Translations of the Bible into vernacular languages contributed to how Huguenots studied the Bible. Vernacular French was favored by the Huguenots. Jacques Lefevre, a pro-reform Catholic at the University of Paris, published the complete Bible in the Vulgate in 1530. His students, William Farel and John Calvin, went on to be major players in the Protestant Reformation. Additionally, Pierre Olivetan published a French Bible for them; the first of its kind translated directly from Greek and Hebrew. The French Confession of Faith (1559) is decidedly Calvinistic.

Olivetan’s Bible translation was the standard the Huguenots looked to for their translations. It was the first to use the word “eternal” to translate the Tetragrammaton, or the four letter Hebrew word for God. After Olivetan’s publication, Sebastian Castellion published his own translation from Hebrew and Greek in 1551. His translation was condemned by John Calvin, whose own translation was published in 1560.

The Huguenots relied on the same texts that Martin Luther used for his Luther Bible, published in 1534. These Bibles were translated directly from Hebrew and Greek, where previous translations relied solely on the Latin Vulgate. A main tenet of the Huguenots was that everyone had the right to interpret the Bible themselves, and thus having a translation of the Bible in easy to decipher language was critical. Luther’s Bible contained the Apocrypha, but interestingly no French Bibles contain these texts. The Huguenots did not view the Apocrypha as truly Biblical, and the only Huguenot scholar who mentions these texts in his works was Moses Blondel. He was active in London circa 1671.

Huegenots who understood Aramaic would have had to study it in a university setting. For example, the Hugenot Biblical scholar Louis Cappel studied at Oxford University. He argued that certain letters in what was thought to be Hebrew texts were actually Aramaic in his Arcanum punctuationis revelatum. His thesis was contested by John Gill in his A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel-Points and Accents.

French became a “lost” language of the Huguenots who went into exile, however. The Huguenots who arrived in America switched to speaking English by the second and third generation. In New York City, the entire Huguenot community spoke only English or Dutch by 1730. As the Huguenots switched from French to English, so too did their worship services. By the 18th century the Huguenots who tried to keep to their roots spoke a very Anglican/German sounding French.

The Huguenots in exile have a very interesting history of smuggling Bibles. According to the British Huguenot Museum, refugees were known to bake their Bibles in loaves of bread. It’s reminiscent of how the Romanovs were said to have sewn their jewelry into their coats before their death.

Sources:

Hidden in Plain Sight. https://huguenotmuseum.org/about/news/hidden-in-plain-sight-the-fascinating-huguenot-practice-of-bible-concealment/

Michael C. Legaspi, Reviving the Dead Letter: Johann David Michaelis and the Quest for Hebrew Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2010), ch. 1.

Margaret Ruth Miles, The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought, Blackwell Publishing, 2005.

Eric J. Roth, "From Protestant International to Hudson Valley Provincial: A Case Study of Language Use and Ethnicity in New Paltz, New York, 1678–1834". Hudson River Valley Review (2005) 21#2 pp 40-55.

Thera Wijsenbeek, "Identity Lost: Huguenot refugees in the Dutch Republic and its former colonies in North America and South Africa, 1650 to 1750: a comparison". South African Historical Journal 59.1 (2007): 79–102.