each word in Wycliffe's Bible was selected for its fidelity to the original text, as well as its ability to aid comprehension and passage flow.
Use of the KJV
When transforming the "Later Version" of the "Wycliffe Bible" into Wycliffe's Bible, reference was made to the KJV in regard to verse number, book order, book names, and (most) proper names.
Verses are not found in either version of the "Wycliffe Bible". Each chapter consists of one unbroken block of text. There are not even paragraphs. In creating Wycliffe's Bible, the "Later Version" of the WB was defined, word by word. Then the KJV was placed alongside and used to divide each chapter into the traditional verses. (The English Bible was first divided into numbered verses in the middle of the 16th century, 60 years before the KJV was printed. The King James translators copied what was already established.) As the blocks were broken up, it became readily apparent that Wycliffe and Purvey had often written first what would appear two centuries later in the KJV. (This debt is particularly obvious in the New Testament.)
The sequence of the books of the Bible to which we are accustomed long pre-dates the KJV. It appeared in some Latin Bibles at least as early as the 5th century AD. (Those Bibles in turn were influenced by the order of the books in the Septuagint, the Old Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, from the 3rd century BC, which is our earliest complete translation of them, and the Old Latin Bibles as well.) The sequence was formally established in the accepted order at the time that the verse divisions were made (again, about 60 years before the KJV was printed). This is the same order found in the "Wycliffe Bible", which was written 150 years earlier, with one exception: "Deeds of (the) Apostles" (in some copies of both versions of the WB entitled "Actus Apostolorum", Latin for "Acts of the Apostles") is placed after Hebrews and before James. In Wycliffe's New Testament, "Deeds"/"Actus" is returned to its more familiar position between The Gospel of John and The Epistle of Paul to the Romans. In short, Wycliffe's Bible simply follows the WB order (but excludes the apocryphal books found intermittently throughout it).
The names of the books of the Old Testament have minor variations among the copies of the "Wycliffe Bible", but they are basically what is found in the KJV. Most are prefaced by the phrase, "The Book of...". The exceptions: 1st and 2nd Samuel are called 1st and 2nd Kings in the WOT (the same alternate names also found in early editions of the KJV); "our" 1st and 2nd Kings are called 3rd and 4th Kings in the WOT (again, the same alternate names also found in early editions of the KJV); 1st and 2nd Chronicles (named thus by Jerome) are called 1st and 2nd Paralipomena in the WOT (the name is taken from the Septuagint and means "things left over", referring to Samuel and Kings; however, it is a misnomer, for the Chronicles are distinct from the other historical books, focusing on God's intervention in history, and omitting Northern Kingdom annals); Nehemiah is called 2nd Ezra; the Song of Solomon is usually called the Song of Songs (as it is often named in Jewish and modern English Bibles); and Jeremiah is referred to as "Jeremy" in the titles of the book of his prophecies and the book of his lamentations. On the whole, book names in Wycliffe's Old Testament follow those found in the KJV.
As indicated, New Testament book names vary among copies of the "Wycliffe Bible". But overall, they are more basic, and less formal, than those found in the KJV. To wit: "The Gospel of Luke" rather than "The Gospel according to Saint Luke"; "The Epistle of Paul to the Colossians" rather than "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians"; and so forth. Wycliffe's New Testament follows the simplicity of the "Wycliffe Bible", rather than the more ecclesiastical KJV, in this regard. (For this combined version, book names have been simplified, i.e., "Numbers", "Esther", "Luke", "Romans", etc., as space is severely limited.)
To aid comprehension and also comparison with other translations, proper names in Wycliffe's Bible were generally made to conform to those in the KJV. However, surprisingly, the modern names of such countries as Africa, Greece, Libya, and Ethiopia are found in the WOT, where the KJV often uses their archaic and/or Hebrew names (respectively Put, Javan or Grecia, Lubim, and Cush), and they were not changed. As well, the WOT often shows its debt to the Septuagint by using the Greek names for such cities as Heliopolis, Memphis, Pelusium, Sidon, Tanis, and Thebes, instead of the Hebrew names which the KJV uses (respectively On, Noph, Sin, Zidon, Zoan, and No); these names were also not changed. A list of "Alternate Names of People and Places in Wycliffe's Old Testament" appears after the "Apocalypse" (Revelation), before the Glossary.
Infrequently, apparently confusing an object name with a proper name, a Hebrew word was not translated in the WOT, but simply transliterated (the KJV and other translations do translate these words). These transliterations were left as found in the original text of the WOT, with a translation following in parentheses. They are also defined in the Glossary.
Finally, the few times where a proper name in the "Wycliffe Bible" is distinctly different from its counterpart in the KJV, it was not changed in Wycliffe's Bible; however the more familiar name is given immediately afterward in parentheses.
Names of God are a special circumstance. God has many names and titles in the Wycliffe Old Testament, including "God", "Lord", "God Almighty", "Almighty God", "the Almighty", "the Lord of hosts" (sometimes written "the Lord of virtues"), "the Lord God of hosts" (sometimes written "the Lord God of virtues"), "the High", "the most High", "the Highest", "the alder-Highest", "the Holy", "my Maker", "the old of days", "creator", "the overcomer", and still others as well (including "king", which is also given as a title for the coming Messiah). In the WOT, the first seven titles in this list are always capitalized, the next six are infrequently capitalized, and the others are never capitalized. In Wycliffe's Old Testament, the capitalized titles were left as such, those in the second grouping ("the High", "the most High", "the Highest", "the alder-Highest", "the Holy", and "Maker") were consistently capitalized to aid comprehension, and the other remaining titles were also capitalized for the same reason. The KJV, and other translations, including Jewish Bibles, capitalize some, or even all, of these titles, but not in uniformity with one another.
Surprisingly, the words "christ", "christs", and "Christ" appear in the WOT. The English word "christ" is from the Greek word "christos" ("christus" in Latin), and means "the anointed (one)"; the transliterated Hebrew for the same word is the familiar "messiah". The word "christos" appears in the Septuagint (e.g., in Psalms 2:2 and Daniel 9:25). It was borrowed from there by the writers of the Greek New Testament in the 1st century AD to refer specifically and only to Jesus Christ (and so it is always capitalized). But in the WOT, "christ" uncapitalized can refer to King Saul, the Persian king Cyrus, David in particular, the patriarchs in general (here the word "christs" is used), and others who were "anointed by God" (but with no messianic overtones). The WOT self-defines the term with the words "the anointed", "the king", or "the anointed king" (sometimes in an alternate rendering, sometimes in italics).
However, reference is made to "Christ" in a prophetic manner, that is, in regard to the coming Messiah, in 1st Samuel 2:10 and 2:35, 2nd Samuel 23:1, Psalms 2:2 and 45:2, and Lamentations 4:20, all verses where the KJV and more modern translations say "anointed king" or "anointed prince"; throughout the Song of Songs, where the "Early Version", and one copy of the "Later Version", present the entire book as an allegorical dialogue between Christ and his bride, the Church; in Daniel 9:25 and 9:26, where the KJV says "Messiah", but modern translations simply say "prince"; and in Zechariah 3:8, where the KJV and other translations say "the Branch"/"The Branch", and Jewish Bibles suggest a formal name, rather than a messianic term. In Isaiah, where one might expect to find the word, if anywhere, it does occur, once, at 45:1, but only as "my christ", and refers to King Cyrus of Persia; in the KJV and other translations, the term used here is "his anointed".
Other titles in the WOT which also refer to the coming Messiah include "king", "duke", "prince", "saviour", "a just burgeoning", "a burgeoning of rightwiseness", "a seed of rightfulness", and "the sun of rightwiseness". None of these titles is ever capitalized in the WOT. However, in one verse, Zechariah 6:12, the coming Messiah is referred to as "a man, Coming forth, either Born, is his name" in the "Later Version", and as "a man, East, or Springing, (is) his name" in the "Early Version" (both
