabaptist communities. The world was to be destroyed before Easter. Only Münster would be saved. Everyone was to join them. Immigrants were to bring food, clothing, money, but most importantly, weapons. Sure enough, they came. So too did Jan Matthys. Bockelson yielded to his authority.

  With Matthys and Bockelson now a team, Münster was wholly under the control of the Anabaptists. Most able-bodied Lutherans fled. Matthys wanted to execute any who remained, but Knipperdolling restrained him. It wouldn’t look good to the outside world, he said. Instead, in the first of many foreshadowings of Nazi Germany, the weak, infirm and elderly were driven from town, accompanied by the hurling of stones and the hysterical cackles of possessed, demented townspeople.

  Münster was not wholly abandoned to its fate. In those days, Northern German states were governed by prince-bishops; secular authorities who had achieved, or bought, ecclesiastical ordination. As insanity tightened its grip on the town the local bishop began raising an army of mercenaries. On 28 February he laid siege to Münster.

  Even now, an occasional voice of protest could be heard within Münster’s city walls. Not everyone had succumbed to the madness. A blacksmith tried to rustle up support to depose Matthys from his self-appointed status as town leader. Matthys had him brought to the town centre. He was executed while the crowd sang a hymn.

  Matthys declared that the spirit of communal ownership was to be rigidly enforced. All money was to be confiscated. Anyone who refused would be executed. He sacked the cathedral and ordered all its books burned. In mid-March, Matthys declared that the only book permitted in Münster would be the Bible, by which he meant the Bible that people could read and understand: the translated Bible.

  His megalomania spiralling out of control, Matthys determined that this was the time to break the siege. He set off with a contingent of men towards the bishop’s lines. As the sortie drew near fighting broke out and Matthys was killed. Briefly, the hopes of the townspeople were raised. But Matthys’s death turned out to be no salvation. Power passed to Bockelson. Like the hydra, the terror divided and multiplied.

  Münster had already seen its fair share of powerful, compelling mystagogues. Rothmann, Hoffman and Matthys had each made full advantage of their charismatic, hypnotic powers. But Bockelson outclassed them all. It was on his canvas that Reck-Malleczewen painted Hitler. Bockelson, or John of Leiden as he was known, may only have had a small empire. But given the chance, he too could have ranked among the world’s greatest ever villains.

  Bockelson’s first act of communal leadership was to act the showman. He ran naked through the town, finally falling into a three-day swoon. Even when catatonic he could mesmerize. When he finally spoke he had the whole population firmly in his grasp. Bockelson’s reign of terror was about to begin.

  His first act was to institute a system of forced labour. Men were either conscripted into the army or worked for the community. In either case they were not paid. Greed, lying and slander were made capital offences. Any youth who disobeyed their parents, any wife who rebelled against her husband, was to be put to death. Adopting the biblical commandment to ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’, he demanded polygamy. Briefly, this proved to be a step too far.

  Outrage at the insistence that they were to take extra wives precipitated the men of the town into a brief rebellion. Bockelson and Knipperdolling were thrown into jail. But the two men had recruited a small, personal militia; foreigners who owed no allegiance to anyone in the town and had no qualms about allying themselves to the despotic cause. The prison holding Bockelson and Knipperdolling was soon breached, the two madmen liberated and their enemies killed.

  Bockelson guessed that to promote polygamy he would need to lead by example. He established a harem of fifteen wives; whether they were seized or seduced we will never know. He passed a law obliging all girls over a certain age to marry. He ordained that, if an existing wife quarrelled with one of her husband’s new brides, she was to be put to death. But this too met with resistance; if Bockelson had anything remotely resembling an Achilles’ heel it was his incompetence at sexual politics.

  The women who were now forced to share their husbands finally asserted themselves. They demanded the right to divorce. Bockelson assented. He legalized divorce and transformed polygamy into free love. His acolytes set off to the town’s perimeter, to the siege, to persuade the few mercenaries whom the bishop had managed to recruit to come and join the fun.

  Bockelson’s crowning megalomaniacal act was to proclaim himself Messiah. He arranged for one of his ‘prophets’ to anoint him and pronounce him King of Jerusalem. He declared himself to have power over all the nations and warned the assembled crowd, on pain of death, not to resist his orders. Over the course of the next three days his preachers went about the town, delivering a similar message.

  A throne was erected in the marketplace for the new Messiah, who dressed himself in the finest robes, wreathed with gold and silver. He processed through the town, his queen by his side, attended by an elaborately uniformed retinue. When he sat on the throne, a page stood on either side. One held a sword, the other the Bible, driving home the message that this was the tyranny of the translated Bible.

  There must have been some in Münster who recognized the madness for what it was. If so, they were wise to keep their counsel. For the brainwashing grew ever more intense. Bockelson’s impelling of the people towards their alleged spiritual destiny never flagged. They were told, in October 1534, that when they heard a thrice-repeated blast of trumpets, they were all to make their way to the town square. There they would miraculously be endowed with supernatural strength. Quoting Leviticus, Bockelson told them that ‘five of you will pursue a hundred; a hundred of you will drive away ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you at the sword’.29 On the heels of this illusory victory they would march triumphantly to the Promised Land, enduring neither hunger nor fatigue. It was to be the victorious redemption of the Israelites.

  Sure enough, the trumpets sounded thrice and the people, too terrified or robotic to resist, assembled in the town square. Bockelson and his retinue arrived, girded in their armour. And then, to everyone’s utter consternation, as if teasing a crowd of children, Bockelson cancelled the promised expedition. The whole thing had been, so he said, a test of their loyalty. Now that they had proved themselves they were invited to a banquet. Tables were brought, the people sat down to dine and, for amusement, Bockelson beheaded a captured mercenary in front of their eyes.

  The murders intensified. Three women were executed, one for bigamy, one for disobeying her husband and the third for mocking a preacher. A group of mercenaries who had defected to Bockelson became too rowdy in a tavern and were shot. The Münster regime was enjoying absolute power, and becoming ever more confident. In August 1534 the bishop attacked, and was repulsed so efficiently that his forces abandoned him. John of Leiden was riding high.

  Now was the time, Bockelson decided, to send envoys to spread his message beyond
the town. It was a defensive measure. The bishop had busily been recruiting new forces to strengthen the siege. Notwithstanding his messianic agenda and desire to proclaim his delusions to the world, John of Leiden never lost sight of the military situation. He urgently needed armed reinforcements from neighbouring Anabaptist communities.

  The situation beyond the walls of Münster was not as he imagined. The world was not watching his pantomime in raptures of admiration. Some of his envoys did manage to stir up support; a thousand Anabaptists gathered in Groningen, planning to march to Münster. But they were defeated by the local duke. An uprising in Amsterdam briefly captured the Town Hall, before it was put down. Three boats carrying Anabaptist pilgrims set off up the river to Münster. They were sunk, with all passengers drowned. Various other brief outbreaks of armed rebellion or messianic fervour were quickly put down by the authorities. It seems that plans hatched in Münster were not despatched to his supporters elsewhere as securely as Bockelson and his allies had assumed. Increasingly the authorities were on to him. Ammunition dumps were raided, collaborators in neighbouring towns arrested. All the while, the siege grew heavier.

  The beginning of the end came in April 1535, when the Imperial states agreed to contribute to a further strengthening of the siege. The blockade finally started to have an impact; the townspeople began to starve. What little food they still had was confiscated by Bockelson to feed his own troops and supporters. The people, reduced to eating grass and the bodies of dead animals, began to turn upon him. Bockelson assured them that he’d had a vision that redemption would come by Easter. Then he told them that the cobblestones would turn to bread. He ordained a three-day festival of dancing, races and competitions for the starving people. Finally, when the famine was so intense that he had no option, he told the most desperate they could leave.

  The bishop treated the refugees no more kindly than Bockelson had done. Unable to discriminate between famine victims and potential spies or insurrectionists, he judged them all equally unfavourably. He refused to let them through his lines. For five weeks they starved between the walls of the town and the ramparts of the siege.

  Meanwhile, in the town, Bockleson’s reign of terror continued. Anyone planning to leave, or speaking out against him, was executed; Bockelson carrying out most of the beheadings himself. If he had a plan at all, it was either that he really did believe redemption would come, or that he was willing for the whole of Münster to starve to death. In the end, neither happened. Two men escaped from the town and showed the besiegers how best to penetrate the defences. Münster was invaded and the Anabaptists, despite an assurance of safe conduct, were executed over the course of the next few days.

  Bockleson didn’t get off so lightly. The bishop ordered that a chain be placed around his neck and that he be led around, naked, like a performing bear. When the local towns and villages grew tired of seeing the tyrant in chains, he and Knipperdolling were tortured to death with red hot irons. With their passing Münster’s torment finally came to an end.30

  The bizarre horror of Münster was of course not caused by the translation of the Bible. But the fact that the translated Bible was the only book allowed in Münster, and that its eschatological outlook underpinned the madness, makes it difficult to imagine whether the same events could have taken place in its absence. Of course, horror depends upon neither Bible nor religion; the perversions of Nazi Germany prove that only too well. And in the whole history of the translated Bible, John of Leiden’s messianic kingdom of Münster is the only event to which the opponents of the vernacular scripture can point and say ‘we were right’. But even to this day, radical fundamentalism hasn’t gone away. And religious extremism relies upon a revealed, unmediated, literal reading of scripture, one which rejects the prism of human interpretation.

  8

  King James’s Bible

  The New King

  If any English-language translation of scripture warrants the epithet ‘The Bible’ it is the version bearing the name of King James. The sixteenth century had seen William Tyndale’s Bible lay the foundations for English literature. By the end of the century William Shakespeare’s pen was elevating the language to unprecedented heights. The King James Bible, born out of this rich literary tradition, did not let its progenitors down. It remains an almost inconceivable rarity, a translation that competes with the original for beauty, clarity of expression and turn of phrase. Clearly the ancient Bible was not written in English. But reading the King James version, one might almost think it was.

  The murderous climate that had seen Tyndale and his supporters cruelly executed, had assuaged. New initiatives in education, facilitated by social progress, the Protestant Reformation and, to a lesser degree, the English Renaissance,1 had vastly improved literacy. It has been estimated that erudition increased so rapidly during the later decades of the sixteenth century that by 1600 one-third of the male population could read. And with literacy came exhortation after exhortation for people to read the Bible, whether in Latin or in English.2

  The flowering of reading skills brought the Bible to the masses. This wasn’t universally seen as a good thing. Although the 1543 law that forbade the reading of the Bible by women and the working classes was unjust and proving unworkable, the fear which had led to the Act, that the ability to read the Bible would lead to new ideas, was well founded. The translated Bible, and its accompanying commentaries, became powerful weapons in the struggle by political radicals against the established social order, and by Puritans against the authority and structure of the new, English Church.3

  But the Bible which liberates can also be the Bible that controls. Radicals point to biblical teachings that bolster their arguments and give them moral legitimacy. Conversely, political and religious establishments, who through the weight of their authority assume ownership of the Bible, may present it in a manner which counters the radical view.

  The most valuable weapon in the use of the Bible as propaganda is translation. In a variation of Humpty Dumpty’s dictum, ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean’,4 the ability of a translator to select the most polemically appropriate meaning can radically alter the way a biblical passage is perceived. Tyndale had deliberately translated the Greek ekklesia as ‘congregation’ rather than ‘church’ to counter the primacy of the Pope. In a more nuanced way, the King James rendering of 1 Corinthians 10.11, ‘Now all these things happened unto them for examples’ contrasts with the Rheims–Douay version’s ‘Now all these things happened to them in figure’. Rheims–Douay had followed Augustine in suggesting that the punishments meted out to the Israelites in the wilderness were intrinsic to their status as Jews, King James implies they were simply illustrations of what can happen to people who complain.5 With the creation of the King James Bible, the age of the bible translator living in fear for his life had drawn to an end. Replacing it was a new era, of the bible translator as sophisticated, theological polemicist.

  James VI had been king of Scotland for thirty-five years when he was told that the English crown was now his. his reign over the Scots had commenced when he was still a wee mite. As monarch of anarchic, brawling Scotland he’d had little money and even fewer allies. But he had a brain, had learned to be cunning and had waited for the day when the English sceptre would be in his hand. He was a man on a mission, and his mission was not solely one of self-interest.

  James was determined to unite the fractured realm over which he had been newly crowned. The country had been riven by doctrinal quarrels for far too long, and in those days religion and politics walked hand in hand. The Catholics were no longer a force to be reckoned with, Elizabeth had made sure of that. But the Protestants were sharply and politically divided. The vast majority of churchmen, those who carried the greatest influence, rejected Rome and much of what they perceived as Catholic dogma, but they still wished to retain many of the symbols and rituals of the Catholic Church. Theirs was a truly English compromise. On the opposing flank of Protestantis
m was a small, vociferous band of Puritans, who rejected all hint of pomp and ceremonial. Theirs was a faith of the heart, devoid of external ritual; a faith that did not need, in John Milton’s words, ‘the weak and fallible office of the senses’.6

  The Puritans believed that England’s Reformation was incomplete.7 They looked longingly towards strict, Presbyterian Scotland and to Europe, with its austere Calvinism. They dreamed of a more rigorous Protestantism taking root in England and they saw James as the monarch who would usher in the change. James’s accession was to be the moment they had waited for, the arrival of a new king who, although nominally Catholic, had been reared under the tutelage of Presbyterian governors, a king fully conversant with everything they held dear. They believed he was the ruler who would advance their cause.

  James’s journey from Edinburgh to his London coronation was deliberately protracted. It was a month-long procession, contrived by the young king to display himself to his new subjects; seducing them with grand gestures of largesse, endowing them with his beneficent protection, a glorious new monarch for a splendid nation. As he journeyed southwards, James’s retinue was assailed by a delegation of Puritans carrying a petition signed by, it was said, one thousand of their clergymen. The Millenary Petition, as it became known, demanded a thorough overhaul of the Protestant Church to rid it of popish practices and bring it into line with the European Reformation.