by Matthew A. C. Newsome ©2003

This was written as a response to an email I received, asking, "Were there any vernacular Bibles available in Scotland in the sixteenth century?"

In Gaelic, I do not think so. In 1659 the Synod of Argyll released a compilation of 50 of the Psalms in Gaelic. All of the Psalms were available in Gaelic by 1715. But I think it may have been in the early nineteenth century when a complete Bible was made available in Scots Gaelic, at the initiative of the Presbyterians, I believe.

In Ireland, on the other hand, we know they had Gaelic versions of the Psalms and at least Matthew's Gospel by the seventh century. There are many quotes from the Bible in Gaelic in much medieval Irish literature and some linguistic scholars see in this evidence for an early complete Irish Scriptures, but there is no hard evidence. A Protestant version of the New Testament was translated into Irish Gaelic
beginning in 1574 and finally being published in 1602. The Old Testament was added in 1686. A second edition of this text, printed in standard Roman characters (as opposed to the Gaelic characters) was released in 1790 for use by Gaelic speaking Scottish Highlanders.

So, no, I don't think we have any evidence for a Gaelic Bible being available for Scots Highlanders in the sixteenth century. In English, that's another story.

We know that portions of the Scriptures were translated into English as early as the eighth century (the Psalms and the Gospels were most common). This trend died off for a while after the Norman invasion, after which there was more of a demand for Scriptures in French than in English. But beginning around the fourteenth century, we start to see English versions again.

All we have surviving from that period are collections of Psalms, the Gospels, the Catholic Epistles, the book of Acts, etc, collected along with prayers and creeds. There is no extant complete Bible in English. However, if we are to believe the testimony of people such as Archbishop Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Foxe the martyrologist, and the authors of the preface to the Reims New Testament (published 1582), the entire Bible was indeed available in English before John Wyclif was born.

Wyclif is usually cited as the first person to translate the Bible into English, which is misleading, as the above information attests to. Wyclif completed the first version of his English translation from the Latin Vulgate in 1382. This is the version of the Bible that was adopted by the Lollard heretics, and many of the copies of this Bible contained glosses and notes that promoted the Lollard heresy, which is why the
Wycliff Bible was subsequently condemned.

All this is prior to the period you enquire about, however, which is the sixteenth century. I just list it to give a better context as to the availability of the Scriptures in English. When we enter the sixteenth century, we are now in the era of the printed book, which means a much greater market for vernacular Scriptures.

William Tyndale's New Testament (which also suffered from Lollardism) was printed in Cologne in 1525. Miles Coverdale printed a complete Bible in English in 1535. His was the first complete English Bible to be printed. He was also the first person to remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament, though he did include them at the end of his Bible, under the heading "Apocrypha" (which is a misnomer).

Another version of the Bible in English, called Matthew's Bible, came out two years later. It was a hybrid version of the Tyndale and Coverdale Bibles. Two years after that the Taverner's Bible came out, which was pretty much a copy of the Matthew's Bible.

After this one could hardly stop the flow of English Bibles being printed. One of the most influential was the Geneva Bible, printed in Calvin's Geneva during the reign of Queen Mary and full of Calvinist doctrine. This edition became so popular that later, under Queen Elizabeth, the Anglican Bishops sought to combat it by releasing the Bishop's Bible, which would never rival it in popularity.

An official English translation of the Bible for Catholic readers was begun in 1578. Called the Douay-Reims Bible, the New Testament was published in Reims in 1582 and the Old Testament at Douay in in 1609. This version would heavily influence the Authorized Version for Anglicans (aka King James Version) which was published in 1611.

So, to sum all that up, yes, an English translation of the entire Bible, including the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament, would most certainly been available to people in the sixteenth century. While I have no direct references in front of me that testify to such English versions being available in Scotland, I also have no evidence that would suggest such editions were being kept out of Scotland, and I would be very surprised to learn that no English Bibles had made their way to the Lowlands at least by the 1540s.