William Fulke’s New Testament

The Reformation movement of Bible translation was not a side project alongside all the preaching, theologizing, church order, politics, and whatnot. It was more or less the main event. Especially for the English Reformation, and especially in the English universities, it was the steady march from Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum through Tyndale’s New Testament to the proliferation of English Bibles that did the reforming.

An easily overlooked phase of the project is the work of William Fulke (1538-1589; PRDL page here). He came to the task just when Roman Catholic opponents were elaborating their criticisms of Protestant Bible translation at greater detail, even at verse-by-verse levels of detail. Fulke warmed to the fight, and produced some remarkable work. At his best, Fulke articulates the lexical and semantic underpinnings of Protestant theology with a precision and thoroughness nobody else attained. (At his worst he was a scrapper who could get lost in fine points; this was especially the case when his opponents had the same tendency.)

To see his work, pick up his 1589 Confutation. ANY VERSE, including surprising ones. Consider this interaction from Eph 1:

Also worth looking at his fight over “worthy,” either ad loc or in his less edifying fight w/the Catholic translator. Does “axios” in NT usage point to the Roman Catholic doctrine of merit and condignity, or to a due proportionality appropriate to sinners saved by grace? Fulke’s got you, hammer and tongs, NT and patristics. Fulke, William. 1583. A Defense of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holie Scriptures. London: H. Bynneman for G. Bishop.

Fulke, William. 1589. The Text of the New Testament of Iesus Christ, Translated out of the vulgar Latine by the Papists of the traiterous Seminarie at Rheims … London: Deputies of Christopher Barker; reprinted 1601, 1617, 1633.

Good intro to Fulke’s work in Ellie Gebarowski-Shafer, “Contested Hermeneutics between William Fulke and the Rhemish Testament,” in Mcutt et al Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation.