History Of Bible Translation
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History of Bible Translation
1449 B.C.: God gives Moses the first five books (Pentateuch or Torah) of the Bible. (Autographs). The first book, the Book of Genesis as we shall see in a future chapter, records the beginning of history which was 13,022 years ago The Book of Job which seems to have predated or been a contemporary of Abraham’s time (approximately 2000 BC), has been suggested as the oldest book. It is possible that God gave Moses the book of Job to write during the time He was giving Moses the first five books, however we have no definite proof. God began writing the Bible to be recorded 9546 years after creation.
586 B.C.: There was no need for any part of the Bible to be translated until a community of Jews, in the Diaspora, forgot their Hebrew. The Diaspora: the scattering of the Jews to countries outside of Palestine after the Babylonian captivity in 586 BC, necessitated the copying and translation of the Old Testament for generations of Jews. At this time the Old Testament began to be translated into Aramaic. This (Translation) is called the Aramaic Targums. This translation helped the Jewish people, who began to speak Aramaic from the time of their captivity in Babylon, to understand the Old Testament in the language that they commonly spoke. Simultaneously, the rest of the Old Testament was being completed in its original autographs up until 391 BC.
391 B.C.: With the completion of Esther, the Old Testament Books (Autographs) were complete. The Jews painstakingly made accurate (Manuscripts) of the original autographs through written and oral recording.
285-246 B.C.: The Old Testament was translated into Greek. This translation is known as the Septuagint. It is sometimes designated "LXX" (which is Roman numeral for "70") because it was believed that 70 to 72 translators worked to translate the Hebrew Old Testament in Greek. The Septuagint is claimed to have been translated between 285-246 BC during the reign of Ptolemy II Then the Scriptures (at least Genesis to Deuteronomy) were translated into the Greek language for the Alexandrian Jews. The Jews of Alexandria, Egypt demonstrate the ability of a Jewish community to flourish in a new context without losing its identity. They integrate so fully with the secular life of the city that their own first language becomes Greek. It is they who first use the word diaspora (Greek for 'dispersion') to describe Jewish communities living outside of Israel. Soon many of them no longer understand Hebrew. But they refuse to let this diminish their strong sense of a shared identity as God's special people, according to the covenant revealed in a book which they now cannot read. They commission, with Ptolemy's support and approval, the first translation of the Bible, the famous Greek version known as the Septuagint. The Septuagint Greek Manuscripts contain The 39 Old Testament Books and 14 Apocrypha Books, which are not and have never been canonical. .
33-95 A.D.: Completion of All Original Greek autographs and manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New Testament. There are over 5,600 early Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament that are still in existence. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus and the later manuscripts were written on leather called parchment.
125 A.D.: The New Testament manuscript which dates most closely to the original autograph was copied around 125 A.D, within 35 years of the original. It is designated "p 52" and contains a small portion of John 18. (The "p" stands for papyrus.)
180 A.D.: Early translations of the New Testament from Greek into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions began about 180 A.D.
200-220 A.D.: The early Christians, who use Greek for their own New Testament, need to read both Old and New Testaments It is essential for their arguments, when debating with Jewish rabbis, that they have an accurate understanding of the original Hebrew. Their need prompts the great work of biblical scholarship undertaken by Origen (185-254 A.D.) in the 3rd century AD. In his Hexapla (from the Greek word for 'sixfold') Origen arranges six versions of the Old Testament in parallel columns for comparative study. The first column is the original Hebrew; next comes a transliteration of this in Greek letters, so that Christians can pronounce the Hebrew text; this is followed by the Septuagint, and then by Greek translations from Christian scholars.
360 AD: Ulfilas (310-383 A.D.) was a Goth and is the first man known to have undertaken an extraordinarily difficult intellectual task - writing down, from scratch, a language which is as yet purely oral. He even devises a new alphabet to capture accurately the sounds of spoken Gothic, using a total of twenty-seven letters adapted from examples in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. He needs the alphabet for his translation of the Bible from Greek into the language of the Goths. It is not known how much he completes, but large sections of the Gospels and the Epistles survive in his version - dating from several years before Jerome begins work on his Latin text.
367 AD: Athanasius (293-373 A.D.)the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the canon of scripture.
382 A.D.: The Latin Vulgate was translated by the early church father Jerome (347-420 A.D.) ("Vulgate" meaning "vulgar" or "common"). He translated into Latin the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek. The Latin Vulgate became the Bible of the Western Church until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's. It continues to be the authoritative translation of the Roman Catholic Church to this day. Other early translations of the Bible were in Syriac, Egyptian Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic, Slavic, and Gothic. The intention of Jerome, translating into Latin the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, was that ordinary Christians of the Roman empire should be able to read the word of God. "Ignorance of the scriptures", he wrote is, "ignorance of Christ. "Gradually this perception is altered and rejected by the Roman Catholic Church.
397 A.D: The Council of Carthage acknowledges the complete New Testament canon that we have today.
500 A.D.: By 500 B.C. the Bible had been translated into several different languages. In one century later, by 600 A.D., it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate. The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed. This was because only the priests were educated to understand Latin, and this gave the church ultimate power. The power to rule without question and the power to deceive, along with the power to extort money from the masses. Nobody could question their "Biblical" teachings, because few people other than priests could read Latin. The church capitalized on this forced-ignorance through the 1,000 year period from the fifith century A.D. to fifteenth century A.D. his is known as the "Dark and Middle Ages". After the collapse of the western empire, in the Fifth Century A.D., the people of Christian Europe speak varieties of German, French, Anglo-Saxon, Italian or Spanish. The text of Jerome's Vulgate is understood only by the learned, most of whom are priests. They prefer to corner the source of Christian truth, keeping for themselves the privilege of interpreting it for the people. Translation into vulgar tongues is discouraged. There were exceptions. In the late 8th century A.D. Charlemagne (742-814 A.D.) commissions translation of parts of the Bible for the use of his missionaries in the drive to convert pagan Germans. In the 9th century, the Greek brothers, Cyril (827-869 A.D) and Methodius (820-885 A.D.) two Greek brothers, sent from Constantinople to Moravia, at royal request, to translate the Gospels and parts of the Old Testament into Slavonic. These are missionary endeavors, promoted by rulers as an act of government when pagan Europe is being brought into the Christian fold. In the later centuries there is no equivalent need to provide the holy texts in vernacular form because Christianity was widespread.. Any such impulse is now a radical demand on behalf of ordinary Christians against the Roman church’s hierarchy. The strongest medieval demand for vernacular texts comes in France from a heretical sect, the Cathars. The suppression of the Cathars is complete by the mid-13th century. But the following century the same demand surfaces within.
678 A.D.: Caedmon was a cow herder attached to the Lady Hilda Monastery at Whitby on the Yorkshire coast of England began to sing verses from the Latin Old and New Testaments in English. This is the first known translation of the Bible into English. These songs became a way of teaching people the Bible.
709 A.D.: Aldhelm (639-709 A.D)., the first Bishop of Sherborne in Dorset, England was the first to translate a portion of the Psalms from the Latin Vulgate in to Anglo-Saxon.
675-735/736 A.D.: Bede (672?-735 A.D.) was a monk of Jarrow, England and is known as the greatest name in the history of the early English church. Bede translated the portions of the scripture into English out of a desire to help those with less ability. He was a Latin, Hebrew and Greek scholar and was dictating a translation of the Gospel of John with his last breath. He is remembered chiefly for his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People." This five volume work records events in Britain from the raids by Julius Caesar in 55-54 B.C. to the arrival of the first missionary from Rome, Augustine of Canterbury (? -604 A.D.) in 597 A.D. Bede's writings are considered the best summary of this period of history ever prepared. Some have called it "the finest historical work of the early Middle Ages."
735-804 A.D.: Alcuin of York (730/740-804 A.D.) was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria., England. He became a student of Ecgbert, Archbishop of York (?-766 A.D.) He was called to Charlemagne’s court at Aachen (Germany) in 782 A.D. to render a standardized text of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate along with a standardized interpretation, a work that shifted the accessibility of Scripture away from the common people. He was responsible for inventing lower case letters.
849-899 A.D.: Alfred the Great (849-899 A.D.) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred is noted for his defense of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English king to be accorded the title "the Great", Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Alfred was a literate King who used his literacy to promote the good of the people. He had portions of the Psalms introduced his law code with translations of the Ten Commandments and portions of Exodus 21-23 and Acts 15:23-29. Although these portions may seem insignificant, they opened the door for English readers to grasp the relevancy of scripture in their lives.
955-1020 A.D.: Ælfric of Eynsham (955-1010 A.D.) Oxfordshire, England, sometimes modernized Alfric, was an English abbot, as well as a consummate, prolific writer in Old English. He produced homilies, (A homily is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture) with Old English translations of Old Testament passages from Kings, Esther, Job and Daniel.
990-1000 AD: Ælfric of Bath produced The Wessex Gospels (also known as the West-Saxon Gospels) are a full translation of the four gospels into a West Saxon dialect of Old English. Produced in approximately 990 A.D., they are the first translation of all four gospels into English without the Latin text. Seven manuscript copies survive. With the French-speaking Normans invasion of Britain in 1066 A.D. came a heavy blow to the translation of the Bible into English. The Old English versions of the scripture became unintelligible to the preceding generations due to the French influence upon the dialect. The Norman ecclesiastical system used Latin exclusively. By the 12-Century the English language had died out. Consequently, this time brought about the Crusades, the first in 1099 AD and the last in 1229 AD and little Bible translation followed. By the mid-twelfth century, a new language, a mixture of Norman and English-marked the beginning of Middle English. During this time little was done to translate the Bible into Middle English except for small portions of the Psalms. The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a 12th-century work of Biblical exegesis, written in early Middle English verse by a monk named Orm or Ormin. He wrote a poetic version of a harmony of the Gospels and Acts with commentary. From the middle to the end of the thirteenth century stories from Genesis and Exodus and a copy of the Psalms were put to poetry. In the first half of the next century copies of the Psalms appeared, attributed to William of Shoreham(?)and Richard Rolle of Hampole (1290-1349 A.D.). Later in the same century a version of the New Testament Epistles were rendered in Middle English. Later the books of Acts and Matthew were added to the collection. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the gap between wealthy and poor severely widened. Major works in biblical scholarship were written in Latin and there was a clear drawing away from translating biblical text into the vernacular English, driving a chasm between priest and laymen. The church had claimed universal supremacy since the Gregorian reform in the eleventh century and even acquired the power to appoint the emperor. The pope stressed his direct links to God and saw himself as the champion of the universal church. This sovereignty was challenged when England and France broke away from the Roman Empire. This was called, "The Great Schism," 1378-1417 European Christendom was divided into two factions with a pope in Avignon, France who was backed by Spain, Portugal, France, the Kingdom of Naples and Scotland, while the rest of Europe supported the pope in Rome. Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bohemia later also broke away from Rome. Even amist all of this fighting, there was a revival of interest in religion by the common people spurred on by the horrors of the Black Death that swept across Europe from 1347 to 1351. When the plague reached England in 1348-49, 30 to 40% of the urban population died. The plague recurred several times 1360, 1369, 1374, each time decimating much of the population. Life expectancy fell from 25 years old in 1348 to 17 years old in 1376. In such a climate it was only natural that an interest in religious things should increase, and as a result the desire grew for a readable Bible. The Friars, who were members of certain religious orders, were the strongest opponents to an English Bible because they deemed Bible study too complicated a task for laymen. The Friars were highly educated and believed that Bible study needed strong philosophical and linguistic skills as well as advanced training in exegesis (interpretation of text) and Biblical Theology. They thought the best a lay person could do was learn from someone who had training. For over a thousand years after the Bible was complete, no English translation of the Bible existed. That was about to change with the dawning of "The Morning Star of the Reformation."
1384 A.D.: John Wycliffe 1328?- 1384 A.D.) was an English theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformist and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers are known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached anticlerical and biblically-centered reforms. He is considered the founder of the Lollard movement, a precursor to the Protestant Reformation he is sometimes called "The Morning Star of the Reformation". He was one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power. Wycliffe was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common tongue. He completed his translation directly from the Vulgate into English in the year 1382 A.D., now known as Wycliffe’s Bible. It is probable that he personally translated the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and it is possible he translated the entire New Testament, while his associates translated the Old Testament. Wycliffe’s Bible appears to have been completed by 1384 A.D., with additional updated versions being done by Wycliffe's assistant John Purvey (1354-1421 A.D.?) and others in 1388 and 1395 A.D.The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river. At the same period the Czechs have their own vernacular Bible, subsequently much improved by Jan Hus (1369-1416 A.D.) Hus, actively promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that people should be permitted to read the Bible in their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned at the stake in 1415 A.D., with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, "in 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed." These translations are part of the radical impulse for reform within the church. Indeed the issue of vernacular Bibles becomes one of the contentious themes of the Reformation. An English contemporary of Wycliffe, the chronicler Henry Knighton (?-1396) is a measure of how far the Church of Rome has swung on this issue since Jerome's campaign in the fourth century. Knighton said, ""This Master John Wyclif translated into the Anglic (English) -not Angelic-tongue, the Gospel that Christ gave to the clergy and the doctors of the Church, that they might minister it gently to laymen and weaker persons, according to the exigence of their time, their personal wants, and the hunger of their minds; whence it is made vulgar by him, and more open to the reading of laymen and women than it usually is to the knowledge of lettered and intelligent clergy; and thus the pearl of the Gospel is cast forth and trodden under the feet of swine."
1455 A.D.: Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468 A.D.) invented the printing press in the 1455 A.D. and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany. The invention of the movable-type printing press meant that Bibles and books could finally be effectively produced in large quantities in a short period of time. This was essential to the success of the Reformation and a monumental moment in world history.
1490’s A.D.: In the 1490’s another Oxford professor, and the personal physician to King Henry the 7th and 8th, Thomas Linacre (1460-1524 A.D.), decided to learn Greek. After reading the Gospels in Greek, and comparing it to the Latin Vulgate. The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel. Even though, the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin, even though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures. As a professor of philosophy at Oxford, Linacre founded the Department for Greek Studies. He did this after a two-year sojourn to Italy to learn Greek himself. Upon returning to Oxford, Linacre discovered that the Greek manuscripts were dramatically different from the Latin Vulgate. He wrote in his diary, "Either this (the original Greek) is not the Gospel or we are not Christians". The Latin Vulgate had become progressively more and more corrupted with each passing generation over the previous 1,000 years. Linacre notified John Colet (1467-1519 A.D.) another Oxford professor, Colet was inspired to follow in Linacre’s footsteps and take a two-year sabbatical to Italy to study Greek. Upon returning to Oxford, Colet assisted Linacre in the production of the first Greek grammar book printed in England. The work of Colet and Linacre contributed greatly to the public awareness that the Roman Catholic Church’s Latin Vulgate text could not be trusted, and called for Christian scholars to return to the original Greek manuscripts to translate, or at least to understand, the Gospel as it was originally meant to be communicated.
1516 A.D.: By the 16th century the view was gaining ground that a personal knowledge of scripture is precisely what ordinary people most need for their own spiritual good. In considering the experiences of Linacre and Colet, the great scholar, Erasmus (1466-1536 A.D.) was so moved to correct the corrupt Latin Vulgate, that in 1516 A.D., with the help of printer John Froben (1460-1527 A.D.), he published a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was not the corrupt Vulgate, but his own fresh rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek, which he had managed to collate from a half-dozen partial old Greek New Testament manuscripts he had acquired. This milestone was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium… and the first ever to come off a printing press. The 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus further focused attention on just how corrupt and inaccurate the Latin Vulgate had become, and how important it was to go back and use the original Greek (New Testament) and original Hebrew (Old Testament) languages to maintain accuracy and to translate them faithfully into the languages of the common people, whether that be English, German, or any other tongue. He based his Greek New Testament from only five Greek manuscripts, the oldest of which dated only as far back as the twelfth century. With minor revisions, Erasmus' Greek New Testament came to be known as the Textus Receptus or the "received texts." No sympathy for this "illegal activity" was to be found from Rome even as the words of Pope Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was quite profitable to him" continued through the years to infuriate the church of Rome.
1522 A.D.: Polygot Bible: The first and best known polyglot Bible is the Complutensian, begun in 1502 under the sponsorship of the archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517 A.D.), printed in 1514–17 at the University of Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, and published in 1522. The Old Testament in the Complutensian contained a revised Masoretic Hebrew text and translations in Aramaic (the Targum of Onkelos), Latin (the Vulgate), and Greek (the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint, printed in full for the first time). The Complutensian New Testament presented the original Greek version together with the Latin translation. Erasmus used the Polyglot to revise later editions of his New Testament.
1522 A.D.: Martin Luther (1483-1546 A.D.) declared his intolerance for the Roman Church’s corruption on Halloween, October 31 in 1517, by nailing his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Church door. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 A. D. that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German for the first time from the 1516 Greek-Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and publish it in September of 1522 A.D. Luther also published a German Pentateuch in 1523 A.D., and another edition of the German New Testament in 1529 A.D.. In the 1530’s he would go on to publish the entire Bible in German. His translation of the Bible also helped to develop a standard version of the German language and added several principles to the art of translation.
1525 A.D.: William Tyndale (1494-1536 A.D.) was the Captain of the Army of Reformers, and was their spiritual leader. Tyndale holds the distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language. Tyndale was a true scholar and a genius, so fluent in eight languages that it was said one would think any one of them to be his native tongue. He is frequently referred to as the "Architect of the English Language", (even more so than William Shakespeare) as so many of the phrases Tyndale coined are still in our language today. William Tyndale wanted to use the same 1516 A.D. Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the New Testament in English for the first time in history. Tyndale showed up on Luther's doorstep in Germany in 1525 A.D., and by year's end had translated the New Testament into English. Tyndale had been forced to flee England, because of the wide-spread rumor that his English New Testament project was underway, causing inquisitors and bounty hunters to be constantly on Tyndale's trail to arrest him and prevent his project. God foiled their plans, and in 1525-1526 A.D. the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language. Subsequent printings of the Tyndale New Testament in the 1530's A.D. were often elaborately illustrated. He finished a translation of the Pentateuch in 1530 A.D. The Book of Jonah in 1531 A.D. and a new revised New Testament in 1534 A.D. They were burned as soon as the Bishop could confiscate them, but copies trickled through and actually ended up in the bedroom of King Henry VIII. The more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution, the more fascinated the public at large became. The church declared it contained thousands of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy, while in fact, they burned them because they could find no errors at all. One risked death by burning if caught in mere possession of Tyndale's forbidden books. Having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English would have meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would crumble. They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences (the forgiveness of sins) or selling the release of loved ones from a church-manufactured "Purgatory". People would begin to challenge the church's authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves. The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the public's eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church held. Salvation through Christ, not works or tithes, could be understood. The need for priests would vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of church-canonized Saints and Mary would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures in English was the biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church. Neither side would give up without a fight. Today, there are only two known copies left of Tyndale’s 1525-26 A.D. First Edition. Any copies printed prior to 1570 are extremely valuable. Tyndale's flight was an inspiration to freedom-loving Englishmen who drew courage from the 11 years that he was hunted. Books and Bibles flowed into England in bales of cotton and sacks of flour. Ironically, Tyndale’s biggest customer was the King’s men, who would buy up every copy available to burn them and Tyndale used their money to print even more. In the end, Tyndale was caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he had befriended. Tyndale was incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536 A.D. Tyndale’s last words were, "Oh Lord, open the King of England’s eyes". This prayer would be answered just three years later in 1539, when King Henry VIII finally allowed, and even funded, the printing of an English Bible known as the "Great Bible."
1535 A.D.: Myles Coverdale (1488-1569 A.D.) and John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers (1500-1555 A.D.) had remained loyal disciples the last six years of Tyndale's life, and they carried the English Bible project forward and even accelerated it. Coverdale finished translating the Old Testament, and in 1535 A.D. he printed the first complete Bible in the English language, making use of Luther's German text and the Latin as additional sources. Thus, the first complete English Bible was printed on October 4, 1535, and is known as the Coverdale Bible.
1537 A.D.: John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537 A.D. It was, however, the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. He printed it under the pseudonym "Thomas Matthew", (an assumed name that had actually been used by Tyndale at one time) as a considerable part of this Bible was the translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned by the English authorities. It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament 1534-1535 A.D. edition and Coverdale's Bible and some of Roger's own translation of the text. It remains known most commonly as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible. It went through a nearly identical second-edition printing in 1549 A.D.
1539 A.D.: Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556 A.D.), the Archbishop of Canterbury, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the "Great Bible". It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church, chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in plain English. It would seem that William Tyndale's last wish had been granted just three years after his martyrdom. Cranmer's Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible due to its great size: a large pulpit folio measuring over 14 inches tall. Seven editions of this version were printed between April of 1539 A.D. and December of 1541 A.D. It was not that King Henry VIII had a change of conscience regarding publishing the Bible in English. His motives were more sinister. However the Lord sometimes uses the evil intentions of men to bring about His glory. King Henry VIII had in fact, requested that the Pope permit him to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. The Pope refused. King Henry responded by marrying his mistress anyway, later having two of his many wives executed, and repudiated the Pope by renouncing Roman Catholicism, taking England out from under Rome’s religious control, and declaring himself as the reigning head of State to also be the new head of the Church. This new branch of the Christian Church, neither Roman Catholic nor truly Protestant, became known as the Anglican Church or the Church of England. King Henry acted essentially as its "Pope". His first act was to further defy the wishes of Rome by funding the printing of the scriptures in English, the first legal English Bible, just for spite. The ebb and flow of freedom continued through the 1540's A.D..and into the 1550's A.D.. After King Henry VIII, King Edward VI took the throne, and after his death, the reign of Queen "Bloody" Mary was the next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English. She was possessed in her quest to return England to the Roman Church. In 1555, John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers and Thomas Cranmer were both burned at the stake. Mary went on to burn reformers at the stake by the hundreds for the "crime" of being a Protestant. This era was known as the Marian Exile, and the refugees fled from England with little hope of ever seeing their home or friends again. In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in Geneva, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe, publisher of the famous Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which is to this day the only exhaustive reference work on the persecution and martyrdom of Early Christians and Protestants from the first century up to the mid-16th century, as well as Thomas Sampson (1517-1589) the Puritan Theologian and William Whittingham (1524-1579 A.D.) the English Bible Scholar. There, with the protection of the great theologian John Calvin (1509-1564 A.D.) author of the most famous theological book ever published, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and John Knox (1510-1572 A.D), the great Reformer of the Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued in exile.
1560 A.D.: The Geneva Bible was published in 1560 A.D. William Whitenham and Thomas Sampson, along with other English exiles in Geneva during "Bloody Mary’s" reign in England, produced it. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible to add numbered verses to the chapters, so that referencing specific passages would be easier. Every chapter was also accompanied by extensive marginal notes and references so thorough and complete that the Geneva Bible is also considered the first English "Study Bible". William Shakespeare quotes hundreds of times in his plays from the Geneva translation of the Bible. The Geneva Bible became the Bible of choice for over 100 years of English speaking Christians. Between 1560 A.D. and 1644 A.D. at least 144 editions of this Bible were published. Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that its translators were influenced much more by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva Bible itself retains over 90% of William Tyndale's original English translation. The Geneva in fact, remained more popular than the King James Version until decades after its original release in 1611 A.D. The Geneva holds the honor of being the first Bible taken to America, and the Bible of the Puritans and Pilgrims. It is truly the "Bible of the Protestant Reformation."
1568 A.D.: With the end of Queen Mary's bloody reign, the reformers could safely return to England. The Anglican Church, now under Queen Elizabeth I, reluctantly tolerated the printing and distribution of Geneva version Bibles in England. The marginal notes, which were vehemently against the institutional Church of the day, did not rest well with the rulers of the day. Another version, one with a less inflammatory tone was desired, and the copies of the Great Bible were getting to be decades old. In 1568 A.D., a revision of the Great Bible known as the Bishop's Bible was introduced. Despite 19 editions being printed between 1568 A.D. and 1606 A.D., this Bible, referred to as the "rough draft of the King James Version", never gained much of a foothold of popularity among the people because they preferred the Geneva Bible.
1609 A.D: By the 1580's A.D., the Roman Catholic Church saw that it had lost the battle to suppress the will of God: that His Holy Word would be available in the English language. In 1582 A.D., the Church of Rome surrendered their fight for "Latin only" and decided that if the Bible was to be available in English, they would at least have an official Roman Catholic English translation. And so, using the corrupt and inaccurate Latin Vulgate as the only source text, they went on to publish an English Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier. Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims New Testament The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 A.D. at the College in the city of Douay. The combined product is commonly referred to as the "Douay/Rheims" Version. In 1589 A.D., Dr. William Fulke (1538-1589 A.D.) of Cambridge published the "Fulke's Refutation", in which he printed in parallel columns the Bishops Version alongside the Rheims Version, attempting to show the error and distortion of the Roman Church's corrupt compromise of an English version of the Bible.
1611 A.D.: With the death of Queen Elizabeth I, Prince James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Protestant clergy approached the new King in 1604 A D. and announced their desire for a new translation to replace the Bishop's Bible first printed in 1568 A.D. They knew that the Geneva Version had won the hearts of the people because of its excellent scholarship, accuracy, and exhaustive commentary. However, they did not want the controversial marginal notes (proclaiming the Pope an Anti-Christ, etc.) Essentially, the leaders of the church desired a Bible for the people, with scriptural references only for word clarification or cross-references. This "translation to end all translations" (for a while at least) was the result of the combined effort of about fifty scholars. They took into consideration: The Tyndale New Testament, The Coverdale Bible, The Matthews Bible, The Great Bible, The Geneva Bible, and even the Rheims New Testament. The great revision of the Bishop's Bible had begun. From 1605 A.D. to 1606 A.D .the scholars engaged in private research. From 1607 A.D. to 1609 A.D. the work was assembled. In 1610 A.D. the work went to press, and in 1611 A.D. the first of the huge (16 inch tall) pulpit folios known today as "The 1611 King James Bible" came off the printing press. Starting just one year after the huge 1611 pulpit-size King James Bibles were printed and chained to every church pulpit in England; printing then began on the earliest normal-size printings of the King James Bible. These were produced so individuals could have their own personal copy of the Bible. The Anglican Church’s King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant Church’s Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant Christian churches embraced the King James Bible exclusively as the "only" legitimate English language translation, yet it is not even a Protestant translation. It was printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by authorities who throughout most of history were hostile to Protestants, and killed them. While many Protestants are quick to assign the full blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that even after England broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500’s A.D., the Church of England, The Anglican Church continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600’s A.D. Throughout the 1600’s A.D., as the Puritans and the Pilgrims fled the religious persecution of England to cross the Atlantic and start a new free nation in America, they took with them their precious Geneva Bible, and rejected the King’s Bible. America was founded upon the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible. Protestants where largely unaware of their own history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible (which is textually 95% the same as the King James Version, but 50 years older than the King James Version, and not influenced by the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament that the King James translators admittedly took into consideration. Nevertheless, the King James Bible turned out to be an excellent and accurate translation, and it became the most printed book in the history of the world, and the only book with one billion copies in print. In fact, for over 250 years, until the appearance of the English Revised Version of 1881-1885A.D. the King James Version reigned without rival. Although the first Bible printed in America was done in the native Algonquin Indian Language by John Eliot (1604-1690 A.D.) in 1663; the first English language Bible to be printed in America by Robert Aitken (1734-1782 A.D.) in 1782 A.D .was a King James Version. Robert Aitken’s 1782 Bible was also the only Bible ever authorized by the United States Congress. He was commended by President George Washington for providing Americans with Bibles during the embargo of imported English goods due to the Revolutionary War. In 1808, Robert’s daughter, Jane Aitken, would become the first woman to ever print a Bible and did so in America. In 1791 A.D. Isaac Collins (1746 -1817 A.D.) vastly improved upon the quality and size of the typesetting of American Bibles and produced the first "Family Bible" printed in America, also a King James Version. Also in 1791, Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831 A.D.) published the first Illustrated Bible printed in America, in the King James Version. While Noah Webster (1758-1843 A.D.) just a few years after producing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, would produce his own modern translation of the English Bible in 1833 A.D.; the public remained too loyal to the King James Version for Webster’s version to have much impact. It was not really until the 1880’s A.D. that England’s own planned replacement for their King James Bible, the English Revised Version (E.R.V.) would become the first English language Bible to gain popular acceptance as a Post-King James Version modern-English Bible. The Americans responded to England’s E.R.V. Bible by publishing the nearly-identical American Standard Version (A.S.V.) in 1901. It was also widely-accepted and embraced by churches throughout America for many decades as the leading modern-English version of the Bible. In the 1971, it was again revised and called (New American Standard Version Bible, often referred to as the N.A.S.V. or N.A.S.B. or N.A.S. In 1973, the New International Version (N.I.V.) was produced, which was offered as a "dynamic equivalent" translation into modern English. The N.I.V. was designed not for "word-for-word" accuracy, but rather, for "phrase-for-phrase" accuracy, and ease of reading even at a Junior High-School reading level. It was meant to appeal to a broader and in some instances less-educated cross-section of the general public. In 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers produced what they called the "New King James Version". Their original intent was to keep the basic wording of the King James to appeal to King James Version loyalists, while only changing the most obscure words and the Elizabethan "thee, thy, thou" pronouns. This was an interesting marketing ploy, however, upon discovering that this was not enough of a change for them to be able to legally copyright the result, they had to make more significant revisions, which defeated their purpose in the first place. It was never taken seriously by scholars, but it has enjoyed some degree of public acceptance, simply because of its clever "New King James Version" marketing name. In 2002, a major attempt was made to bridge the gap between the simple readability of the N.I.V., and the extremely precise accuracy of the N.A.S.B. This translation is called the English Standard Version (E.S.V.)
There have literally been hundreds of translations in English of the Bible. There are five main translation families that make up over 90 percent of all Bibles. They are: *The King James Version Family: *The New International Version Family: New International Version (NIV) Today’s New International Version (TNIV) *The New Living Translations. *The New American Standard* Paraphrase Translations. So now the question, which translation is best? How can we know? The answers are clear and definite. For the answers to these questions we must look at two previously mentioned elements involved with translation: Manuscripts and Textual Criticism.
Manuscripts
Manuscripts are the copies of the original autographs of the Bible. Many exist and some are better than others and one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament stand out in superiority, The Manuscripts themselves are not inspired as the original autographs. Their reliability is assured because of the vast quantity that have been found and preserved.
The Old Testament Books
There are two predominate manuscripts that were used for Old Testament Bible translation over the last. approximately 2,400 years.
1. The Septuagint: Septuagint (sometimes abbreviated LXX) is the name given to the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures. The Septuagint has its origin in Alexandria, Egypt and was translated between 300-200 BC. Widely used among Hellenistic Jews, this Greek translation was produced because many Jews spread throughout the empire were beginning to lose their Hebrew language. The process of translating the Hebrew to Greek also gave many non-Jews a glimpse into Judaism. According to an ancient document called the Letter of Aristeas, written in the second century, it is believed that 70 to 72 Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (309-246 B.C.) to carry out the task of translation. The term "Septuagint" means seventy in Latin, and the text is so named to the credit of these 70 scholars. The Septuagint was also a source of the Old Testament for early Christians during the first few centuries A.D. Many early Christians spoke and read Greek, thus they relied on the Septuagint translation for most of their understanding of the Old Testament. The New Testament writers also relied heavily on the Septuagint, as a majority of Old Testament quotes cited in the New Testament are quoted directly from the Septuagint, others are quoted from the Hebrew texts. Some modern Bible translations also use the Septuagint alongside Hebrew manuscripts as their source text. Besides the Old Latin versions, the LXX is also the basis for the Slavonic, the Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Old Testament.
2. The Masoretic Text: (MT): The Old Testament "oracles of God" were providentially committed to the Jewish, or Hebrew people. "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit [is there] of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. (Romans 3:1-2). The ancient Masoretes devoted their lives to perfection in preserving and copying the Old Testament books. The story of their work is a marvelous testimony to God's preservation of His word to all generations. There is very little controversy regarding the Hebrew text. The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible regarded almost universally as the official version of the Tanakh. It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah. The Masoretic Text is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent years, csince the twentieth century, also for Catholic Bibles. In modern times the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown the Masoretic Text to be nearly identical to some texts of the Tanakh dating from 200 B.C. The MasoreticText was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the ninth and tenth centuries. Though the consonants differ little from the text generally accepted in the early second century and also differ little from some of the Dead Sea texts that are even older,, it has numerous differences of both greater and lesser significance when compared to manuscripts of the Septuagint. The Hebrew word, "mesorah" refers to the transmission of a tradition. In a very broad sense it can refer to the entire chain of Jewish tradition, but in reference to the Masoretic Text the word mesorah has a very specific meaning: the diacritic markings of the text of the Hebrew Bible and concise marginal notes in manuscripts and later printings of the Hebrew Bible which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. The oldest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic Text date from approximately the ninth century A.D. Since the Septuagint is a translation, scholars speculate if it accurately reflects the Hebrew scriptures of the 2nd century BC, a close examination of the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text show slight variations. Are these errors in translation, or are the Septuagint and Masoretic Text based on slightly different Hebrew manuscripts? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has helped to shed light on this question. Discovered in the Qumran region near the Dead Sea beginning in 1947, these scrolls are dated to as early as 200 BC and contain parts of every book in the Old Testament except Esther. Comparisons of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint show that where there are differences between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint, approximately 95% of those differences are shared between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic text, while only 5% of those differences are shared between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint. Does this mean that the Septuagint is unreliable and that our Old Testament is wrought with contradictory sources? No. It is imperative to note that these "variations" are extremely minor (i.e., grammatical errors, spelling differences or missing words) and do not affect the meaning of sentences and paragraphs. (An exception is the book of Jeremiah, in which the actual passages are arranged differently.) None of the differences, however, come close to affecting any area of teaching or doctrine. The majority of the Septuagint, Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls, are remarkably similar and have dispelled unfounded theories that the Biblical text has been corrupted by time and conspiracy. Furthermore, these variations do not call into question the infallibility of God in preserving His word. Although the original documents are inerrant, translators and scribes are human beings and are thus prone to making slight errors in translation and copying Hebrew scribal rules attest to how precise the scribes did their work. Even then, the Bible has redundancy built into its text, and anything significant is told more than once. If grammatical mistakes were introduced that makes a point unclear, it would be clarified in several other places in scripture.
The New Testament Books
There are two present sets of original manuscripts that translators have used since the New Testament was complete. One is the Received Text which comes from the Byzantine era (300-1400 A.D.) which was at that time more closely associated to the true apostolic fathers who were the eye witnesses to Christ’s life, death and resurrection. The other text that seems to be a favorite for the ones who would like to change or twist the translation to mean what they want it to mean are using the Vaticanus or Siniaticus Greek texts. This text was considered by scholars in the Middle Ages to be not only spurious but in error and was discarded as credible. These manuscripts had been on the shelf at the Vatican library for some many years untouched because they realized the monk's errors. Because it was not used and was found older than the most recent copies of the Received Text, modern translators who are perverting the truth by using it thought it was a better one to use. Avoid any of the translations which use this text rather than the Received Text. We will continue to see why.
Textual Criticism
Textual criticism is the method used to examine the vast number of manuscripts to determine the correct composition of the original autographs. Textual Criticism encompasses the practice of studying the manuscripts of the Bible with the goal of reproducing the original text of the Bible from this vast wealth of manuscripts. This is a necessary task because there exists minor variations among the biblical manuscripts. So, unless one manuscript is arbitrarily chosen as a standard by which to judge all others, then one must employ textual criticism to compare all manuscripts to derive the reading which would most closely reflect the original autographs. When textual critics look at all 5,600 Greek New Testament manuscripts they find that they can group these manuscripts into text-types or families with other similar manuscripts. There are three text-types. *The Alexandrian text-type, found in most papyri and in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus all of which date prior to 350 A.D. *The Western text-type, found both in Greek manuscripts and in translations into other languages, especially Latin. *The Byzantine text-type, found in the vast majority of later Greek manuscripts. Over 90 percent of all 5,600 Greek New Testament manuscripts are of the Byzantine text-type. We are dealing with the Word of God. It is not enough that the translations be accurate; the Greek text underlying the translations must be the correct one. The new translations use an incorrect Greek text. Another group of New Testament scholars argues that the readings of the majority of manuscripts are to be preferred to the readings of a few older manuscripts. This is referred to as the Majority Text or Byzantine Text theory. Because this text has been handed down and preserved by the church through the centuries, it is also referred to as the Traditional Text or Ecclesiastical Text. According to the Westcott-Hort theory, manuscripts are to be weighed, not counted. After all, it is alleged, all of the Byzantine Text came from one related family. Hence, the great number of them carries little weight. According to the Byzantine Text theory, on the other hand, greater age is not nearly so important as number. First, one text being older than another in no way implies that it is superior; the older text itself could be errant. They were more than likely set aside as obsolete or inferior. Too, the weight of textual evidence now reveals that the Byzantine Text readings go back at least to the time of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. The fact that we do not possess any early copies of the Byzantine Text is easily explained: (1) the climate in Egypt, where the early Alexandrian Text manuscripts were found, is more arid, thus any text would last longer there; (2) the Egyptian manuscripts were probably not used, due to their corrupt nature, and therefore lasted longer, whereas the majority of manuscripts was frequently used and these manuscripts wore out. Second, if numbers of similar manuscripts have a single ancestor, as is alleged to be the case with the Byzantine Text; it does not necessarily mean that the greater number carries little weight. It may well imply that the copyists of that day believed that ancestor to be the manuscript most faithful to the original. The manuscripts that are fewer in number were in all probability rejected by copyists; their scarcity indicates their corrupt nature. (31) Further, it is not the case that the numerous manuscripts of the Byzantine Text have all come from one common parent. Indeed, there is strong evidence to suggest that the Byzantine Text documents come from numerous parts of Christendom, and are not related geographically. Third, the churches in the East used the Byzantine Text for over 1000 years prior to the Reformation. The churches of the Reformation used the same text for another 350 years, and some still continue to use it. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that this same text was preserved "throughout the second and third centuries and down into the fourth century." If the scholars who have followed Westcott-Hort’s theory in opting for the Alexandrian Text are correct, then the church, in many cases, has been without the most authentic text of the New Testament for nearly two millennia. This in itself does not indicate that God has "by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages" the New Testament text. This erroneous approach to textual criticism is more rationalistic than Biblical. It is highly subjective, rather than Biblically objective The Byzantine Text theory, which fully adheres to the doctrine of divine providential preservation of the Scriptures, provides a superior text, and translations should be based upon it, not upon the Alexandrian Text.
Textual History
Two main lines of Greek texts exist, diverging in minor but important ways. The text used almost exclusively until the 1800’s was Textus Receptus. However, manuscript discoveries in Alexandria changed some scholars views. But are those manuscripts reliable? In 1525, Erasmus compiled the first Greek text using texts from Byzantium, which had been in use previously for centuries, forming the basis for what would later be called Textus Receptus, and the main text the King James Version translators used. Although they had the other Alexandrian texts available (Codex Siniaticus, etc), they obviously felt the Alexandrian text base (later to become Westcott-Hort) was unsuitable. Westcott and Hort compiled a Greek New Testament starting in 1853 and finished 28 years later, relying heavily on the Alexandrian Codex Vaticanus and Codex Siniaticus, changing the traditional Greek in over 8,000 places.. The Alexandrian texts will be refered to collectively as Westcott-Hort. How they edited the text, the reasons why and their background becomes critical to understanding the newer translations derived from Westcott-Hort’s work. Only two modern translations use the Textus Receptus Greek text (King James Version, New King JamesVersion; all the others New American Standard Bible, New International Version, etc use Westcott-Hort or the Alexandrian texts. The influence of early Gnostic heresy runs through Westcott-Hort’s text For our uses, Byzantine, Textus Receptus and the Majority Text will be treated as equivalent, and simply called Textus Receptus, while Westcott-Hort, UBS, and Nestle-Aland will be treated as the Alexandrian line and referred to as Westcott and Hort or Alexandrian. Textual criticism actually began in the sixteenth century. The Reformers and the later Puritans were very much aware of this discipline. Believing in the principle of sola Scriptura, they were strong advocates of the belief that God has preserved His Word in the majority of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, which manuscripts were in basic agreement. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, used a handful of copies in which numerous variants existed in an attempt to refute the principle of sola Scriptura. Without an infallible church to tell us what is and what is not the actual Word of God, said Rome, one can never be sure of the true text of Scripture. Romanism favored a few manuscripts with numerous differences, over the majority of manuscripts that were in basic agreement, whereas the Reformers and the Puritans, for the most part, took the opposite stand. Therefore, textual criticism over the last century has followed the principles used by Rome (and Enlightenment Rationalism), not those of the Reformers and Puritans. And that practice has led the church astray. We have been told that a few texts upon which the new translations are based are better than the majority of texts upon which the King James and the New King James Versions are based. As this chapter has shown, however, this is not true. The Westcott-Hort theory is not dependable.
Who were Westcott and Hort?
Brook Foss Westcott (1825-1903) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) were two non-Christian Anglican ministers. Fully steeped in the Alexandrian philosophy that "there is no perfect Bible", they had a vicious distaste for the King James Bible and its Antiochian Greek text, the Textus Receptus. The church used accepted texts for centuries, while the "critical" text for only the last 100 years or so. Westcott/Hort relied heavily on Alexandrian manuscripts Alexandria, Egypt was the center of Gnostic heresy the first few centuries A.D. Consider the words of Westcott/Hort themselves: "The Book that has engaged me most is Darwin, whatever may be thought of it, it is a book that one is proud to be a contemporary with. I must work out and examine the argument in more detail, but at present my feeling is strong that is unanswerable."Fenton Hort. Life of Hort. Vol.1 pg 416. "No one now, I suppose, holds that the first three chapters of Genesis, , for example, give a literal history-I could never undertstnad how anyone reading them with open eyes could think they did…"Brooks Westcott.Life of Westcott. Vol. II. Pg 19. These men did not believe in orthodox Christian theology? The problem stems from allowing their gnostic ideas to influence their Bible work. Everyone has bias, the idea is to minimize it as much as possible. Even if their views don’t matter or didn’t influence their work, the changes they made to the text, violate the better manuscripts, and introduce contradictions in the Bible.Westcott/Hort delete Matthew 18:11, "For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost." and Acts 8:37 "And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." entirely from all the modern translations with the exception of the New American Standard. Other verses in the newer translations are changed as will be demonstrated. The Textus Receptus: basis for King James Version/New King James Version was the received text until about 1900 A.D. when the critical text became popular, while the modern translations generally do not acknowledge Westcott/Hort, instead referring to Nestle/Aland or UBS Greek text (which is basically Westcott/Hort). Each modern translation then decides how much to follow Westcott/Hort (New American Standard Bible less, New International Version more and it appears in the English standard version the most.
Gnostic Influence — Westcott and Hort
Early in church history a heretical group sprang up called the Gnostics, accepting the Greek idea of dualism between spirit and matter. All matter in Gnostic teaching was evil; since all matter is evil, Jesus really didn’t have a physical body and no physical resurrection occurred. The Gnostics also believed they had special knowledge, leading to spiritual elitism in the early church. The Gnostic’s teaching on the evilness of material leads to two errors. On one side was a form of asceticism — the path to heaven comes by denying yourself (the extreme puritanical view). On the other side, your body (since it is evil) doesn’t matter. The Gnostic heresy that Jesus didn’t have a body denies His death, physical resurrection, and the historical demonstration for His atonement for our sins. The apostle John wrote his first letter (1 John) which in part, combats Gnostic heresy. John writes he saw and handled Jesus — Jesus had a physical body. Even more, John warned anyone stating Jesus did not come in the flesh is not of God. "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world." (1 John 4:2-3 KJV) John’s one statement debunks all of Gnostic heresy. Why then is academia so enamored by it? Why would Westcott-Hort follow such heresy when it so obviously contradicts Biblical teaching? Why have we allowed people who obviously rejected Biblical teaching to edit God’s Word? Westcott and Hort edited the original Greek as they compiled their edition, but as we shall see, Gnostic philosophy heavily influenced both men. The Greek texts they used appear footnoted in the NASB and NIV Bible as "the oldest and best manuscripts". Yes, they’re the oldest, but are they the best? Westcott and Hort held strange theological views, do we trust them with God’s Word? In light of John’s warning about Gnostic heresy, can we trust these men to compile an accurate Greek text? As we’ll see in the examples, they allowed their un-orthodox views to influence their compilation of the Holy Scriptures. The Bible must be considered an integrated message to be used as whole and complete. As soon as editing begins, contradictions and other problems arise, as we’ll see in the examples section. No way exists for Westcott-Hort or anyone to edit the Biblical text and keep it consistent. If the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, any internal inconsistencies in a manuscript cause the rejection of that manuscript.
Textus Receptus
The King James Version (KJV) and a few of the modern translations in use today, used certain Greek texts from which all accurate New Testament translations are derived. Foremost amongst these is the Traditional Received Text (Textus Receptus), also called the Byzantine Text or the Majority Text because it is based on the vast majority of manuscripts still in existence. These extant manuscripts, abbreviated as (MSS) were brought together by various editors such as Lucian of Antioch (250?-312 A.D.) Erasmus (1466-1536A.D.), Robert Estienne, known as "Stefanus" (1503-1559 A.D.)Theodore Beza (1519-1605 A.D.) and Bonaventure (1583-1652 A.D.) and his nephew, Abraham Elsevier (1592-1652 A.D.), to form the text known as Textus Receptus, the name given to the Majority Text in the seventeenth century. The most notable editor of all was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536A.D.) one of the greatest scholars the world has ever known. When the early Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decided to translate the scriptures directly from Greek into the languages of Europe, they selected Textus Receptus as their foundation Greek document. It is vitally important to understand why they did so.
Copyrights
The fact that most modern Bible versions are copyrighted seems to be in consequential at first. However, in order to copyright someone else's writings, a person has to make a significant amount of changes in the other person's document, so that they can call it their own and qualify for copyright protection. The 2005 Encarta Encyclopedia says this about the requirements for a document to be copyrighted: "To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be both fixed and original. The law considers a work to be fixed if it is recorded in some permanent format. Acceptable ways of fixing a work include writing it down, storing it on a computer floppy disk, recording it on videotape, or sculpting it in marble. If a poet thinks of a new poem and recites it to an audience before writing it down, copyright does not protect the poem because it is not fixed. To be original, the work must not be copied from previously existing material and must display at least a reasonable amount of creativity." (Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2005 © 1993-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.) Now if a new translation is copyrighted, that means it is an original document of the "translators" and displays a reasonable amount of creativity of the "translators". Be careful in using a copyrighted Bible. You might be following an original document of men that is based on the Word of God but which has added to or removed words from the Word of God. At the same time this is not to say that a version that is not copyrighted has not been tampered with the Words of God. Another problem with a copyrighted Bible is that most of the copyrighted translations prohibit the use of their translation where the quoted verses account for more than 50% of the total work in which they are quoted. You also may not quote more than 1000 verses. Copyrighted translations also prohibit the copying of an entire Book of the Bible, even for free distribution. The NIV requires a $10,000 licensing fee plus a royalty of $10 for every copy that is made of the NIV. That is making merchandise of the Word of God and it is wrong.
Greek New Testaments and Missing Verses
An even more important factor in choosing a translation is the Greek New Testament it was translated from. The Greek New Testaments used to translate from are not all the same. The modern Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society's Greek New Testament which most modern translations are translated from is missing many words, phrases, and entire verses. By researching the Greek New Testaments, the many fragments of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century Greek New Testaments, and the writings of early church fathers to find out which Greek Bible was correct. What is found is that the Textus Receptus Greek New Testament is the most accurate. This is the Greek New Testament that the King James Version is translated from. The Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society's Greek New Testament is not complete and is not trustworthy. Unfortunately this was the Greek New Testament used by most modern translations like the New International Version.
Why The King James is the Best Bible Translation
When considering Bible translation, many issues arise. For example up until the last 100 years the King James had been the most used Bible in Protestantism for 300 years prior. 1.What you’re translating from. Two lines of Greek texts exist with differences. 2. How you translate what you’ve got. Most people focus on number two, the easy-to-read argument, but completely ignore number one.
Why this information is so important
Satan’s very first attack, his first strategy in Genesis 3:1 becomes casting doubt on God’s word. Recalling Satan’s words "Has God really said?" confusing Eve and causing her to sin. Satan realizes casting doubt on what God actually says can be a winning strategy for him. What could cause more confusion than casting doubt that the Bible is not the exact Word of God? This strategy continues today with the Bible translation debate. Is the King James really the best translation? What about the old language? Shouldn’t newer translations be used? However, in view of Satan’s strategy of creating doubt in God’s word the translation and preservation of the Bible becomes critically important. Just any translation will not do. Anyone translating between languages quickly understands one thing, it’s impossible to completely and accurately translate between languages. The translator must always choose different wording to convey the original idea; sometimes it’s impossible to express the idea of one language in another. As such, the original always surpasses the copy for accuracy; translation forces a compromise of sorts, subject to the personal ideas of the translator which explains why we must understand the personal ideas of the translator .The idea a perfect translation exists quickly disappears they all have mistakes, understanding which translations have which problems is important.
The Textual Argument
King James Version advocates make the claim that the King James Bible is translated from the best original manuscripts. The 1525 Daniel Bomberg, 2nd edition of the Jacob Ben-Chayyim Masoretic text for the Old Testament and the Received Text, originally published by Roman Catholic scholar Desiderius Erasmus for the New Testament. These are the best original language texts because: • They represent the majority of ancient, manuscript witnesses. • These ancient manuscripts were used consistently and with out interruption by God’s believing people. • These ancient manuscripts were never lost to the "sea of time" or ever laid aside by God’s people. They were continually copied and re-copied and show signs of being worn out from use, thus indicating the confidence God’s people placed in them as being God’s Holy Word. On the other hand, the original language texts used to translate modern versions must be rejected because: • The manuscripts utilized by modern translations are few and represent the minority of witnesses • These manuscripts have their origin in and around Alexandria, Egypt, an area known for false(Gnostic) teaching. • The manuscripts utilized by modern translations are in pristine condition, indicating they were never used by God’s people. • These manuscripts give the appearance they were altered or corrupted by heretical men who desired to undermine Christian doctrine.
The Historical Argument
The King James Bible, (KJV) demonstrates God’s hand of blessing by how it has impacted world history. • The forerunner English translations (along with the original language texts used in translating the KJV) where all instrumental in the shaping of the Reformation led by Martin Luther (1483-1546), John Calvin (1509-1564 A.D.) and John Knox (1510-1572 A.D.) • It was the translation carried to the new world by the Pilgrims and Puritans • It was the translation utilized in the preaching of the two Great Awakenings in America. Both Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758 A.D.) and George Whitfield (1714-1770 A.D) used the KJV when they preached. • It was the translation carried around the world in the great missionary endeavors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.• All of the wonderful Christian literature published in the 1600s by the Puritans and reformers used the KJV.* The KJV has been time tested and will be 400 years old in 2011. It is the most important and best translation of the original languages into English.
The Texts of the Bible used by the Trinitarian Bible Society
The Trinitarian Bible society has been in existence since December 7, 1831. It is an organization that has been providing uncorrupted Bibles for the world ever since. Here are the reasons why they have used the text they have to produce the best Bible translation and why.
The Hebrew Text
"The Society uses the Hebrew Masoretic Text as the textual basis for the Old Testament in its translations. Great care was taken by the Jews over the centuries to preserve the Hebrew text in its purest form; their work produced what is commonly called the Masoretic Text. This text has been the standard Hebrew text for over one thousand years. When translating the Hebrew into other languages, occasionally ancient translations such as the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and the Aramaic Targums are consulted because of the difficulty of the Hebrew. But, because God gave the text originally in Hebrew, these ancient translations must be treated as secondary to the Hebrew. The Masoretic Text is the most reliable form of the text of the Old Testament, and is the basis of all of the Society's Old Testament publications."
The Greek Text
"The Society uses the form of the Greek text of the New Testament known as the Textus Receptus or Received Text. This is the text which underlies the New Testament of the Authorised Version and the other Reformation translations. It is a faithful representation of the text which the church in different parts of the world has used for centuries. It is the result of the textual studies of conservative scholars during the years both before and after the Reformation, and represents for the most part over 5,000 available Greek manuscripts. The Society believes this text is superior to the texts used by the United Bible Societies and other Bible publishers, which texts have as their basis a relatively few seriously defective manuscripts from the 4th century and which have been compiled using 20th century rationalistic principles of scholarship. We can have the confident assurance that the Word of God as it is found in the Textus Receptus New Testament is a trustworthy representation of the text as originally given. God has provided that many generations of believers have printed editions of the Greek text and Bibles translated from them. For the most part, the Textus Receptus follows the Greek manuscripts which were in widespread use for centuries. God continued to preserve His New Testament by guiding His people to use a text which, although in a printed form, nevertheless is God's holy Word from eternity. May Christians reject the modern Greek texts and the versions which follow them and use the Textus Receptus Greek New Testament and the Authorised Version, which God has blessed for many centuries!"
Principles of Translation used by the Trinitarian Bible Society
"In today's world, people are far more concerned with having the Scriptures in a form which is easy to read, a form which is sometimes already interpreted or paraphrased so that it reads like a storybook. Thus many Bible societies follow a principle known as 'dynamic equivalence' in translation. The underlying principle in dynamic equivalence is an attempt to reproduce in the receptor language the same effect which the original Scriptures had on those to whom they were first addressed; the dynamic equivalence translators seek to give the same thoughts or ideas to present-day readers that the Bible would have given to its first readers. It is attempted with little regard for the wording of the Greek and Hebrew texts. The actual words are no longer considered to be as important as the thoughts or ideas behind them. Modern man does not have the thoughts of the writers of Scripture; we do, however, have their words, and must faithfully render those words into the languages of the peoples of the world. The Society, believing in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, that the very words of the Bible and not merely the thoughts or ideas are inspired and inerrant, uses the principle of translation known as 'formal equivalence'. This means that, whenever possible, the grammar, form, vocabulary and syntax of the Greek and Hebrew are followed. The Society seeks to follow the principle "as literal as possible, as free as necessary", so that every word of the text is taken into account in translation. These are the normal, traditional principles of translation, the principles used in the translation of Scripture."
The King James Bible vs The New King James
No English translation is without error. However, when we study the Bible we want to have the most accurate translation we can get our hands on. The King James Version (KJV) is a more literal translation than other popular translations. We will first look at a few examples from the New King James and then a few from the New International Version . The point here is to illustrate that the King James Version is the best Bible translation. When the KJV was translated the translators gave a greater effort to translate each word whereas other English translations have sacrificed some of the word-for-word accuracy in favor of conveying a paraphrased rendering.
Genesis 22:8
KJV: "And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together."
NKJ: "And Abraham said, "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." So the two of them went together."
The NKJ hides the foreshadowing that Christ Himself would be the Lamb slain.
Matthew 7:14
KJV: "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
NKJ: "Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it."
The NKJ contradicts Matthew 11:30 which states, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." What the NKJ translators have done is placed a small amount of commentary in this verse by inserting their interpretation of what God meant by the word "strait."
First Corinthians 1:21
KJV: "For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."
NKJ: "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe."
The KJV calls the preaching foolish and the NKJ implies that the message itself is foolish.
Second Corinthians 2:17
KJV: "For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ."
NKJ: "For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ."
Corrupting the Word of God is a more serious issue than peddling. This verse is watered down in the NKJ.
First Timothy 6:5
KJV: "Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself."
NKJ: "useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself."
The phrase "supposing that gain is godliness" has been changed to "who suppose that godliness is a means of gain," which is a reversal in meaning.
King James Bible vs New International Version (NIV)
The NIV is the best selling English translation today. It is translated from the Westcott & Hort-Alexandrian-Sinicitus-Vactinus Manuscripts. Just one of the biggest concerns one should have with the NIV is the fact that 16 verses have been completely omitted: Matthew 17:21, Matthew 18:11, Matthew 23:14, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44, Mark 9:46, Mark 11:26, Mark 15:28, Luke 17:36, Luke 23:17, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, Acts 15:34, Acts 24:7, Acts 28:29, Romans 16:24. This is a direct violation of the Word of God. Revelation 22:18-19, "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book."There are also many poorly translated verses. Some examples are as follows:
Joshua 3:4KJV: "Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore."
NIV: "Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it."
Numbers in the Bible often have spiritual significance. Converting "2,000 cubits" into "1,000 yards" hides the number 2,000. In the historical sense of the story this conversion doesn’t impact the story, but if we are doing a number study then the units (cubits or yards) is irrelevant. It’s the number itself that carries spiritual significance.
Isaiah 14:12
KJV: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"
NIV: "How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!"
The NIV calls Lucifer the morning star, which may confuse the reader because Revelation 22:16 refers to Christ as the morning star.
Matthew 5:22a
KJV: "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment:"
NIV: "But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."
Most printings of the NIV leave out the phrase "without a cause", implying that all anger is a sin. However, Ephesians 4:26 tells us that not all anger itself is a sin. Moreover, Mark 3:5 says that Jesus was angry with the people in the synagogue. Is He subject to the judgment? No, obviously not.
Matthew 19:9
KJV: "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."
NIV: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
The NIV leaves out the last part of the verse which teaches that marrying a divorced person is a sin.
Mark 6:37KJV: "He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?"
NIV: "But he answered, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "That would take eight months of a man's wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?"
Again, the NIV has converted a numerical phrase to make its historical meaning more readily understood. The disadvantage to doing this is that we lose any spiritual truth that God might be teaching through the phrase "two hundred pennyworth of bread."
Mark 10:24
KJV: "And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!"
NIV: "The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!"
The NIV omits the phrase "for them that trust in riches," altering the meaning of this verse.
Phillipians 2:6KJV: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"
NIV: "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped"
These are two very different statements.
1 John 5:7-8
KJV: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one."
NIV: "For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement."
Clearly the NIV omits a large portion of this passage.
Many of the omissions and errors mentioned above are corrected in footnotes that have been inserted in many of the NIV printings. Of course, it would be more ideal to read a translation that does not require the reader to factor in footnotes in order to get the full Word of God.
The King James Bible: 1. Uses a Superior Text. 2. Uses Superior Translators 3. Uses A Superior Translating Technique and Method. 4. Has Superior Theology.
Why all the Thee’s and Thou’s?
The editors of the New King James claimed that they made the King James Version clearer by "updating archaic words." One example of this is the updating of Old English words like "ye" and "thou" to "you." What many people don’t realize is that words like "ye" and "thou" were no longer used in everyday speech after the 13th century. The King James Bible was translated in the 17th century so those words were long since considered "obsolete" when the KJV was translated; so why did the translators use them? Well, the Hebrew and Greek languages both contain a different word for the second person singular and second person plural pronouns. Today we use "you" for both singular and plural, as did the people of the 17th century. However, the King James Version translators desired to be as faithful as possible to the original manuscripts so they could not use "you" every time because it does not distinguish between singular and plural as "ye and "thou" do.
Summery
The King James Bible: 1. Uses a Superior Text. 2. Uses Superior Translators 3. Uses A Superior Translating Technique and Method. 4. has Superior Theology.
Accurate Translations
As noted above, the controversy here is not over the Old, but the New Testament, at least as regards the textual issues. Just in the last century there have been numerous new translations, including the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, and the New King James Version. Most of these new translations (the New King James Version being an exception) are based upon a Greek text of the New Testament, known as the Alexandrian Text or Critical Text, that differs from the Greek text underlying the King James Version and New King James Version, known as the Received Text (Textus Receptus), in over 5000 ways. Most newer translations rely heavily on a handful of early Greek manuscripts Two in particular: Codex Sinaiticus more predominantly, Codex Vaticanus, that were discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The theory that these documents are to be favored, primarily due to their greater age, was promulgated by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort. If it were true that the earlier codices are to be considered as the most trustworthy, then it would seem that they ought to differ the least among themselves. But this is not the case; even among these few manuscripts, there are numerous differences. The Westcott-Hort theory further maintains that some 85-90 percent of Greek manuscripts represented by the Received Text, which, unlike the Alexandrian Text, are in substantial agreement, underwent a radical editing process in the fourth century. Hence, they are unreliable. Other studies, however, have shown that this is simply not the case. "History is completely silent," wrote Professor Harry Sturz, "with regard to any revision of the Byzantine [Received] Text." As a matter of fact, there is evidence to show that the Alexandrian manuscripts were the ones tampered with, and these deliberate changes are the reason that these documents are so dissimilar. As William Einwechter commented: "Due to this nearly total rejection of the value of the Byzantine [Received] Text as a witness to the original autographs, the scholars have established the MCT [Alexandrian Text] on the basis of only 10-15% of the available manuscripts." Although the Alexandrian text is older, they are fewer, because they were set aside, in favor of the Received text. The Received text was copied and copied, the Alexandrian, Siniaticus and Vaticanius where all thrown in the trash heaps for unreliability and inaccuracy by the ancient scribes and were rediscovered by Westcott and Hort who, unfortunately, influenced, the majority of textual scholars in last two centuries and that is why there are so many bad translations of the Bible. The King James remains the best.
Who Preserves the Word?
Scripture not only tells us that God will preserve His Word, it also tells us that He will use His elect people, not a group of "text scholars" to preserve it. Under the Old Testament administration, God "committed the oracles of God" to Israel, His chosen nation (Romans 3:2). Under the New Testament era, the same responsibility has been given to the church. Jesus claimed that He had given His apostles the same infallible, inerrant words which His Father had given Him, and that "they have received them" (John 17:8). These are the very words which He taught "will by no means pass away" (Matthew 24:35). "The Scripture," He taught, "cannot be broken" (John 10:35). And "it is impossible for [Him] to lie" (Hebrews 6:18). At the same time, however, Paul warned against faulty documents in 2 Thessalonians 2:2, and Peter cautioned believers against those who would "twist" the Scriptures in 2 Peter 3:16. These passages remind us that this subject is no small matter. We are dealing with the Word of God. It is not enough that the translations be accurate; the Greek text underlying the translations must be the correct one. The new translations use an incorrect Greek text. The Byzantine Text theory, which fully adheres to the doctrine of divine providential preservation of the Scriptures, provides a superior text, and translations should be based upon it, not upon the Alexandrian text. The doctrine of divine inspiration of the original writings, implies the doctrine of the divine preservation of Scripture. And the doctrine of divine preservation of Scripture demands the adoption of the Byzantine Text theory rather than the Alexandrian Text theory.
Scripture Alone
We see how important the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura(Scripture only) is, in this case having to do with our understanding of how we should judge which translations are best. Here the two major doctrines are the verbal and plenary inspiration of the autographs, and the providential preservation of the inspired words. That is, God has not only "immediately inspired" the original writings, but He has also "kept pure in all ages" the autographs so that they are "authenticable." In His Word God tells us that He will providentially preserve His Word unto all generations. The matter of the authenticity of the inspired text in a majority of the Hebrew and Greek copies is not an option. The Alexandrian Text, which implicitly denies this, must be rejected, and the Received Text accepted. Isaiah 40:8 "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."Matthew 24:35 "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my WORDS shall not pass away." Revelation 22:18,19 "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the WORDS of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
All glory to God
JR
(Thank you to JR)
