Difference between revisions of "Wycliffe Bible"

Revision as of 15:19, 18 March 2011

John Wycliffe's Translation

This page describes preprocessing results for the text of John Wycliffe's Translation obtained from The Wesley Center Online. The same text is also available from WikiSource. For historical context, see Wycliffe's Bible.

Weaknesses

Both Tyndale and Wycliffe texts from the Wesley Center Online were the work of Sergej A. Fedosov of the Slavic Bible website.

Some problems with Sergej's work is that he didn't transcribe the Middle English vowels with a macron that represented a n, or m – so the text has a lot of hi meaning him, the meaning them, wet meaning went etc., where these are not spellings that the printer used. He also transcribes the þe, þt and such thorn letters as ye, yt instead of the, that, etc., but transcribes the ampersand (&) as and.

He also capitalised some words where this was inappropriate. e.g. The first word of Leviticus 1, "Forsothe" was transcribed as "FORSOTHE".

Description

The downloaded ZIP file contained 76 books comprising the 66 protocanonical books and 10 deuterocanonical books. It also included a text file providing a key to the booknames. The Biblical text files were last edited on 2002-05-24. I have not attempted to compare the full text with the derived copy at WikiSource.

Filenames

I prefixed the filenames for the Biblical text files with the usual book numbers, with an underscore to avoid mis-sorting filenames that already began with a numeral.

Deuterocanonical books

To include the 10 deuterocanonical books in a SWORD module would require using av11n.

Here is a list of these books extracted from the original text file of booknames.

3 Esdras - 2ez.txt
Tobit - tob.txt
Judith - jdt.txt
Wisdom - wis.txt
Syrach - syr.txt
Preier of Jeremye - epj.txt
Baruk - bar.txt
1 Machabeis - 1ma.txt
2 Machabeis - 2ma.txt
Laodicensis - lao.txt

These books appear in the following order

• 3 Esdras, Tobit & Judith are after 2 Esdras.
• Wisdom & Syrach are after Songes of Songes.
• Preier of Jeremye & Baruk are after Lamentations.
• 1 & 2 Machabeis are after Malachie
• Laodicensis is after Apocalips

These are the numbers that I assigned for these at the file renaming.

67_TOB.TXT
68_JDT.TXT
70_WIS.TXT
71_SYR.TXT
72_BAR.TXT
73_EPJ.TXT
77_1MA.TXT
78_2MA.TXT
81_2EZ.TXT
87_LAO.TXT

Conversion to USFM

I made a simple TextPipe filter to convert the files to rudimentary USFM, complete with ID and Header tags, plus the following remarks.

\rem John Wycliffe's Translation of the Bible
\rem converted to rudimentary USFM format by David Haslam
\rem from the text obtained from The Wesley Center Online
\rem http://wesley.nnu.edu/fileadmin/imported_site/biblical_studies/wycliffe/

The ID and Header for Genesis looks like this:

\id GEN
\h Genesis

Versification issues

I used Dirk's GoBibleCreator USFM Preprocessor utility to detect versification issues.

Results

The results were as follows: (82 issues in total, some of which are inter-related due to being immediately adjacent)

Versification Issues
Filename	Chapter	Verse
01_GEN.usfm	3	21	
01_GEN.usfm	8	8	
02_EXO.usfm	29	43	
03_LEV.usfm	22	17	
04_NUM.usfm	2	2	
04_NUM.usfm	28	30	
04_NUM.usfm	33	23	
07_JDG.usfm	4	6	
07_JDG.usfm	4	16	
09_1SA.usfm	4	3	
09_1SA.usfm	16	17	
09_1SA.usfm	17	4	
12_2KI.usfm	21	1	
12_2KI.usfm	21	22	
14_2CH.usfm	26	12	
15_EZR.usfm	10	38	
16_NEH.usfm	9	30	
16_NEH.usfm	9	4	
16_NEH.usfm	10	1	
16_NEH.usfm	10	39	
16_NEH.usfm	11	9	
18_JOB.usfm	6	7	
18_JOB.usfm	8	9	
18_JOB.usfm	37	1	
18_JOB.usfm	37	34	
19_PSA.usfm	9	22	
21_ECC.usfm	4	18	
21_ECC.usfm	5	1	
21_ECC.usfm	6	12	
21_ECC.usfm	7	1	
21_ECC.usfm	7	31	
21_ECC.usfm	8	1	
21_ECC.usfm	10	1	
21_ECC.usfm	10	19	
22_SOL.usfm	1	17	
22_SOL.usfm	2	1	
22_SOL.usfm	6	6	
24_JER.usfm	11	9	
24_JER.usfm	30	25	
24_JER.usfm	31	1	
25_LAM.usfm	3	60	
26_EZE.usfm	39	1	
26_EZE.usfm	39	24	
26_EZE.usfm	43	15	
27_DAN.usfm	4	1	
27_DAN.usfm	4	101	
27_DAN.usfm	13	66	
27_DAN.usfm	14	1	
28_HOS.usfm	12	1	
28_HOS.usfm	12	13	
33_MIC.usfm	4	14	
33_MIC.usfm	5	1	
39_MAL.usfm	3	1	
39_MAL.usfm	3	18	
40_MAT.usfm	10	32	
40_MAT.usfm	20	27	
40_MAT.usfm	22	6	
40_MAT.usfm	24	51	
42_LUK.usfm	7	42	
48_GAL.usfm	3	20	
54_1TI.usfm	4	17	
54_1TI.usfm	5	1	
66_REV.usfm	12	1	
66_REV.usfm	12	20	
68_JDT.usfm	1	11	
68_JDT.usfm	8	5	
70_WIS.usfm	7	31	
70_WIS.usfm	8	1	
70_WIS.usfm	10	22	
70_WIS.usfm	11	1	
71_SYR.usfm	27	1	
71_SYR.usfm	27	29	
72_BAR.usfm	2	36	
72_BAR.usfm	3	1	
72_BAR.usfm	4	3	
72_BAR.usfm	4	20	
77_1MA.usfm	11	4	
78_2MA.usfm	2	27	
81_2EZ.usfm	1	38	
81_2EZ.usfm	3	1	
81_2EZ.usfm	3	32	
81_2EZ.usfm	7	16	

Analysis

Genesis

Let's examine the first such issue as an example:

\v 20 And Adam clepide the name of his wijf Eue, for sche was the moder of alle men lyuynge. And the Lord God made cootis of skynnys to Adam and Eue his wijf, and clothide hem; and seide, Lo...!
\v 22 Adam is maad as oon of vs, and knowith good and yuel; now therfore se ye, lest perauenture he putte his hond, and take of the tre of lijf, and ete, and lyue with outen ende.
\v 23 And the Lord God sente hym out of paradijs of likyng, that he schulde worche the erthe, of which he was takun.
\v 24 And God castide out Adam, and settide bifore paradis of lykyng cherubyn, and a swerd of flawme and turnynge aboute to kepe the weie of the tre of lijf.

Clearly there is no marker for \v 21.

Verse 20 requires splitting into two verses in order to match the v11n for the KJV. Thus it would then become:

\v 20 And Adam clepide the name of his wijf Eue, for sche was the moder of alle men lyuynge.
\v 21 And the Lord God made cootis of skynnys to Adam and Eue his wijf, and clothide hem; and seide, Lo!

In Wikisource, this change has not been made, even though some issues have been fixed in other books.

Many of the remaining 81 v11n issues were similar.

Esther

Esther includes the Greek additions, but with ordinary verse numbers.

Psalms

The numbering of the Psalms follows the Greek pattern. See Composition and numbering section of the article on Wikipedia.

Psalm 10 is appended to Psalm 9 as a single Psalm, yet the verse numbers were restarted at 1. The Wikisource edition corrected this oddity.

Daniel

Daniel includes the Greek additions, but with ordinary verse numbers.

Edited USFM files

A copy of the USFM files was made. Those with versification issues have been edited until the preprocessor utility reported none.

It would be sensible to cross-check these changes against if and how WikiSource rectified such issues. Many of them were not changed.

Go Bible

A Wycliffe Go Bible application has been made from the edited USFM files. This has been tested successfully using mpowerplayer.