Bible Translations
Down Through The Centuries
Some Basics About The Bible
The 66 books of the Bible were written by some 40 different writers over a period of approximately 1,500 years. Each word these writers wrote was inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible’s first five books were written by Moses sometime between 1445 B.C. and 1405 B.C. The last book, The Revelation, was written by the John sometime between 94 A.D. and 96 A.D. 99.9% of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with the other .1% being written in Aramaic. All of the New Testament was written in Greek.
The earliest books of the Bible were most likely written upon the dried skins of animals. Over the course of the centuries, people learned how to make a better form of writing “paper” by using papyrus, a plant-like reed. Eventually, the “paper” that was made from papyrus came to itself be known as papyrus. As a matter of fact, the word “Bible” comes from the Greek word biblia, which is the plural Greek word for biblion. Biblion is derived from the word byblos, which refers to papyrus.
For long books, several pieces of papyrus would be written upon, glued together, and then rolled up to create a scroll. The width of such a scroll would vary from three to twelve inches. The length of the scroll of a particularly long book could be upwards of thirty feet. Such a scroll was called a biblion. Even though the word biblia is actually plural and would be rightly translated “the books”, the word came to refer to the one book that was the collection of the 66 books.
Of course, the problem with dried animal skins and papyrus was that they became brittle with age. They also decayed very easily, especially in damp conditions where they became rotten. Therefore, all of the actual originals of the Bible’s 66 books were lost to history long ago. What we have are copies of those originals. Actually, what we have are copies of copies of copies, etc. There are more copies for some books than others. Some of the copies are older than others and some of them are in better condition than others. All of the copies were handwritten by scribes. It wasn’t until the mid 1400s that the modern process of printing was invented.
Around the year 300 A.D., papyrus was replaced by vellum as the main source of writing paper. Vellum was parchment made from skins, and it was more durable than papyrus. For many years, all of the discovered copies of the New Testament books were ones that had been written on vellum. Ultimately, though, many papyrus copies were discovered.
On another note, the books of the Bible were not originally written with verses and chapter divisions. It wasn’t until the 13th century that some translators divided the Bible into chapters. It then took another three centuries for some other translators to divide the chapters into verses. The first translation of the Bible to be printed in the chapter-verse format was the Latin translation that was done by Stephanus in 1555. No one can deny that this format is very helpful in locating and identifying passages, but it should always be remembered that the chapter and verse divisions are manmade. They are not God-inspired like the Bible’s actual words.
The Compiling Of The Old Testament
It was sometime after the writing of Malachi, the Old Testament’s last book, that the Jews compiled the various books of the Old Testament into one grouping. This places the compiling sometime after 400 B.C. Jewish tradition holds that it was Ezra who did the compiling, but the fact is that we cannot say with certainty when and how the Old Testament books first became one complete collection. What we do know is that, from this compiling, the entire Old Testament was translated into Greek sometime around 250 B.C. This Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew is called the Septuagint.
The Compiling Of The New Testament
It was the early Christians who compiled the 27 books of the New Testament into one collection. This compiling (canonizing) took place through a loose process as the early churches, over the course of many years, came to formally recognize certain writings as being God-inspired and authoritative. At the Council of Carthage, in 397 A.D., the 27 books that we know as the New Testament were formally ratified as the holy scriptures. This ratification, however, only confirmed what had already been the consensus opinion of the churches for several years. As evidence of this, thirty years earlier, in 367 A.D., a man named Athanasius had published a list of the Old Testament and New Testament books that were “handed down and believed to be divine.” His list contained all of the 27 books that the Council of Carthage ratified as the New Testament scriptures.
The Translating Of The Bible Into Latin
In 390 A.D., Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible was published. This legendary translation is known as The Vulgate. In the years that followed its publishing, the translation was often revised, with the last revision being done in 1592. The Vulgate became the official translation of the powerful Roman Catholic Church. The common people of the church could not read or understand Latin, but the Catholic priests could. Thus, by using The Vulgate exclusively, the Catholic hierarchy of leaders were able to minimize the Bible in their worship services and maximize their tradition-based rites and rituals. Even to this day, the 1592 revision of The Vulgate remains the standard Latin translation in use by the Roman Catholic Church.
John Wycliffe’s translation
It wasn’t until the 1380s that the Bible was translated into the English language. The man we can thank for this was an Oxford scholar named John Wycliffe. He and his associates took the Latin words of The Vulgate and translated them into the common English (called Middle English) of their day. This was painstaking work because they had to produce all of the copies of their translation by hand. Even though the law of England, which was dominated by the Catholic Church, forbade people from reading Wycliffe’s translation, the handwritten copies remained in high demand.
It should be noted, however, that it is virtually impossible for us to appreciate the vast difference between the Middle English of Wycliffe’s day and our modern version of English. For example:
- Genesis 1:1 of Wycliffe’s translation reads: In the firste made God of nougt heune and earthe.
- John 3:16 reads: Forsothe God loued the world, that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that ech man that bileueth in to him perische not, but haue euere lasting lyf.
You see, to the modern-day reader of English, even Wycliffe’s translation would need translating!
As for Wycliffe himself, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church hated him for what he had done. They considered him to be a heretic for taking the Bible out of the aloof realm of their Latin-speaking priests and giving it to the common people in a language they could read and understand. The Catholic Church’s hatred of Wycliffe was plainly evidenced even forty years after his death when, in 1424, Pope Martin V ordered Wycliffe’s bones to be dug up and burned.
John Purvey’s translation
Despite the continual threat of persecution from the Catholic hierarchy, John Wycliffe had lit an unquenchable fire of translating the Bible into English. The next English translation to follow the publishing of Wycliffe’s came from John Purvey in 1388. Purvey’s translation was for the most part just a revision of Wycliffe’s text, but it smoothed out some of Wycliffe’s highly literal style of translating. This made for easier reading. Not surprisingly, for the next century, Purvey’s translation was the most commonly used English translation.
Again, though, we must understand that Purvey’s translation, like Wycliffe’s, was built upon a different brand of English than we know today:
- Genesis 1:1 of his translation read: In the beginning God made of nougt heuene and erthe.
- John 3:16 reads: For God louede so the world, that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that ech man that bileueth in him perische not, but haue euerlastynge lijf.
William Tyndale’s translation
As important as the works of Wycliffe and Purvey were, they were only translations of The Vulgate into English. What was needed was a translation of the Bible’s original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into English. This is where a man named William Tyndale came to the forefront. In the 1520s, he began work on an English translation that would bypass the Latin of The Vulgate and bring the Bible’s original languages straight into the English.
Of course, as Tyndale did his work, he faced the familiar problem of persecution from the Catholic Church. After all, English law of the time still prohibited the Bible from being printed in any other language besides Latin. Because of this, Tyndale was forced to flee from England. He first went to Hamburg, then to Cologne, and then to Worms. It was from Worms that his English New Testament was first printed in 1525. Copies of this translation were then smuggled into England in bales of merchandise.
Following the underground success of his New Testament translation, Tyndale turned his efforts toward translating the Old Testament’s Hebrew. Sadly, though, he only got to finish translating approximately fifteen of the books. In 1536, he was arrested, imprisoned, strangled, and burned at the stake. On top of this, virtually all of the thousands of his English New Testaments that had been printed were confiscated and burned. Today, only three copies of these are known to exist.
Miles Coverdale’s translation
Thankfully, William Tyndale’s work was not completely stopped by his death and the destroying of his English New Testaments. In October of 1535, even as Tyndale himself was imprisoned in Belgium, one of his assistants, Miles Coverdale, published an English translation of the entire Bible. For the New Testament and Old Testament books that Tyndale had translated, Coverdale only slightly revised Tyndale’s work. For the Old Testament books that Tyndale hadn’t finished, Coverdale did his own translating from both The Vulgate and a German translation that Martin Luther had done. This wasn’t as good as Tyndale’s bringing of the original Hebrew into English, but at least it got another English translation, one more accurate than Wycliffe’s, into the hands of the people.
Thomas Matthew’s translation
In 1537, two years after the publishing of Miles Coverdale’s translation, another English translation came upon the scene. This one was published by Thomas Matthew (whose pen name was John Rogers). This translation did little to add to the works that Tyndale and Coverdale had already published, but it was significant in that it was the first English translation to actually be published in England. As for Matthew, he eventually met a sad end when Queen Mary had him burned at the stake in 1555.
“The Great Bible” translation
In 1539, two years after Thomas Matthew published his English translation, yet another new English translation was published. This one was Miles Coverdale’s revision of the Matthew translation. The new translation was called “The Great Bible” because of its large size. The printing of it was begun in Paris but completed in England because of persecution from the Catholic Church in Paris. “The Great Bible” was the first English translation to be authorized for distribution to the churches.
“The Geneva Bible” translation
The next English translation to be completed was called “The Geneva Bible.” It was published in 1560. The work on this translation was done by a group of Protestant scholars who had fled to Geneva to escape the persecution of the Catholic Church. “The Geneva Bible” enjoyed a long and fruitful run as it went through 160 editions over the course of the next several decades. Incidentally, this translation was the first English translation to incorporate verse divisions into the Bible’s text.
“The Bishop’s Bible” translation
Following the publishing of “The Geneva Bible” came “The Bishop’s Bible,” which was published in 1568. This translation was a revision of “The Great Bible” and was intended to rival the popularity of “The Geneva Bible.” However, despite gaining some favor with the people, this translation never did replace “The Geneva Bible” in common acceptance.
The Rheims-Douai translation
Finally, in the 1570s, some Catholic scholars began to see the need for a Catholic-approved English translation of the Bible. From this came the Rheims-Douai translation. The New Testament of this translation was published in 1582, but the Old Testament was not published until 1609-1610. The Rheims-Douai translation was thoroughly revised between 1749 and 1763 by Bishop Richard Challoner, and this revised version was authorized for use by American Roman Catholics in 1810.
The King James translation
When England’s Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, the crown was passed to James I. For the previous 37 years, he had been James VI, king of Scotland. In 1604, not too long after becoming king of England, James authorized a new English translation of the Bible. His goal was to create a uniform reading of scripture for the different denominational factions of his empire. The plan was to publish a translation the masses could agree upon, a translation that would replace all of the other English translations.
To accomplish the king’s goal, forty-seven of the best Hebrew and Greek scholars of the day went to work. The translation they produced was published in 1611. It is known as The King James translation or The Authorized Version (so named because the project was authorized by King James).
The new translation, however, did not immediately receive the universal acceptance for which King James had hoped. In truth, it took over fifty years for The King James translation to displace “The Geneva Bible” as the most popular translation. Once it did, though, it went on to become the most widely used English translation of all time.
Still, despite this translation’s legendary status, it is clear that the translators who produced it did not view it as perfect or mean for it to remain unchanged for all time. This is clearly seen by the fact that the translation underwent revisions in 1612, 1613, 1616, 1629, 1638, 1660, 1683, 1727, 1762, 1769, and 1873. Each of these versions differed in certain places from the previous versions. The King James translation that is sold today is, for the most part, based upon the major revision that was done in 1769.
One serious problem that eventually cropped up with the King James translation involved the style of English language that it used. As the old form of English was gradually replaced by a more modern form, many of the old English words of the translation became archaic or obsolete. The following are some examples of such words:
- “chambering” (Romans 13:13)
- “ceiled” (Haggai 1:4)
- “clouted” (Joshua 9:5)
- “cotes” (2 Chronicles 32:28)
- “suretiship” (Proverbs 11:15)
- “sackbut” (Daniel 3:5)
- “scall” (Leviticus 13:30)
- “brigandines” (Jeremiah 46:4)
- “amerce” (Deuteronomy 22:19)
- “crookbackt” (Leviticus 21:20)
- “glede” (Deuteronomy 14:13)
- “wen” (Leviticus 22:22)
- “wont” (1 Samuel 30:31)
- “nitre” (Proverbs 25:20)
- “anon” (Mark 1:30)
- “tabret” (Genesis 31:27)
- “agone“ (1 Samuel 30:13).
Furthermore, the King James translation also added either “eth” or “est” to numerous verbs (“goeth”, “speaketh”, “doest”, “sayest,” etc.). While this made the language somewhat beautiful for public reading, it made the translation even harder to understand. Also, it made every Bible character sound British!
The English Revised translation
By the 1870s several Bible scholars in both England and America felt that it was time for a new English translation. Three factors led them to this conclusion. First, a number of Greek New Testament texts (copies or pieces of copies of the New Testament books) had been discovered since the publication of the King James translation. Many translators considered these copies to be superior to the copies with which the translators of the King James translation had worked. Second, over the course of those same years, Hebrew scholars had gained a greater expertise in their ability to translate Hebrew. Third, by this time much of the language of the King James translation seemed very outdated and out of touch with the way people actually talked.
The result of all of this was the English Revised translation. The New Testament of this translation was published in 1881 and the Old Testament in 1885. Those in the scholarly world praised this new translation for its accuracy, but the common people rejected it and criticized it because it was so different from the familiar King James translation.
The American Standard translation
The American translators who had helped with the work on the English Revised translation were not entirely satisfied with the end product. Among other problems they had with the translation was the fact that certain English words meant something different in England than they did in America. Therefore, in 1901 these scholars published the American Standard translation. On the whole, this translation was regarded as being superior to the English Revised translation. However, the translation faced the same problem the English Revised translation had faced: The common people still preferred the familiarity of the King James translation.
Moffatt’s translation
Robert Moffatt was a Scotchman who served as a Professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. His translation of the New Testament was published in 1913 and his translation of the Old Testament was published in 1924. Then, in 1926, the two works were combined and published as one full translation. The startling feature of this translation was that it made no attempt whatsoever to be a formal, word-for-word translation. It was, instead, a paraphrase that put the language of the Bible into the street-language English of the day. The translation was by no means as scholarly as translations had always been, but it was very easy to read and it made the Bible contemporary.
The Revised Standard translation
This translation was primarily a revision of the 1901 American Standard translation. The New Testament of it was published in 1946 and the Old Testament in 1952. One feature of this revision was that it inserted quotation marks to indicate when a Bible character was speaking.
The Amplified Bible translation
The New Testament of this translation was published in 1958 and the two-volume Old Testament was published in 1962 and 1964. Then, in 1965, the works were combined and published as one complete translation. What made the Amplified Bible translation different from others was the fact that it freely added additional English words into its word-for-word translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. These extra words helped the English reader to more fully grasp the subtleties and shades of the meanings of the words of the original languages. Said another way, the words added in to the Bible’s actual text served to “amplify” the translation into English.
The New American Standard translation
This translation was published in the early 1960s. Like the Revised Standard translation, it was a revision of the 1901 American Standard translation. According to the majority of Bible scholars, this is the English translation that did the best job of bringing the literal, precise meanings of the Bible’s words over into modern-day English. An updated version of this translation was published in 1995.
The New English Bible translation
The New Testament of this translation was published in 1961 and the Old Testament in 1970. It was a new translation rather than a revision of a previous one. For this translation, the translators used a technique known as “dynamic equivalence.” This technique was something of a combining of the word-for-word and paraphrasing approaches.
The Jerusalem Bible translation
The Jerusalem Bible translation was published in 1966 as a new translation rather than a revision of a previous one. Actually, however, the basis for this translation was a French translation that had been published by Catholic scholars in 1961. That French translation was entitled La Bible de Jerusalem. The French translation was noteworthy in that the Catholic translators translated from the Bible’s original languages rather than The Vulgate’s Latin. As for The Jerusalem Bible, its translators, for the most part, also translated from the original languages. However, in passages where more than one translation was acceptable, they generally followed what had been published in the French La Bible de Jerusalem.
The New American Bible translation
This translation was published in 1970 as another translation done by Catholic scholars to bring the Bible’s Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek straight into English. Unlike the translators of The Jerusalem Bible, the translators of The New American Bible did not base their work upon the French La Bible de Jerusalem.
The Good News Bible translation
The New Testament of this translation was published in 1966. That translation was entitled Good News For Modern Man: The New Testament In Today’s English Version. A second version of the New Testament was published in 1967 and a third in 1971. Then, in 1976, after the translation of the Old Testament was completed, the two were combined and named The Good News Bible. This translation was a “dynamic equivalence” translation rather than a word-for-word one.
The Living Bible translation
This translation was published in 1971. Like the Moffatt’s translation from 1926, this was a full-fledged paraphrase rather than a word-for-word translation. The man behind this translation was an American publisher and author named Ken Taylor. Taylor’s translation was a paraphrase of The American Standard translation. As with any paraphrase of the Bible, this translation was very high on readability, but critics complained that the paraphrasing oftentimes read too much into what the Bible text actually said.
The Children’s Living Bible translation
This translation was published in 1972 as a companion piece to Ken Taylor’s The Living Bible. It was the first translation to be specifically designed for children.
The New Century Version translation
The New Testament of this translation was published in 1978 and the Old Testament in 1986. Like The Children’s Living Bible, this translation was specifically designed for children. Its reading level was rated at grade 3 and up, and it was also entitled The International Children’s Bible. Unlike The Children’s Living Bible, this translation was a dynamic equivalence translation rather than a paraphrase.
The New International Version translation
The complete edition of this translation was published in 1978 as a new translation rather than a revision of a previous one. This translation was the best attempt yet at the translation style of “dynamic equivalence.” The translation became very popular, so much so that it actually outsold the famous King James translation for the next several years.
The New King James translation
The complete New King James translation was published in 1982 as a revision of the legendary King James translation. It updated the obsolete words of the King James, eliminated the use of “thee” and “thou”, and dropped the “eth” and “est” off the verbs. Also, in some places where the King James translation hadn’t done the best job of translating the Hebrew and Greek into English, it gave more accurate renderings. This translation differed from other modern translations in that it was translated from basically the same set of Hebrew and Greek copies from which the King James was translated.
The New Revised Standard translation
The New Revised Standard translation was published in 1990 as a revision of the Revised Standard translation. Interestingly, that translation itself was a revision of the American Standard translation.
The Message translation
This translation was published in 1994 as a paraphrase that attempted to use the most modern, everyday language to convey what the Bible says. As with any paraphrase, it was very easy to read, but lacking in the pure accuracy of a word-for-word translation.
The New International Readers
Version translation
This translation was published in 1994 and designed to be the popular New International Version translation for children. With its use of short words and simple sentences, its reading level was rated grade 2 and up.
The Contemporary English Version translation
The complete New Testament of this translation was published in 1991 and the Old Testament of it was published in 1995. This translation was a “dynamic equivalence” translation rather than a word-for-word one. This translation also went by the title Bible For Today’s Family.
The New Living translation
The New Living translation was published in 1996 as a revision of The Living Bible translation. Like The Living Bible, this translation is a paraphrase rather than a literal, verse-by-verse translation. As a paraphrase, it is exceedingly easy to read but lacking in the pure accuracy of bringing the Bible’s Hebrew and Greek into English.
The English Standard Version translation
This translation was published in 2001 as a new translation rather than a revision of a previous one. Its translation style was word-for-word, but it also placed a high emphasis on keeping the language very common and very readable.
The Today’s New International Version translation
This translation was published in 2002 as something of a revision of the New International Version translation. As was the case with the New International Version, the translation approach was “dynamic equivalence.” The difference was that the language was even more contemporary.
The Holman Christian Standard Bible translation
The complete version of this translation was published in 2003. It was a new translation rather than a revision of an older one. This was, for the most part, a word-for-word translation that was closely associated with the Southern Baptist Convention denomination.