Coverdale Bible

The Coverdale Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale and printed in 1535, was the first complete printed Bible in English. Its scope is the whole Bible, but it was not drawn from a single source language: Coverdale worked from Latin, German, and earlier English materials, taking Tyndale's work as the base text for those books already available and turning to Luther's version, the Zürich version, and Latin versions for the remainder. Its guiding philosophy was that of a literary vernacular, mediated through intermediary versions where direct recourse to the original tongues was not possible. It is best categorized as a fresh compilation or translation, with Tyndale as its predecessor and base translation. Among its distinctive features is that it was not translated wholly from Hebrew and Greek, Coverdale relying instead on several German and Latin versions. Its phrasing, especially in the Psalms, long echoed in later English Bibles and liturgy.