William Bradford, the Pilgrim leader who organized the first Thanksgiving in 1621, was a Separatist. The Separatists, reformers who took to heart the text of II Corinthians 6:17 — “Come out from among them, and be ye separate” — broke with the Church of England, and sought in the New World a situation in which they might be free to worship and enjoy community on their own terms.
The Separatists were intensely focused on Scripture, and their leading scholars came to believe that the Bible is best understood in its original languages, eliminating the distortions and questions of interpretation that are inevitable in translations. While other British Protestants had prioritized making the Bible available in English, the Separatists did not think especially highly of translations in general and were suspicious of the King James version in particular. They trained their clergy in Hebrew as best they could, with an eye toward eventually educating all of the faithful to be able to read the Bible in its original languages, with no mediation between Christians and the holy texts. The project, unfortunately, has not advanced very much in the 400 years since the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving in the New World.
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