Changes

==== Royal authority and its limits ====

==== Royal authority and its limits ====

The Geneva editors, in their notes, spoke of limits on royal authority, and this is probably why [[James I]] specifically ordered a translation of the Bible ''without'' annotation. He construed any limit on royal authority as a challenge to his own authority. For example, the note for {{Bible ref|book=Exodus|chap=1|verses=19|version=KJV}} says the following of the [[Hebrew]] midwives who disobeyed the Pharaoh in refusing to kill Hebrew boy-children at birth:<ref name=Ex119>''1599 Geneva Bible'', Tolle Lege Press, ''op. cit.'', p. 60</ref> {{Cquote|Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling evil.}} The very notion that the disobedience of a royal command might be a lawful act would be anathema to a king who believed that he ruled by divine right and answered only to [[God]] and not to any of his subjects.<ref name=Brown/> The footnote for {{Bible ref|book=Exodus|chap=1|verses=22|version=KJV}} would surely have been worse:{{Cquote|When tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage.}}

The Geneva editors, in their notes, spoke of limits on royal authority, and this is probably why [[James I]] specifically ordered a translation of the Bible ''without'' annotation. He construed any limit on royal authority as a challenge to his own authority. For example, the note for {{Bible ref|book=Exodus|chap=1|verses=19|version=KJV}} says the following of the [[Hebrew]] midwives who disobeyed the Pharaoh in refusing to kill Hebrew boy-children at birth:<ref name=Ex119>''1599 Geneva Bible'', Tolle Lege Press, ''op. cit.'', p. 60</ref> {{Cquote|Their disobedience herein was lawful, but their dissembling evil.}} The very notion that the disobedience of a royal command might be a lawful act would be [[anathema]] to a king who believed that he ruled by divine right and answered only to [[God]] and not to any of his subjects.<ref name=Brown/> The footnote for {{Bible ref|book=Exodus|chap=1|verses=22|version=KJV}} would surely have been worse:{{Cquote|When tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage.}}

The firm belief of the editors of the Tolle Lege edition is that these marginal notes were the catalyst not only for the furtherance (such as it was) of the reformation in England, but also, and more to the point, for the political revolutions in the English-speaking world<ref name=Foster/>—presumably beginning with the [[Glorious Revolution]] of 1688 and continuing with the [[American Revolution]] of 1776-83. They hold this belief even though the Geneva Bible ceased printing in 1644, long before [[William and Mary]] and more than a century before the American Revolution. Brown<ref name=Brown/> points out that the [[Church of England]] retained all of the trappings and hierarchical structure of the [[Roman Catholic Church]], the chief difference being that the Archbishop of Canterbury answered no longer to the [[Pope]] of [[Rome]] but directly to the British crown.

The firm belief of the editors of the Tolle Lege edition is that these marginal notes were the catalyst not only for the furtherance (such as it was) of the reformation in England, but also, and more to the point, for the political revolutions in the English-speaking world<ref name=Foster/>—presumably beginning with the [[Glorious Revolution]] of 1688 and continuing with the [[American Revolution]] of 1776-83. They hold this belief even though the Geneva Bible ceased printing in 1644, long before [[William and Mary]] and more than a century before the American Revolution. Brown<ref name=Brown/> points out that the [[Church of England]] retained all of the trappings and hierarchical structure of the [[Roman Catholic Church]], the chief difference being that the Archbishop of Canterbury answered no longer to the [[Pope]] of [[Rome]] but directly to the British crown.