In this it follows the books found in the Vulgate Bible, since at that time the Protestants had still not established their position on whether or not they should remain as Bible text or be considered works of spiritual edification and useful to the faith but not part of the Sacred Scriptures. At the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, the Catholic Church had just decreed that several of these books would remain in their Bibles, but in the Protestant world the excision of these works took place gradually during the 17th century.
Finally, the Spanish style that Casiodoro gave to his translation is worthy of note. At a time when the Golden Age of Spanish literature was just beginning, this Bible is a monument to the beauty and plasticity of the Spanish language. He not only transferred a message requiring delicate translation, but he did so with uncommon grace and accuracy.
The Old Testament is written in Semitic languages with which there are no linguistic contacts and, therefore, it is often expressed in phrases and words that are difficult to transpose to our language; the Greek of the New Testament also posed challenges, especially because of its different syntactical structure and the complexity of the message in some of the books. Casiodoro used other previous translations, but improved them by study, erudition and sensitivity until he achieved a text of the highest quality.
When there were still no models of Spanish prose and poetry to open stylistic paths, Casiodoro opened the way for others to continue elevating the language.
To Casiodoro, the Word must have tasted like the best wild honey.
The Bible of the Jar, the Reina-Valera
In 1602, the first revision of the translation by Casiodoro de Reina was published in Amsterdam. The reviser was Cipriano de Valera, and the Bible would be known first as the Bible of the Jar and, much later, to honor those who worked on it, as the Reina-Valera Bible.
It was called “of the Jar” because the seal on its cover shows a tree and two persons, one of which is pouring water onto the earth from a jar, as if watering a newly planted tree. Above them, illuminating the scene, are the Hebrew letters for God’s name, YHWH.
The Bible of the Jar does not contain many differences from Casiodoro’s text, but there are differences of form and accessory items. Cipriano modified almost all the marginal references from the first edition and reduced some of the introductions and summaries with which the books and chapters began, but added them to the Book of Revelation, which had none. Another important change was the order of the books. In the Bible of the Bear, the apocryphal books are interspersed with the rest of the books of the Old Testament, while Cipriano considered that it was better to group them and place them at the end, before the New Testament.
Cipriano had belonged to the group of monks from the convent of San Isidro del Campo in Seville who had fled to Geneva in 1557 to escape from the bonfire of the Inquisition. The leader of the group was Casiodoro de Reina and they fled together, but then their lives took separate paths: Casiodoro remained an independent Protestant, while Cipriano embraced the doctrines of John Calvin. Their dwelling places were also different. Cipriano settled down in England, where he became a distinguished professor at Oxford and Cambridge, while Casiodoro went from city to city throughout Europe, always in search of a place in which to settle down.
Cipriano took on the revision of the Bible for several reasons. In his prologue he said that it was because the 2,600 copies of the Bible of the Bear had been bought up. However, we know that there were other less practical reasons. Cipriano’s Calvinist emphasis made him prefer a text with different information and notes, where the apocryphal books were presented as less connected to the rest of the Old Testament. In practice, the Bible of the Jar differs from the Bible of the Bear much more in its notes and summaries than in the Bible text.
Finally, there was one more reason: there was a certain enmity between them. Cipriano was suspicious of Casiodoro’s independent ideas, and the latter did not feel comfortable with the disciples of Calvin. Perhaps in order not to hurt him, Cipriano waited until Casiodoro’s death—which took place in 1594—to revise and publish the translation in 1602. The cover bears only his name, although the prologue inside mentions that the text is a revision of Casiodoro´s work. This resulted in the Reina-Valera being known as the Bible of Cipriano de Valera for the next three centuries. It was not until the late 19th century that Reina’s name would be included in the current editions.
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