The Story of the Matthew Bible: That Which We First Received

After centuries of neglect, at last we have a popular yet well-sourced account of the Matthew Bible and the men who gave it to us. Ruth M. Davis gives a vivid and passionate account of the heroes who struggled and suffered to produce our seminal English Bible in 1537 – not only of the giant William Tyndale, but also the lesser-known Myles Coverdale and John Rogers. These three, with the help of Henry VIII’s chief ministers Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, were the martyrs and soldiers who won the field for the Scriptures that formed the basis of the King James Version. Davis’s vigorous, sometimes poetic, prose will satisfy both the academic reader and those curious to learn more about the tumultuous origins of our English Bible and about the Scriptures we first received.The Matthew Bible is the only English Bible that was bought with blood. This book is the only history ever devoted just to telling its story.

Ruth Magnusson Davis, B.A., LL.B., is a retired lawyer with an undergraduate degree in languages. She is a foremost authority on the 1537 Matthew Bible, and in 2009 founded the New Matthew Bible Project, dedicated to gently updating the Matthew Bible for today. She is also the founder of Baruch House Publishing, with a mission to bring to the world again the best of the forgotten works of the early English Reformation.