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.