Month: July 2023

When considering the Bible in English, we have to begin in England. Christianity’s arrival in England is alleged to have occurred in the first century but is attested to by AD 200 (Tert., Adv. Judaeos 7). According to tradition, Aristobulus was sent by the Church at Tyre to Britain in AD 37. In Wales, there’s a town named after him, and Eusebius and Hippolytus attribute him as the first bishop in Britain. The first British Christian martyr was St. Alban in AD 304. Later, in AD 313, three bishops from London, York, and Lincoln (maybe?) attended a conference in Arles, France. 

The Latin Vulgate was the standard Bible since AD 400, but translations into local vernacular were emerging. English derives from the West-Germanic and Indo-European language family. Among the earliest English manuscript is the Anglo-Saxon Proto-English that dates to AD 995. As a matter of consistency, John 3:16 will be used to compare the evolution of the language. 

God lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan sunu, dat nan ne forweorde de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif. 

The fourteenth-century Oxford scholar John Wycliffe produced the first English manuscripts of Scripture. He opposed the established church because he believed it was contrary to Scripture, so the Bible in English for the common man to read became a goal. 

For god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him perish not: but haue euerlastynge liif.

His manuscripts were produced from the Latin Bible, the only source available. Wycliffe so angered the Pope that he had his remains dug up, crushed, and scattered in the river forty-four years after he died. One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, continued his mission and advocated that people should be able to read the Bible in their language and he opposed the tyranny of the Roman church. Hus was burned at the stake, and Wycliffe’s manuscripts were used as kindling for the fire. The year was 1415, and Hus’ last words were, “In 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.” In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous ninety-five theses to the door at Wittenberg—an act often regarded as the spark that began the Reformation. 

Many others would follow in this endeavor, but William Tyndale was the first to print the New Testament in English. At the time, this was forbidden, so he took these to be printed in Cologne.

However, his intention was discovered, and the printing was halted while he fled. Around 1526, he had 3,000 copies produced in Worms. Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in October 1536. Only three copies of his Bible exist today. One of Tyndale’s disciples, Myles Coverdale, continued his work, translating the Old Testament and producing the first complete Bible in English in 1535—Coverdale Bible.  

The Great Bible was an English translation authorized by the Church of England in 1539, but a more significant English translation followed—the Geneva Bible (c. 1560). It was the first Bible to add numbered verses and chapters for quick reference—the works of Shakespeare quote from this translation. This was the standard version for over 100 years. It retained over 90% of Tyndale’s translation and was a significant source for the King James Bible (c. 1611). The Geneva Bible was the first English translation taken to America by the Puritans and Pilgrims. Nevertheless, when the King James Bible was published, they were so large that they were chained to the pulpits in every church in England. It was decades before King James surpassed the Geneva Bible. Here’s how it read when published in 1611: 

For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeuth in him, should not perish, but haue everlasting life.

A note of interest: the first Bible printed in America was in the native Algonquin language by John Eliot in 1663. 

Noah Webster, after whom Webster’s Dictionary is named, translated the Bible into the vernacular in 1833. Many remained loyal to the 1611 edition of the KJV and refused Webster’s version. Yet, in the 1880s, England produced the Revised Version to replace the KJV. More ancient manuscripts were discovered by this time, making a revision necessary. Until this time, the Bible had eighty books. In the 1880s, the Apocrypha was eliminated, giving us the sixty-six books we now have. Americans produced the American Standard Version in 1901 in response to the Revision Version. This was the standard version until 1971 when the New American Standard was printed. The NASB was considered the best word-for-word translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English that has ever been produced. In the same year, the first paraphrase of the Bible was created—The Living Bible. Another translation philosophy had arisen. 

A couple of years later, critics of the direct and literal translation wanted something they believed would flow better in English, so the NIV was produced. Until this time, the philosophy that guided translations was formal equivalence which aimed at matching the form and structure of the original as close as possible. The NIV translation philosophy would be dynamic equivalence, translating the ideas into contemporary language. Wherever there are poetic or archaic-sounding ideas, dynamic equivalence puts that into modern parlance for the reader’s sake. This new philosophy would make it so that a junior-high student could read and understand what the Bible was saying. 

The New King James Version was created in 1982 to update the wording for KJV loyalists. In 2002, an attempt was made to synthesize the NIV’s readability and the NASB’s precision, producing the English Standard Version—deriving from the NRSV. Next, we’ll explore some challenging passages to translate and how they’re resolved. 

The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, with some portions appearing in Aramiac—specifically in Daniel and Ezra. The oldest copies of the Old Testament were discovered around the Dead Sea and are referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls—dating to the third–second centuries BC. Before this discovery in the twentieth century, the oldest copy of the Old Testament was a Masoretic Text dated to AD 1008–09 (Leningrad Codex). The original Hebrew Bible contained only consonants but between AD 500–700, Jewish scribes known as Masoretes produced copies in which they added vowels to preserve pronunciation. This is the standard authoritative text used in synagogues and by Catholics and Protestants as the source text for their Old Testament translations. 

In the third century BC, seventy (or seventy-two) Hebrew scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek. This is the earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible and is often called the Septuagint, or LXX—referring to the seventy who translated it. We don’t know what copies they translated from, but it includes second-century BC fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. This is stated because the LXX has variants that differ from the Masoretic text. For example, Jeremiah 27:19–22: 

Septuagint (NETS) 19 … Even some of the remaining vessels 20 which the king of Babylon did not take when he exiled Jeconiah from Jerusalem, shall enter into Babylon, says the Lord.

Hebrew Bible (NRSV) 19 … and the rest of the vessels that are left in this city 20 which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did not take away when he took into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem—21 thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels left in the house of the Lord, in the house of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem: 22 They shall be carried to Babylon, and there they shall stay, until the day when I give attention to them, says the Lord. Then I will bring them up and restore them to this place.

I prefer to think of these differences like how we read the Synoptic Gospels—as variations rather than contradictions. There are many between the LXX and Hebrew Bible. The Orthodox Church uses the LXX for their Old Testament since the early church used it. This translation was the basis for the Old Latin, Coptic (Egyptian), Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations. 

The Samaritan Pentateuch was comprised in the second century BC (approx. 122 BC). It was written in Samaritan Hebrew in contrast to Tiberian Hebrew among the Jews. Samaritans only acknowledged the Bible’s first five books, and we have variations from the Old Testament. For example, in Acts 7:4, Stephen says that Abraham left Haran for Canaan after his father died, agreeing with the Samaritan Pentateuch; the Masoretic Text claims that Abraham’s father died sixty years after he had left (Genesis 11:32). In the Septuagint and the New Testament book of Acts (7:14), Jacob had seventy-five descendants rather than the seventy found in the Hebrew Bible. A few years later, portions of Scripture were translated into Aramaic since that was the most spoken language in Palestine. It’s known as the Targum, Aramaic for “translation.” 

The New Testament was written in Koine Greek in the first century AD. In the second century, however, the Old Testament was translated into Syriac, spoken by Jews in northern Syria. This version was called the Peshitta (“simple”). Later, Syriac Christians adopted it and added a Syriac version of the New Testament.