History of Bible Translations

Most English speaking Christians today read and study the Bible without giving much thought to how the English Bible came to be or the dramatic and life threatening work of Bible translators. Contrary to popular thought, the King James Version was not the first translation of the Bible.

The First Bible Translations

Bible translation began in the third century BC. Jews living in Alexandria (a region of Egypt conquered by Alexander the Great) increasingly spoke Greek instead of Hebrew. In order to maintain the word of God and have a text that would be accessible to the people, rabbis undertook the task of translating the Old Testament manuscripts from their original Hebrew into Greek. This Greek translation of the Old Testament became known as the Septuagint, also abbreviated LXX because its seventy contributors.

Translation Fueled by the Gospel

During the time period from the 2nd to the 4th century AD translation work continued from Hebrew to Greek and Greek to Latin but many of the texts were corrupt. The Christian faith was spreading rapidly throughout Europe and so, in 382, the pope commissioned Jerome to produce one official Latin translation. This version was known as the Latin Vulgate and it was the predominant translation until the Reformation. Jerome recognized the importance of his task since people who could not read the Bible could not know Christ and his promise of salvation.

Around this same time, a man named Ufilas felt the call of God to communicate the Scriptures to the Gothic people living in Europe. Since these people had only an oral language, he first created an alphabet and a written version of the language. From this point he translated large sections of the Bible into their language.

The Disappearance of Latin

Though Jerome’s goal in translating the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin was to make the word of God more accessible to the people, by the medieval period (8th-14th century AD), the Roman empire was a distant memory and no one spoke or read Latin anymore. No one, that is, except the priests and scholars. The Roman Catholic Church thus had the corner on the word of God and his message of salvation. All Biblical knowledge communicated to the Christian masses was filtered through the priesthood. If believers were to understand the word of God for themselves there was a need for an English translation.

The Reformation and Martyrdom

A dominant theme of the Reformation was the belief that it was the Holy Spirit that ministered the truth of God in the soul of the believer. In order for this to take place, the believer had to have a Bible that he could read and understand. The Roman Catholic Church saw this endeavor as a direct act of insubordination and Bible translation became a heretical offense punishable by death. The Bible first expanded out of its Latin tradition in the late 14th century when John Wycliffe and his translators produced the first English Bible. Jan Hus, a supporter of Wycliffe and Reformer in Prague, maintained a version of the Bible in Czech. He was later burned at the stake.

In the 16th century, Erasmus continued the work of Bible translation in the Greek but expressed his desire that the Bible would be readable to all. In 1526, William Tyndale, a contemporary of Martin Luther, translated the Bible directly from Hebrew and Greek to English. Though nearly all his Bibles were seized and burned by the Bishop of London, Tyndale set the stage for further English translation. He too was burned at the stake. One year later Luther completed the “September Bible,” his translation into German.

The King James Version

The King James Version of the Bible, commissioned in 1604 by King James I, rendered the Bible in understandable, yet highly aesthetic language. Not only was it a revolutionary Bible translation, it had the side effect of transforming the English language as a whole. This text reigned supreme throughout the Christian world until the 1950s.

To the Ends of the Earth

From the first translations by the Alexandrian Jews in the 3rd Century BC to the nearly 2,000 translations that exist today (partial and entire texts), the motivation and purpose behind Bible translation has been missional—to clearly and effectively communicate and spread God’s word and his message of salvation. Countless saints risked and lost their lives to put the Scriptures in the hands of the people. They believed that by the power of God’s holy word alone, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, an individual could come to trust in Christ for salvation and thereby gain eternal life.

What is the Bible?

In simplest terms the Bible is the word of God. But in order to understand what this means it is helpful to look at the Bible in terms of form, function and reliability.

FORM

Today the Bible comes to us in the form of a book, but the Bible was not magically conceived as one complete unit. Instead it came in the form of many various writings that God gave, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to a group of human authors. Having received the word of God through direct speech, dreams and visions, and other means of inspiration, the writers faithfully rendered God’s communication in writing. Depending on their time and location, the writers preserved God’s word on scrolls or large sheets of papyrus.

The manuscripts were collected and brought together to form what we know today as the Bible, or “canon.” The Bible is a collection of 66 books. While the books have strong interdependence and form a cohesive unit, they are viewed as separate entities rather than chapters of one larger book. The Biblical writings are richly varied in genre—the word of God is communicated through narrative, prophecy, historical record, poetry and other wisdom literature, songs, and letters.

FUNCTION

The purpose of the Bible is as multi-faceted as its form. Just as God is infinite, his revelation of himself in the text manifests that same complexity and texture. But this does not mean that the Bible is unintelligible. God has condescended to communicate himself in a way that is understandable to even a child, and yet the Bible is a wealth of wisdom and meaning that will never be exhausted. His truth, his wisdom, and his glory are contained therein and by the Holy Spirit’s illumination, we are brought into contact with the living Lord.

The Bible is the story of God and his people. Beginning with creation in the Old Testament, the Bible tells us who we are and where we came from. It shows us the relationship we were meant to have with God and the tragic fall that severed that covenant. Post-fall, the Bible becomes “redemptive history,” in which God communicates how his people, estranged from his infinite holiness through sin, can be brought back into relation with him. This begins with God choosing the Israelites for himself as a holy people and reconciling them to himself through a provisional system of animal sacrifice. This was to foreshadow the ultimate expression of God’s word and God’s love: Jesus Christ. The New Testament is the story of God’s new covenant with the world in which his people will be brought back into right relation with him through his Son, Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. The Scriptures illustrate this path of salvation and eternal life for those who place their hope and their trust in Christ as the means by which they may be justified before God.

But the Bible is more than a history. By reading and studying God’s word one learns how he or she may have a relationship with the living God. God is one unified being, yet three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Bible tells of God’s love, but also his justice and plainly details God’s expectations for his people. The Bible is the standard of objective truth because God is truth and thus it is a powerful guide for living. It teaches us the nature of the world and the reality of the human condition, it teaches us what sin is and how we may be freed from its enslaving effects, it teaches us how to treat others and how to worship God.

RELIABILITY

God’s promises in the Bible are trustworthy and reliable and his commandments are binding. The Bible then becomes ultimate in its authority because it is the inerrant and infallible word of God, which is to say in its original manuscripts, it is God’s true word—the standard by which all other standards are measured. The redemptive history that comprises the Bible is the history we are living today. It is God’s timely salvation for man’s timeless need.

Understanding Bible Translations

Why Are There So Many Translations?

As more reliable manuscripts are discovered and as studies progress in the linguistics of the ancient biblical languages, there is a need for more accurate translations of the Bible. Also, as the English language evolves translators seek to render the Bible in words that will communicate its meaning most fully to its readers.

Word-for-Word or Thought-for-Thought?

Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Old and New Testament respectively, are ancient languages with unique words and systems of word ordering (semantics) that do not perfectly match to the English language. Thus it is the task of the Bible translator not simply to match a Hebrew or Greek word to an English word, but to also be aware of the role of the word in the sentence and the meaning it contributes to the entire thought of the writer. The challenge is to create a translation that is not too stiff or wooden because it structures a sentence in a way that is foreign to English readers, while also representing the individual power of each word as part of a complete thought.

Literal Translations

A word-for-word, or “literal” translation will focus on accurately translating each word of the original biblical text into an equivalent English word or group of words. These translators appreciate the importance of each word and will try to find a word as close to the original as possible while also trying to construct the English text in a manner that is readable and understandable. Literal translations will often be less concerned with aesthetics and more focused on representing the original words of the biblical authors.  The benefit of literal translations is the commitment to accurate and precise representation of each word. The common complaint is that these translations are sometimes seen as less “readable.”

Dynamic Equivalence Translations

Thought–for-thought translation, known more formally as “dynamic equivalence,” will be more focused on representing the general thoughts of the biblical writers. They are less focused on each individual word. When sentence structures or idiomatic expressions do not have a common English equivalent dynamic equivalence translators will attempt to rephrase the thought to make more sense to modern readers. Many readers enjoy this style of translation because it matches well with common English words and language patterns and is thus easy to read. A common complaint of dynamic equivalence translations is that they rely significantly on the interpretation  of the translator and may exclude or confuse original words and meanings.

Which to Choose?

English Bible translations fall along a broad spectrum and don’t always fit neatly into either the word-for-word or thought-for-thought slot. Some translations, like the New American Standard Bible are known for being very literal and others like the Message are more of a paraphrase than a translation. When looking for a translation for personal Bible study try to find one that is readable and understandable for you, but most importantly, that represents the holy word of God as accurately and precisely as possible.

The Gospel

The word “gospel” means “good news.”  But, what is the good news and what does it mean to you? Is there some bad news?

We have a God that is so holy and pure that he cannot be near even the slightest evil. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they committed a crime of colossal proportions. Because Adam was a representative for all humanity, his treason has consequences for all humanity. His evil has resulted in a curse on all of creation. Even though God has created all people and he loves them as his creation, the part of humans that is evil is repulsive to him.

Though God has given us everything, we have not loved him or obeyed him. This is sin—the treasuring of anything above the one who is infinitely worthy. Because God is infinitely worthy, for his creation to love anything more is a direct offense against him. Because God is also completely just, this offence is a crime that cannot go unpunished. The punishment is hell and eternal suffering and it is justly deserved. But because of God’s great mercy, this is not the end of the story.

God is not an angry or mean God. What he is, however, is a God of total justice. Right is right and wrong is wrong. To make an exception would be to contradict his own character; he must be consistent with himself. But God is also a God of love, and he himself provides a solution.

And this is the Good News: the one who is a solution to the problem of our evil is Jesus Christ. Christ, who is God, became a servant for you. He leaves his place in heaven to become a person with a body. He is totally human and can feel pain and suffering, and he is also totally God. This means he is infinitely valuable and divine and glorious.

And though in your sin you have offended him, he loves you, he delights in you, he knows every special thing about you. He is the perfectly obedient Son and the agreement he makes with God the father is this: God will save up all of the anger he has towards every human being that has ever lived and sinned and he will lay all of that punishment on Christ instead.

For the ones that Christ has been given he hangs on the cross and is crucified. He goes through hell, experiencing the infinite wrath of God so that you do not have to. And because Christ then rose from the dead and the tomb was left empty, we know that the work was accomplished. It is finished.

We don’t have to wonder if what he did was enough to save us. He has gone to be with the Father and from his place in heaven he is watching you and praying for you and in a way he is representing you before God the Father. We call him an advocate, our helper, our closest brother, our help in time of need. He lived on earth and he went through all of the challenges we go through and he can sympathize and identify with our struggles because he knows that life is hard and we all need a lot of help. And then when we die, we will rise as he did and we will have new bodies and we will live eternally in heaven. We will no longer have sin or dirtiness or our pain or our tears; we will live in glory.

But until that day he has sent us the Holy Spirit to cause our hearts to trust in Christ and to be reborn. The Holy Spirit brings understanding to the believer through God’s word and conforms the sinful individual to be more like Christ. When you have trusted fully in Christ, God agrees that when he looks at you, he will not see all that you have done and all that you are, but rather he will see the beauty and obedience of his own Son who has suffered your sentence on the cross. This is called justification and it puts the one who trusts in Christ into perfect harmony with God.

What do you have to do? You have to have faith. What is faith? Faith is believing that Jesus has saved you because he suffered the wrath and anger that you deserved. Only Jesus is glorious enough to pay that price. Make no mistake: Jesus did not change the Father’s mind. The Father is not the angry one and Jesus the loving one. God the Father gave Jesus to be the solution to a horrific situation and Jesus was wholly obedient. He is the perfect and the only solution.

That is good news—the best possible news. Life is short, but eternity is forever. And it is eternity that Jesus is saving you for. Our prayer for you is that you would know the truth about yourself and the truth about the Good News of Christ and that the Holy Spirit would awaken your heart to love and trust in him as your righteousness.

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.”        -Romans 5:1-2