The flower of English Protestant scholarship was driven into exile, and found its way to Frankfort and Geneva again.There the spirit of scholarship was untrammeled; there they found material for scholarly study of the Bible, and there they made and published a new version of the Bible in English, by all means the best that had been made.In later years, under Elizabeth, it drove the Great Bible off the field by sheer power of excellence.During her reign sixty editions of it appeared.This was the version called the Genevan Bible.It made several changes that are familiar to us.For one thing, in the Genevan edition of 1560 first appeared our familiar division into verses.The chapter division was made three centuries earlier; but the verses belong to the Genevan version, and are divided to make the Book suitable for responsive use and for readier reference.It was taken in large part from the work of Robert Stephens, who had divided the Greek Testament into verses, ten years earlier, during a journey which he was compelled to make between Paris and Lyons.The Genevan version also abandoned the old black letter, and used the Roman type with which we are familiar.It had full notes on hard passages, which notes, as we shall see, helped to produce the King James version.The work itself was completed after the accession of Elizabeth, when most of the religious leaders had returned to England from their exile under Mary.
Elizabeth herself was not an ardent Protestant, not ardent at all religiously, but an ardent Englishwoman.She understood her people, and while she prided herself on being the "Guardian of the Middle Way," she did not make the mistake of submitting her sovereignty to foreign supervision.Probably Elizabeth always counted herself personally aCatholic, but not politically subject to the Roman pontiff.She had no wish to offend other Catholic powers; but she was determined to develop a strong national spirit and to allow religious differences to exist if they would be peaceful.The dramatic scene which was enacted at the time of her coronation procession was typical of her spirit.As the procession passed down Cheapside, a venerable old man, representing Time, with a little child beside him representing Truth--Time always old, Truth always young-- presented the Queen with a copy of the Scriptures, which she accepted, promising to read them diligently.
