How the Bible came to us

NeonTetra SG

The Bible is a collection of books used by people all over the world. But how did the Bible come to us? How old is it? Who wrote it?
Source

The Hebrew Old Testament

The books in the Old Testament are part of the history, laws, poetry and prophecies of the Hebrew people. At first, much of this material was passed down by word of mouth. Scholars are not sure when the books were first written but it seems certain that the period of writing covered several centuries. By the first century AD, Jewish religious leaders had laid down that certain books were holy directly inspired by God and it is these books which now make up the Old Testament, which was written mainly in Hebrew. Although no original manuscripts have been found we have only copies of copies of copies the Jewish scribes were always aware they were writing out a holy text, and took great care not to make mistakes.

The Greek New Testament
No original New Testament manuscripts survive, but some that do exist are very close, in time, to the first writing down of the New Testament. Scholars generally agree that the first New Testament books to be written were Pauls letters. They were kept by the churches who received them, but other churches soon wanted copies. Before the end of the first century AD they were collected together, copied and circulated, along with some other New Testament letters, and Acts and Revelation.

[The early New Testament writings were on papyrus. The Egyptians were first to use these stems of papyrus reeds which grew along the Nile to write on. Our word paper comes from papyrus, and the word Bible itself is connected with the Greek word for papyrus, byblus, which came to mean a scroll or book made from papyrus and hence any book.] DYK box.

First translation
In the third and second centuries BC the first translation of the Old Testament was made, in Greek. Many Jewish people, particularly merchants and seafarers, had moved to various parts of the world round the Mediterranean and, because Greek was the common language, they gradually forgot most of their Hebrew. This translation, known as the Septuagint and made by Jewish scholars at Alexandria in Egypt, was probably mainly for these settlers. Septuagint comes from the Latin for 70, and there is a legend that 70 or 72 people worked on the translation, which was commissioned by King Ptolemy who wanted a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures for the great library he was building at Alexandria.

The Latin Bible
As the Roman Empire spread, so too did the language of Rome. For the first two centuries of its life the young Church in Rome spoke Greek, which was the language of culture within Italy. It was only when Christianity reached provinces like Africa, where the local educated classes spoke Latin, that the need for a Latin translation was felt. There is evidence that translations of part of the Bible existed both in Africa and Europe by the end of the second century AD, and a whole Bible probably by the third. Indeed, the trouble seemed to be that there were too many Latin translations. By the middle of the fourth century the situation had become so confusing that Pope Damasus commissioned his secretary Hieronymus to make an official version to be used by the Church throughout the Latin-speaking Empire.

Hieronymus, or Jerome as he is called in English, set about revising the existing texts of the Gospels by comparing them with the Greek. He produced his version in AD 383. In 386 Jerome went to Bethlehem and spent the rest of his life there as a monk. He started a translation of the Old Testament from the Greek Septuagint but realised that it was much better to translate direct from the Hebrew, and studied the language with the help of a Jewish rabbi. His translation met with considerable opposition from many conservative people in the Church, who clung to the familiar text of the Old Latin versions and thought Jerome too revolutionary. Only some centuries later did Jeromes Vulgate become accepted throughout the Church in Europe.

For more than a thousand years, Latin was the international language of Europe. St Jeromes translation was the only version used by the Roman Church and although it was called the Vulgate, meaning common or belonging to the people, by the Middle Ages Latin was no longer the language of ordinary people, only by the rich and educated. The Bible was written by hand in expensive books in a language the poor people could not understand or afford. But as they did not read anyway, it didnt seem to matter especially if most people who didnt read the Bible had to accept the Churchs interpretation of what the Scriptures said. At that time, many church leaders thought it would be dangerous if everyone could read and interpret Gods Word for themselves.

Early English Translations
The Latin Vulgate came to Britain in the sixth century, with early missionaries like Columba and Augustine. Please see seperate story for more on English Bible translation.

NeonTetra SG

The efforts at Bible translation in Europe during the Middle Ages were sincere and dedicated, but few. The power of the Church, with its opposition to Bibles in the vernacular, hindered Bible translation, and difficulties in producing Bibles, when each had to be copied out by hand, hindered Bible distribution. In the following centuries the Reformation and the invention of printing were to change this picture completely.

The Roman Church's insistence that it alone could explain the Word of God was one of the main controversies of the Reformation. People like Martin Luther, in Germany, and William Tyndale, in England, claimed that everyone should have the chance to read the Bible in their own language and understand it for themselves. Before the Reformation, in the mid-fifteenth century, the invention of printing with movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg had made books more easily available and less expensive. During the great revival of interest in the arts and sciences (particularly in Greek and Roman culture) -- the Renaissance -- scholars found many Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible and early Church writings which were previously unknown, or disregarded. The Reformers, and progressive people in the Roman Catholic Church, were anxious to give the people the chance to read the Bible. All these factors helped spark the sudden interest in Bible translation in the sixteenth century.

German
Martin Luther, the most important name in German Bible translation, was born in 1483, the son of a miner. He was an Augustinian monk, who eventually became a professor at Wittenberg University in 1511. He spoke and wrote against what he felt were wrong practices and beliefs in the Roman Catholic Church and was excommunicated and exiled from the Holy Roman Empire. His patron, Freidrich III of Saxony, gave him refuge in his fortress of Wartburg, and while there Luther began a translation of the New Testament into German. He believed that a good Bible translation must be made directly from the original languages, and in words everyone can understand. The existing German versions had been translated from Latin in the Middle Ages and used old-fashioned and often incomprehensible language. The British and Foreign Bible Society has a copy of Luther's New Testament, which was published by Hans Luft in Wittenberg in September 1522 and became immensely popular. The Old Testament appeared in sections over the next few years and in 1532 the whole Bible was published by Melchior Lotther, again in Wittenberg. It remains the standard German Protestant Bible (with revisions from time to time).

Spanish
In Spain in 1551 the Spanish Inquisition put on their Index of Prohibited Books, "The Bible in Castilian romance or in any other vulgar tongue" ("vulgar here meaning vernacular, nor Latin) and this meant that although Bible portions already existed in Spanish they could not be widely circulated. The most important translation work was therefore done outside Spain.

NeonTetra SG

In North America
One of the earliest opportunities for missionary translation work was among the indigenous Americans of New England. At this time some people in England Puritans felt that worshipping God should be much simpler than the Church of Englands services and that everyone should rely much more on the Bibles teachings. Many of them, including John Eliot, sailed to the newly colonised east coast of America to find religious freedom. Eliot, born in Hertfordshire, became a Church of England priest but was soon sympathising with the Puritans. He sailed to Boston in 1631 and for over 50 years worked with the Massachusetts indigenous Americans. He felt they should be able to hear Gods word in their own language so he learned to preach in the Massachusetts language, then began writing grammars and reading books. In 1661, his translation of the New Testament was published by Samuel Green in Cambridge, near Boston, and in 1663 the whole Bible appeared the first Bible produced in the Americas, and really the first modern translation for missionary use.

In the East
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Protestant missionaries followed traders to their established settlements. Wherever they went, the missionaries translated Scripture. The earliest Malay Gospel translations were in fact the work of a Dutch East Indies Company director. One of the great translations of the eighteenth century was into Tamil, the first language of India to have a Bible.

The Expansion
Before 1800 fewer than 70 languages had any translation of even part of the Bible. By 1900 more than 500 had at least one book of the Bible. What had happened? At that time explorers were travelling further afield, and a lot of interest in foreign lands was aroused in Europe. Also at this time the Church in Britain was finding new life in what is usually called the Evangelical Revival (one result of which was the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society).

These things inspired missionaries to set out from Europe and America to settle in India, China or Africa. Many of them felt their most important task was to translate the Scriptures for the people among whom they were working. There were hundreds of dedicated men and women who, with the help of national speakers, made and revised their Bible translations all over the world. Only a few are mentioned here.

India: William Carey
William Carey, born in Northamptonshire in 1761, became a Christian when he was 21 and began preaching in nearby villages. Although he did not have much education, he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Dutch. He was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society and one of its first missionaries. He went to Bengal in India in 1793 and set up a college at Serampore. In 30 years William Carey and his colleagues translated and printed in 45 languages and dialects in 35 of these they were the first people to print Scriptures. Carey himself learned Sanskrit (the old classical Indian language), Bengali, Marathi, and even some Sinhalese spoken hundreds of miles away in what is now Sri Lanka. He translated, or helped to translate, into over 20 languages, of which his Bengali Bible is the most famous.

China: Marshman & Morrison
One of William Careys colleagues, Joshua Marshman, was particularly interested in Chinese and, with the help of John Lassar, an Armenian born in Macao, in China, he began translating the Bible into Chinese. Matthews Gospel was published in 1810 at Serampore and the whole Bible was finished by 1822. At the same time another man was translating the Bible in China itself. Robert Morrison was born near Newcastle in 1782. Becoming an apprentice to a man who made lasts for shoes, he studied in his spare time as much as he could and went to London in 1803 to train as a missionary with the London Missionary Society (LMS). LMS sent him to Canton in 1807 but China was not friendly to foreigners, and any national discovered teaching Chinese to a foreigner could be tortured and put to death. Robert Morrison began translating the Bible, working on the New Testament with the help of a Chinese manuscript he had found and copied at the British Museum in London. It was part of the New Testament, the work of an eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary called Jean Bassett. Another LMS missionary, William Milne, joined Morrison in 1817 and in 1823 their complete Bible was published.

The South Seas
In many parts of Africa and on the Pacific Islands, the languages were not written down and this meant that before Christian missionaries could translate the gospel, they first had to decide what letters were to be used for the sounds, and how words were to be spelled. Then they could teach people to read. In Tahiti, in 1817, the LMS set up a printing press run by William Ellis. The King of Tahiti himself, Pomare II in his eagerness to see what his Ianguage wouId look like when written down on paper pulled the first pages of the first printed book in Tahitian, a spelling book, off the press. Some parts of the Bible followed, translated by LMS missionaries with King Pomares help. People were anxious to have these, and if they had no money they paid for the books with coconut oil three gallons bought a copy of Luke!

Africa
The early translations in Africa were not all the work of white missionaries. The story of the first man to translate Scriptures into Yoruba (the main language of Western Nigeria) is one of the most exciting in the history of Bible translation. In the first part of the nineteenth century the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas still flourished and in 1821 an 11-year-old Yoruba boy (called Adjai), his mother and two little sisters, were kidnapped by slave traders in their village, Ochugun. Taken to Lagos, Adjai now separated from his family was bought and sold several times within a year. Eventually his fifth master sold him aboard a Portuguese slave ship bound for Brazil or Cuba. One day out from Lagos, however, a British boat intercepted the slave trader and took the 1,987 captives to Freetown in Sierra Leone, which was a refuge for freed slaves many of whom were Yorubas like Adjai. Adjai was sent to a Christian school, where he proved to be very intelligent, and learned about Christianity. He was baptised in 1825, taking the name Samuel Crowther after a famous London clergyman of the time. Crowther studied in Freetown and in England at the Church Missionary Society colleges and was ordained in 1843, later becoming the first African bishop. He returned to his own people in Nigeria and began to translate the Bible into Yoruba. The Epistle to the Romans was published in 1850 and by 1884 the complete Bible was finished, after being translated by a committee of Europeans and Yorubas, supervised by Samuel Crowther.

South America
Ever since the Spanish and Portuguese colonised South America, Roman Catholic priests had set up missions. They may have made Scripture translations in languages of the indigenous South Americans but no traces remain.

The first printed Scripture was Lukes Gospel in Aymara, published in 1829 by the British and Foreign Bible Society

NeonTetra SG

Wycliffe
Not until the fourteenth century did England have a complete Bible in her own language. At that time John Wycliffe and his followers often called Lollards voiced many criticisms of the Church. One of their chief complaints was that the people could not understand the priests mumbled Latin, and worse, that the priests themselves could not understand it. Under Wycliffes inspiration some of the Lollards translated the complete Bible from Latin into English, so that the ordinary people could read and understand it. To circulate their Bible, they had to write each copy out by hand and, laborious though this must have been, many such Bibles circulated.

In the 1450s Johannes Gutenberg, in Germany, printed the first book using moveable type in the West. The demand for Bibles grew, especially for Bibles which could be understood by someone who was not a scholar. The Reformation leaders urged Bible translation, and in many European Protestant countries Scriptures were being translated and printed, but it was not until 1526 that the first New Testament was produced in English. Although Gutenberg had printed a Latin Bible in 1456, and leading fifteenth century European printers were producing Bibles in both Latin and vernacular languages, no one in England printed the Wycliffe Bible: probably because it had been banned by the Church since 1408.

Tyndale
The Church still banned English Scriptures when William Tyndale translated his New Testament, which was printed in Germany. The books were smuggled into England by sympathetic merchants in bales of wool and wine casks with false bottoms.

Tyndale started translating the Old Testament but only managed to finish the Pentateuch and Jonah before he was betrayed, arrested, tried, and finally burned for heresy at Vilvorde in Belgium in 1536. His work was continued by faithful friends, such as John Rogers.

Coverdale
Miles Coverdale produced his Bible the first complete printed Bible in English in 1535, basing his New Testament and Pentateuch on Tyndales work and translating the rest from Latin and German. Although the Bible had no royal licence it was not suppressed, perhaps because Coverdale had the sympathy of Thomas Cromwell who, as Secretary of State at the time, had influence on the King, Henry VIII.

In 1537 another Bible appeared, edited by Thomas Matthew, probably the pen-name of Tyndales friend John Rogers, who was later burned during Queen Marys persecution of Protestants. Matthews edition combined what he believed to be the best of Tyndale and Coverdales work. Thomas Cromwell succeeded in having a licence granted by the King, despite the fact that Henry had banned all translations under Tyndales name and this Bible obviously contained much of Tyndales work.

Cromwell then commissioned Coverdale to produce a revision of Matthews Bible and the printing of this Great Bible began in Paris. When the French authorities responded to the Inquisition and stopped the printing, the press, paper and compositors had to be shipped hurriedly to England. The Bible appeared in 1539 with Henrys blessing and command that it should be in every church so that everyone could read it. These Great Bibles were quite expensive, and often chains were bought to fasten the Bibles to the lecterns.

During the reign of Mary I, Protestants were persecuted as heretics, and many fled to Geneva. One of those refugees, William Wittingham, produced a New Testament in 1557. He was also one of the main contributors to a complete revision of the Bible, published in 1560 and known as the Geneva Bible (also known as the Breeches Bible), which was the first English Bible printed in roman type, with verse divisions. It was immediately welcomed, remaining the most popular English Bible for over 70 years.

The Bishops Bible first appeared in 1568 after work by a group of bishops and biblical scholars under the leadership of Matthew Parker, then Archbishop of Canterbury. It had several editions, then, in 1604, at a conference between the Bishops and the Puritans at Hampton Court, a new revision of the Bible was proposed, and welcomed by King James I. Fifty translators were appointed to follow the Bishops Bible as much as possible, correcting any errors. Their work was submitted to a committee for final editing and was published in 1611. Because James I had commanded it, it became known as the King James Version, or the Authorised Version. For more than 300 years it remained the most widely read book in the English language.

It was decided at the Convocation of Canterbury in 1870 to make a revision of the King James Version bearing in mind the new discoveries in the field of Bible scholarship but changing as little as possible from the text of the 1611 Bible. The New Testament of the Revised Version was published in 1881 and the complete Bible in 1885.

A group of American scholars added their comments and alternative readings. In 1901 the Americans published their own Revised Version, which became known as the American Standard Version.

Roman Catholic translation
The Roman Catholic Church produced its own translation of the BibIe made from the Latin Vulgate. At the English Roman Catholic College at Douai in France, Gregory Martin and other refugees from Oxford translated the New Testament. The college moved to Rheims in 1578 and there the New Testament was published in 1582. The Old Testament appeared in 1609-1610 in Douai. The Douai-Rheims Bible remained the standard Roman CathoIic version for many years. In 1966 an official Roman Catholic translation the Jerusalem Bible was published, based on the Hebrew and Greek rather than Latin. It was revised in 1985 and is now known as the New Jerusalem Bible] - box story

The Good News Bible
The Good News Bible is one of the most popular Bible translations used in Britain today. Its a translation which aims to give readers maximum understanding of the content of the original Hebrew and Greek texts, by presenting them in natural, everyday English. Originally published by the American Bible Society, it was first published in England by the British and Foreign Bible Society and HarperCollins in 1976, and quickly became the most widely used version in this country.

Recently, the Good News Bible was revised in the light of current biblical scholarship and modern language and the second edition was published in 1994.

The Contemporary English Version
The Contemporary English Version (Into the Light 1997) translation was published to meet the needs of the many people who hear the Bible rather than read it for themselves. And, like other serious translations of the Bible, the CEV is faithful to the meaning of the original Bible texts. To ensure its accuracy, the Old Testament was translated directly from the Hebrew and Aramaic texts, while the New Testament was translated directly from the Greek texts. It was designed particularly for those seeking to explore Christianity and avoids traditional religious terminology.

NeonTetra SG

I didnt understand
When the Bislama Bible was finally launched in Vanuatu in 1998 their Prime Minister and President spoke, calling it a day of national history. The Speaker of Parliament promised to make Bible-reading part of the regular parliamentary meetings, while the translators received medals from the President.

A hurricane, a rebellion, family tragedies, computer crashes, the culture, and lack of training all contributed to prolong the Bislama Bible project, which took almost 30 years to complete.

Translation advisor Moli, who had been helping with the project since it began, said, Id always read the Bible in English but I didnt understand the stories. Now when I hear the translation in Bislama, my language, I can join in. I wanted to know the Word of God in my own language.

Thankfully now the Solomon Islands Pijin translation is set to benefit from the newly-completed Vanuatu Bislama translation with the help of the computer program CARLA (Computer Assisted Related Language Adaptation).

Run away!
Red, the colour of blood, is very important to the Maasai people of Kenya, and when the New Testament was published in 1983 it had a red cover. But the traditional Maasai elders feared that red book because of its power to change peoples lives. They noticed that when people read words from the red book they started acting differently. Young warriors who stole cattle from neighbours stopped stealing when they had been touched by the words in the red book. Even old men were seen crying when they heard words from the red book. The traditional elders warned people, When the Christians talk to you listen! But when they open the red book run away!

One day Joel ole Kima, a Maasai pastor, met two men on the road. Neither of them was a Christian. He started to chew the news with them (a Maasai expression meaning to ask about the wellbeing of their cows, their children and their wives). But one of the men refused to speak to Joel, something which is almost unheard of among the Maasai. When Joel asked why, the man told him that some people in a nearby village had said that when Joel ole Kima meets people, after chewing the news he always gets into the red book. This man had heard that the words from the red book can change people. I dont want to take that risk! he told the pastor.

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[email protected]_arms SG

lol so u cant trust it because its been lied upon, re written etc etc. Woot!

OldAhPek SG

Towkay.....
this is a forum....not eBook

post so long...
dont bother to read Shocked

Icemoon SG

True .. this is not the way to attract readers also.

Neon should snip the interesting parts or do a mini "do you know" for the forummers. Also the page design at the source website is more conducive for reading?

SilverRevo SG

Actually people who read The Lord Of The Rings can follow it as their bible too , in fact why not? They bear similarities , a saviour , that is Frodo and God , if you read the Silmarilion . And perhaps we start worshipping Frodo , and the day he destroyed the ring is our saviour’s day . And we can have people reenacting the scenes such as Frodo’s journey. we can have church asking people to worship Frodo for he brings peace and goodness to people. We’ll have statues of him without a finger representing the people’s struggles against evl. All pastor’s wear elven clothings , eat holy lembas bread and carry swords around. We’ll have crusades , holy ones against the evil governments . Fighting with swords , bows and magic . The Evil one would be Sauron and that Gollum. We’ll make statues of them just to stone them. we’ll have pligrimages to The Shire In New Zealand , hopefully still there. We’ll say hobbit grace before taking our breakfast, second breakfast ,lunch , tea , dinner , supper all six meals.

GargoyleR SG

x2 Laughing

stupidissmart SG

u need another 2 elements. Those who do not believe will be killed during the years of crusaders, inquisition and witch hunting. Those who believe have to force their children to be brainwashed as well. With these 2 elements, u can make the people believe in anything