Before the advent of printing presses, reproduction of text of the bible was tedious work, not undertaken lightly. Individual scriptures were at times translated and written out — as by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian, the first one to publish them in English. Wycliffe and his followers faced strong opposition from the Catholic Church, who thought it heresy to use non-Latin bibles, but the decree was weakened first by Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, and second by John Rogers.

On this day, October 4, in 1567, John Rogers, under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew, printed the first complete English-language bible. Rogers put together the five books of the Old Testament, together with New Testament scriptures and many of the Apocrypha that did not make it into the canon

William Tyndale, one of those unfortunate followers of Wycliffe who was hounded by the Vatican, made up the bulk of the translated work in the John Rogers bible (and in his honor, it is sometimes referred to as the Matthew-Tyndale bible) — Tyndale managed to get the entire New Testament translated and published before being imprisoned. Rogers also used some translations from Miles Coverdale, and added his own translation from French of the “Prayer of Manasses,” now also considered apocryphal.