The Pilgrims and Puritans who came to the New World saw themselves as a continuation of the ancient epic of faith in the Bible. In their religious oppression, they identified with the early church's persecution, and their pilgrimage to North America was their personal exodus from Egypt. John Winthrop encouraged his gathering of colonists to be that bright "city on a hill" that Jesus spoke of (Matthew 5:14).
Though King James commissioned his own translation of the Bible, purposely absent of politically charged footnotes, the preferred Bible for the Puritans was the Geneva Bible. Bringing this banned Bible with them into the New World was their silent protest against the king's control over their faith.
The relevant biblical references at the end of each article on this site remind us of how the New England colonists saw their experience as part of the greater spiritual drama that began in ancient times and was still unfolding before their eyes.
Modern Reprints of the 1599 Geneva Bible
Harvard Divinity Sch. Intro to the Geneva Bible
Historical Publications Regarding the Geneva Bible
Searchable Online 1599 Geneva Bible
The Pilgrim's Use of the Geneva Bible
Plymouth’s Governor, William Bradford, used the image of Israel’s exodus from Egypt when he described (in Plymouth Plantation) his fellow Pilgrims as:
“Englishmen who came over the great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, etc. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them that have been redeemed of the Lord, show how He has delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered forth into the desert wilderness, out of the way, and found no city to dwell in....”
In "The Life of William Bradford" (1702), influential New England minister, Cotton Mather, reflected on Governor Bradford's legacy as a type of Moses, called to lead the people of Plymouth:
"The leader of a people in a wildness had need be a Moses; and if a Moses had not led the people of Plymouth Colony when this worthy person [William Bradford] was their governor, the people had never with so much unanimity and importunity still called to lead them."
