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In The Beginning

Bible writing began about 1513 B.C.E., shortly after the Israelites had been delivered from bondage in Egypt. Moses was given two tablets of stone which had been written on by God's finger, these tablets contained the Ten Commandments which were incorporated into the book of Exodus (Exodus 31:18; Deuteronomy 10:1-5). The original writing was in Hebrew the language used by Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and by Noah at the time of the flood, it was the language confused at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9).

Just one small nation used that language who carefully preserved the original scrolls and made numerous copies of the sacred pronouncements of God, the Kings of Israel, upon ascending the throne, would write out for themselves a copy of the Law and read it daily (Joshua 1:8; Deuteronomy 17:18, 19). The copying of the text was done with extreme care by highly trained scribes. One God-fearing scribe named Ezra is referred to as a skilled copyist in the law of Moses, (Ezra 7:6) but Israel still turned to idol worship, the Law as written down by Moses was lost.

However King Josiah cleansed Judah of idolatry and while he was having the temple repaired the High Priest Hilkiah found "the book of the law". King Josiah's secretary Shaphan then read the Scriptures to Josiah. (2 Kings 22:3-20; 2 Chronicles 34:8-28 ;) helping to fulfil the commanded to read the Scriptures "day and night".

These original writings probably disappeared when the Babylonians destroyed the temple in 607 B.C.E. However, other handwritten copies of those inspired scriptures had been made, so that Daniel, a captive in Babylon, learned from Jeremiah's prophecy, that Jewish' captivity would end after seventy years, in 537 B.C.E. (Daniel 9:2). After the restoration of the temple, Ezra the copyist encouraged everyone daily to read the book of the law of God (Nehemiah 8:13, 18).

Many copyists appear to have been busy in those days, writing out the Scriptures by hand for the use of the Jews, who were now scattered in communities throughout the ancient world. In the old world of Mesopotamia the scriptures were copied by Scribes or Sopherim, (Sofrim, according to the Talmud, 'because they counted all the letters of the Law') they copied the Hebrew scriptures from the days of Ezra up to the times of Jesus Christ, these men at times changed the text, when they thought it was needed (Matthew Chapter 23:2, 13;).The Sopherim allowed their superstition of Gods name to alter the text to read Adhonai (Lord) at 134 places and to read Elohim (God) in some instances, this is recorded by their successors.

The Samaritan Pentateuch

The Samaritans were a people who occupied the territory of the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel after the king of Assyria took the Israelites into exile (740 B.C.E.). They adopted some features of Jewish worship and accepted only the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. During the fourth century B.C.E the Samaritan Pentateuch, simply reproduced the Hebrew words into the characters of the Samaritan alphabet, (extant copies go back to the 10th C.E.)

During the course of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C.E. the Persian Empire controlled the eastern Mediterranean basin, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the area. In response to needs, the Torah and prophetic words were translated into Aramaicin for the synagogues. For a long time they paraphrased the Bible books, but at the beginning of the Common Era it was put into writing the resulting Targums (from Aramaic meturgeman," translator ") survived after original Hebrew scrolls had been lost.

There are several Targums (translations) of the Pentateuch. The Babylonian Targum is known as "Onkelos," named after its reputed author. The most famous of the Palestinian Targums is that popularly known from a 14th-century scribe s mistake, as "Jonathan," a name derived from "Targum Jerusalem." Two other Targums, remain as fragments (Jerusalem II and III), Pseudo-Jonathan (or Jerusalem I) is complete. Aramaic is an extant version of the Targum to the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Targum to the Prophets also originated in Palestine and received its editing in Babylonia. The Aramaic renderings of the Hagiographa are later productions, of the 5th century C.E.

The Greek Septuagint Version

In 332 B.C.E. Alexander The Great had destroyed the Phoenician city of Tyre and founded the city of Alexandria as a centre of learning.

The Alexandrian theologian Origen, working at Caesarea between 230 and 240 C.E, produced, in parallel vertical columns, the Hebrew text, the same in Greek letters, and the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotio. The Hexapla was a work of such magnitude that Origen himself produced an abbreviated edition, the Tetrapla, containing only the last four columns. The original manuscript of the Hexapla is known to have been extant as late as c. 600 C.E. Today it survives only in fragments.

About 280 B.C.E. a start was made in Alexandria, Egypt, to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, for the benefit of Greek-speaking Jews there. Aritobulus, a second century writer wrote that a version of the Hebrew law was translated into Greek in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.E.). The translation by Jewish scholars is reported by Philo and other rabbinic sources. The story is also told by Aristeas, a Greek official at the Egyptian court. By the mid-3rd century B.C.E. the language of the scriptures was unintelligible, too many of the communities outside Palestine as Greek (koine "common") was the dominant lingua franca. The Pentateuch is part of the collection of writings of the Greek Bible. The, Septuagint (meaning, "Seventy" each of the 12 tribes of Israel contributed six scholars to the project in Alexandria, Egypt) as the Greek Bible came to be called, took well over a century to be completed.

In 168 B.C.E., Syrian ruler Antiochus IV attempted to destroy all the copies of the Hebrew Scriptures he could find throughout Palestine. A Jewish history notes: "Any scrolls of the law which they found they tore up and burnt." The Jewish Encyclopedia says: "The officers charged with carrying out these commands did so with great rigor . . . The possession of a sacred book . . . was punished with death." But copies of the Scriptures survived both among Jews in Palestine and those living in other lands.

The Septuagint version of the bible of the second century B.C.E. was used by Greek-speaking Jews prior to and during the time of Jesus Christ. In time the Jews stopped using it, but the early Christian used this Greek translation made in Alexandria. In the meantime, many of the books of the Christian Bible, the New Testament, were first written in Greek, and others in Aramaic.

A revision of the Greek text was made by Theodotion (of unknown origins) late in the 2nd century, and by Symmachus, Jerome did utilize Symmachus for his Vulgate, but other than that, his translation is known largely through fragments of the Hexapla.

The Masoretes, the "lords of tradition"( from Hebrew masoreth, "tradition ") Hebrew scholars at Talmudic schools in Palestine and Babylonia began restoring the Hebrew scriptures, in the 6th century they laboured to complete the Masoretic, text, which since its completion in the 10th century has come to be universally accepted. as the authentic Hebrew Bible. Their intention was not to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures but to transmit to future generations the authentic Word of God. To this end they gathered manuscripts and whatever oral traditions were available to them. The result shows that every word and every letter was checked with care either in Hebrew or Aramaic, they brought to attention discrepancies in the various texts. Since texts traditionally omitted vowels in writing, the Masoretes introduced vowel signs to guarantee correct pronunciation. Among the various systems of vocalization that were invented, the one fashioned in the city of Tiberias, Galilee, eventually gained ascendancy. the Masoretes not only counted and noted down the total number of verses, words, and letters in the text but further indicated which verse, which word, and which letter marked the centre of the text. In this way any future emendation could be detected. Their marginal notes (columns alongside the original text) came to be known as the Masora they list the 15 extraordinary points of the Sopherim, marked in the Hebrew text by dots or strokes, some of these have no affect on an English translation but others do, they also noted 18 other corrections. The Masoretic version of the bible was transmitted by scribes with amazing fidelity down to the time of movable type in the 15th century. The earliest and most reliable Masoretic manuscript that has been made available to modern Bible scholars is the Ben Asher Masoretic text of about 930 C.E.

Gods Word Through The Ages

The Jewish scriptures, were originally written almost entirely in Hebrew, with a few short elements in Aramaic. It appears to have been their custom to subdivide the Holy Scriptures into three parts. The law of Moses, called the Pentateuch which includes the five books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Prophets, and the Psalms (Moses wrote Psalm 90 and, possibly, 91.)'

The Jewish historian Josephus, in his work Against Apion (I, 38-40 [8]) around the year 100 C.E., confirms that by then the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures had been fixed for a long time. He wrote: We do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other. Our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty, and contain the record of all time. Of these, five are the books of Moses, comprising the laws and the traditional history from the birth of man down to the death of the lawgiver. . . . From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, who succeeded Xerxes as king of Persia, the prophets subsequent to Moses wrote the history of the events of their own times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. . . . From Artaxerxes to our own time the complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets. We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own Scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable; and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them, and, if need be, cheerfully to die for them."-Against Apion, I, 41-43 (8).

About 130 C.E, Aquila, a convert to Judaism from Pontus in Asia Minor, translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek under the supervision of Rabbi Akiba.

The New Testament

Then there was a gap in Bible writing for almost 500 years, it was vital that the life and teachings of Jesus Christ were put down in writing. Thus the disciples and apostles of Christ wrote twenty-seven books, from Matthew to Revelation. They wrote under the influence of God's spirit. until the apostle Matthew penned his historic account. The koiné or common Greek had become the lingua franca of the common people. The writing was completed over 1,900 years ago, recorded on perishable materials, paper made of papyrus reeds and parchment made of animal skin.

The Romans

In the year 303 C.E., Roman Emperor Diocletian is said to have watched his soldiers smash down the doors of a church and burn copies of the Scriptures. Diocletian thought he could eliminate Christianity by destroying its sacred writings. The next day, he decreed that throughout the Roman Empire, all copies of the Bible be publicly burned.Copies survived, however, and were reproduced and survive to this day. One is in Rome; the other, in the British Library in London, England.

Papyrus

The Hebrew Scriptures had been written on leather scrolls which were bulky, besides this they were very costly, papyrus was more practical and served the purpose ideally, at least during the first three centuries. That the original manuscripts, whether written by themselves or by their copyists, were on rolls is apparent both from secular history and from Scripture references. Papyrus was the material upon which the Greek Scriptures were written. Made from the white pith of the papyrus plant, it was tough yet relatively inexpensive. For this reason it was universally used in the days of Jesus and his apostles.

Camden M. Cobern states in his book The New Archaeological Discoveries: "The ordinary size of a papyrus sheet in the days of the apostles was about five by ten inches, and the ordinary grade was often sold in rolls of perhaps twenty sheets, the price of a sheet being little more than twenty-five cents. While the width of the cheaper papyri was only about six inches, a better quality called Charta Livia . . . reached a width of eight inches or more; and the highest grade, called Hieratica . . . , ran about nine and a half inches in width. . . . It is doubtful whether any New Testament writer had ever in his life used the higher grades of papyrus, and it can be counted as absolutely settled that every book of the New Testament was written upon the medium or poorer qualities. But in all the years since linen paper came into common use-in the eighth or ninth century of our era-it has never been honoured as was the humble papyri of that first century which received the autographs of the apostles and evangelists as they told the story of the Man of Nazareth, 'A poor man toiling with the poor.'"

The Codex

They early Christians began replacing the roll with the codex (the stem of a tree was called a "caudex") and this name was applied to tablets of wood with raised rims, often covered with a coating of wax and written upon with a stylus (Isaiah. 8:1). In the fourth century A.D. vellum and papyrus were being used in codex form, the codex seems to have been regarded as especially suitable for Christian writings however classical writings continued to be circulated in rolls, By the fifth century A.D. tablets of several leaves were being used, having strings passed through pierced holes to hold them together. The Romans developed the parchment notebook, an intermediate step between the tablet and the later book-form codex. As the style and material changed, it became a problem to know what to call it, in Latin the word membranae came to distinguish especially the parchment notebook, and this word was used by Paul when requesting "the scrolls, especially the parchments [membranas]." (2 Timothy. 4:13) That Paul used a Latin word and in a Latin sense would be only because no Greek equivalent existed to describe what he was asking for. Later the word "codex" was transliterated into the Greek language to refer to the book. We now possess, scattered throughout the world's museums and collections, more than a hundred Bible codices on papyrus (some just fragments) written before the end of the fourth century.

It has been conjectured that Christianity may have reached Britain by way of France (Gaul) before the conclusion of the 1st, or not long after the commencement of the 2nd century, but the period and manner of its introduction are uncertain. It had, however, made considerable progress in the island previous to the coming together in the fourth century of the Roman Empire and the Christian religion in the time of Constantine the Great (306 - 337).

Christianity is one of the greatest influence's on Western civilisation, the spread of Christianity necessitated further translations of both the Old and New Testaments into Coptic, Ethiopian, Gothic, and, most important, in Latin.

Jerome

Jerome, in the fourth century, wrote the following in his work De viris inlustribus [Concerning Illustrious Men], chapter III, : "Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judea in the Hebrew language and characters for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. Who translated it after that in Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Beroea to copy it." (Translation from the Latin text edited by E. C. Richardson and published in the series "Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur," Vol. 14, Leipzig, 1896, pp. 8, 9.)

In 405 Jerome finished translating a Latin version the then common language of the people, for which reason it was called the Vulgate or " vulgar " version. that was based in part on the Septuagint, and this version, the Vulgate, despite corruption introduced by copyists, became the standard of Western Christianity for a thousand years or more. He also provided a Latin translation of the Greek New Testament. and the two together became the Bible which was accepted by the Western Catholic Church, Jerome's Latin Vulgate served as the basis for translations of both the Old and New Testament into Syriac, Arabic, Spanish, and many other languages, including English.

The Bible In England

Aldhelm (St.) [c 640-709] is said to have translated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon verse; the Venerable Bede translated part of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon prose;

The name of King Alfred is with some doubt connected with the " Paris Psalter," a translation of Psalms 1-50, however Alfred the Great was a patron of letters and one of the most learned Englishmen of his time. He translated from Latin into Anglo-Saxon Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, the histories of Orosius and Bede, he also wrote a book of moral reflections, and contributed prefaces to the works of other writers .It may have been the work of Gregory, that gave inspiration for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

There were many partial translations into English of the bible by monks in the Middle Ages which continued during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries .

John Wycliffe, 1320 -1384 with the help of a group of Oxford scholars, translated the Vulgate, The first Version appeared about,1382 It is not known whether Wycliffe actually took part in the work himself, ten years after his death his follower, John Purvey, produced a revised version.

The Age Of Printing

There were only 33 different translations of the Bible c. A.D. 1450, the Gutenberg Bible was the first complete book extant in the West and the earliest printed from movable type, so called after its printer, Johannes Gutenberg, who completed it about 1455 working at Mainz, Germany. The three-volume work, in Latin text, was printed in 42-line columns and, in its later stages of production, was worked on by six compositors simultaneously. (Also called FORTY-TWO-LINE BIBLE, ) or it is sometimes referred to as the MAZARIN BIBLE because the first copy described by bibliographers was located in the Paris library of Cardinal Mazarin. Like other contemporary works, the Gutenberg Bible had no title page, no page numbers, and no innovations to distinguish it from the work of a manuscript copyist. This was presumably the desire of both Gutenberg and his customers.

In the 15th & 16th centuries study had revived of ancient Greek and led to new translations, printer Froben, of Basel, Switzerland, commissioned the famous Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, who was able to consult only a few Greek manuscripts, in 1516 just ten months later his work appeared . In the preface of his text Erasmus wrote:

" I vehemently dissent from those [the Church of Rome] who would not have private persons read the Holy Scriptures, nor have them translated into the vulgar tongue, "

He himself admitted that his edition was "rushed through rather than edited." , Because of the errors further editions appeared in 1519, 1522, 1527 and 1535. This text remained the standard for more than two hundred years.

Erasmus' refined Greek text became the basis for better translations into several of the Western European languages. This made possible the production of versions superior to those that had been translated previously from the Latin Vulgate.

The first printed Septuagint was that of the Complutensian Polyglot (1514-17). Since it was not released until 1522, however, the 1518 Aldine Venice edition actually was available first. The standard edition until modern times was that of Pope Sixtus V, 1587. later critical editions were printed.

During the sixteenth century the Greek "New Testament" was produced for general circulation, from then, one publisher after another brought out his own edition. Among these were the Parisian Stephanus, the Swiss Beza and the Dutch Elzevir; Luther used the 1519 edition of Erasmus for his own translation. His German-language translation of the New Testament was published in 1522 and that of the complete Bible in 1534; this remained the official Bible for German Protestants and was the basis for Danish, Swedish, and other translations. During and after the Reformation, the Bible was translated into the vernacular by Catholics as well as Protestants.

The Textus Receptus or the Received Text for Great Britain was based on Erasmus' text and became the basis for many English versions including the Christian Greek Scripture portion of the King James Version.

William Tyndale

Because of the influence of printing and a demand for the scriptures, Englishman William Tyndale, educated at Oxford began working on a New Testament translation directly from the Greek in 1523. The work could not be continued in England because of political and ecclesiastical pressures, and the printing of his translation began in Cologne (in Germany) in 1525.

William Tyndale loved the Bible. But in his days, the religious authorities insisted on keeping it in Latin, a dead language. He lived the life of a fugitive long enough to translate the Greek Scriptures (the "New Testament") and some of the Hebrew Scriptures (the "Old Testament") His Bibles were smuggled into England secretly and sent to nobles and merchants. The news of their arrival leaked out, and every effort was made to get hold of them by the Church authorities. Bishop Tunstall arranged through a merchant named Packington to buy Tyndales books, then at St. Paul's Church yard the books were burned. After this he lived for a time in Antwerp, two printers Hans and Christopher van Ruremond produced 1,500 copies of Tyndales New Testament, when bringing 500 copies to England the brothers were arrested and probably died in a prison. Tyndale from 1529 to 1535 spent most of his time in Antwerp. In 1530 Merten Keyser printed Tyndales version of the Pentateuch the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. In May 1535 Tyndale was thrown into prison near Brussels convicted of heresy, strangled, and his body burned. in 1530,

His last words were " Lord open the king of England's eyes "

During 1994/95 the British Library exhibited a textually complete 1526 edition of William Tyndale's translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures printed during his exile in Worms, Germany. This book was purchased from England's Bristol Baptist College for almost $1,600,000, as it was reckoned to be the only surviving complete copy the bulk of the 3,000 or so smuggled into England were burned at the instigation of the bishop of London. However, another complete copy of this edition has come to light, in a library in Stuttgart, Germany. Mislabelled and overlooked for hundreds of years, it retains not only its original binding but also its precious title page.

The translation of Miles Coverdale, turned out to be a retrograde step in the manner of its execution, although it proved to be a vindication of Tyndale's work. On October 4, 1535, the first complete English Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale, came off the press either in Zürich or in Cologne. The edition was soon exhausted. A second impression appeared in the same year and a third in 1536. A new edition, "overseen and corrected," was published in England by James Nycholson in Southwark in 1537. Another edition of the same year bore the announcement, "set forth with the king's most gracious license." In 1538 a revised edition of Coverdale's New Testament printed with the Latin Vulgate in parallel columns issued in England was so full of errors that Coverdale promptly arranged for a corrected version .

Antonio Brucioli of Italy translated the text of Erasmus into Italian in 1530. With the advent of the Erasmus Greek text, there was now opening up an era of textual criticism. (Textual criticism is the method used for reconstruction and restoration of the original Bible text).

With the encouragement of ecclesiastical and political power Henry VIII. gave Royal licence to the Thomas Matthew Bible published in 1537. Although the name is Thomas Matthew, it is certainly the work of John Rogers, a close friend of Tyndale. Although the version claimed to be "truly and purely translated into English," it was in reality a combination of the labours of Tyndale and Coverdale. Rogers used the formers Pentateuch and 1535 revision of the Testament and the latter's translation from Ezra to Malachi and his Apocrypha. Rogers' own contribution was primarily editorial

In an injunction of 1538, Henry VIII commanded the clergy to install in a convenient place in every parish church, "one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in English." The order seems to refer to an anticipated revision of the Matthew Bible. The first edition was printed in Paris and appeared in London in April 1539 in 2,500 copies. The huge page size earned it the sobriquet the Great Bible. It was received with immediate and wholehearted enthusiasm. The first printing was exhausted within a short while, and it went through six subsequent editions between 1540 and 1541. "Editions" is preferred to "impressions" here since the six successive issues were not identical.

Chapters

The present division into chapters was introduced into the Vulgate by Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury who framed Magna Carta, but the system of numbered verses was not applied until the sixteenth century. Robert Estienne, or Stephanus, was a prominent printer and editor in the sixteenth century in Paris, he saw the practical benefit of using a system of chapters and verses for ready reference, and so he introduced this system in his Greek-Latin New Testament in 1551. Verse divisions were first made for the Hebrew Scriptures by the Masoretes, but it was Stephanus' French Bible of 1553 that first showed the present divisions (This was followed in subsequent English-language Bibles and made possible the production of Bible concordances such as the one by Alexander Cruden in 1737 and the two exhaustive concordances to the Authorized Version of the English Bible-Robert Young's, first published in Edinburgh in 1873, and James Strong's, published in New York in 1894) for the complete Bible.

The repressive rule of Edward's successor, Mary Tudor (a Roman Catholic) put an end to the printing of Bibles in England for several years. Their public reading was proscribed and their presence in the churches discontinued.

A colony of Protestant exiles fled to Geneva's Protestant community where a well established printing industry helped in the production of the Geneva Bible (or the so-called "Breeches Bible," because Adam and Eve made "breeches" to cover their nakedness (Genesis 3:7). Translated by William Whittingham and his assistant, under the influence of John Calvin, Coverdale and John Knox (the Scottish Reformer), produced the New Testament in 1557 (Old Testament, 1560). It become the official translation in Scotland, but was not printed in England until 1576. Elizabeth in 1558 put an end to the persecutions and the Great Bible was soon reinstated in the churches. The Geneva Bible, however, gained lasting popularity as the family Bible of England, it was acknowledged as an excellent translation, and was used by Shakespeare and Marlowe. It pays particular attention to the Hebrew text, translating the tetragrammaton as Iehouáh. It was the first English bible to have numbered verse divisions, and running headings. However the marginal notes were considered to be radical and due to the obvious superiority of the Geneva Bible over the Great Bible, Archbishop Matthew Parker of Canterbury (about 1563-64) enlisted many scholars (bishops), to produce a bible to win popular approval in 1568, it was to be called The Bishops' Bible . The most impressive of all 16th-century English Bibles in respect of the quality of paper, typography, and illustrations.

Roman Catholics addressed themselves to the same problem faced by the Anglican Church, they undertook to provide English-speaking Roman Catholics with an authoritative Roman Catholic version of the Bible, as an alternative to the several Protestant translations then in existence. Roman Catholic practice thereto fore had effectively restricted personal use of the Bible, in Latin, to the clergy. The Vulgate provided the basis for the Douai-Reims Version Douai-Reims Bible REIMS-DOUAI BIBLE, also spelled RHEIMS-DOUAY The New Testament translation was published in 1582 at Rheims, where the English College had temporarily relocated in 1578, by Catholic exiles Cardinal Allen of Reims, Gregory Martin, professor of Hebrew at Douai, but the Old Testament, did not appear until 1610 ,when it was finally published at Douai under the editorship of Thomas Worthington. In the intervening period it had been brought into line with the new text of the Vulgate authorized by Clement VIII in 1592. The version contained many polemic notes protesting Protestant heresies .Bishop Richard Challoner issued a series of revisions (1749-72) intended to make the translation more easily understandable, and subsequent editions were based upon this revision well into the 20th century Christian Church received its Bible from Greek-speaking Jews and found the majority of its early converts in the Hellenistic world., which remained the only authorized Bible in English for Roman Catholics until the 20th century.

The Authorised Version

James I had a passion for literature. He left sonnets, Latin translations, a treatise on prosody, a number of political tracts, a treatise against witchcraft and another against the use of tobacco, several volumes of religious meditations, and a theological work which had the ill fortune to be condemned by the Pope.

The translation which is most familiar to people in England is the Authorised Version of 1611 it was suggested at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, and the plan for its execution was drawn up by James I. The work was based on what was called the Bishops' Bible, published in 1568, which the revisers were told was " to be followed and as little altered as the truth of the original will permit ." The preparation of the Bible took about three and a half years. A band of approximately fifty-four eminent scholars, who were divided for the task into six groups. Two groups met at Oxford, two at Cambridge and two at Westminster. A committee meeting in London had general supervision of the work.

Avoiding strict literalism in favour of an extensive use of synonym, it was a masterpiece of Jacobean English and the principal Bible used by English-speaking Protestants for 270 years. It incorporates a good deal of Tyndale's Bible and yet in spite of being a composite work, it is a masterpiece of literature and has helped to mould the style of many of our best writers. Its accuracy, however, did not satisfy all subsequent scholars and on the suggestion of the Convocation of Canterbury his Majesty's commanded it was revised .

Among the first to bring out his own text was the German scholar Griesbach; although it is said that he did not rid himself entirely of the influence of the Received Text (textus receptus ).

The first one to do so was Lachmann, a professor of ancient classical languages at Berlin University.

The Thirty Years War

Sweden minted a coin with God's name on it in about the year 1568, and Scotland did so about 1591, about 1600, Sweden's King Charles IX put God's name (spelled variously as Ihehova, Iehova, and Iehovah ) on money. A German coin minted in the year 1634 prominently featured the name, such coins became popularly known as the Jehovah talers. During the Thirty Years’ War, which was fought in Europe from 1618 to 1648 and which began as a religious war, such coins proliferated. After the victorious Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, Swedish King Gustav II Adolph had coins minted that bore the Tetragrammaton . These were produced in towns such as Erfurt, Fürth, Mainz, and Würzburg. About the same time, Sweden's allied principalities also began minting coins with God's name on them.

During the some 150 years after the end of the dreadful Thirty Years War, God's name continued to be struck on coins, medals, and tokens. Such coinage was minted in Austria, France, Mexico, and Russia, among other countries. A symbol, known as the Jehovah-Sun insignia was also used on flags and coins.

During the some 150 years after the end of the dreadful Thirty Years War, God's name continued to be struck on coins, medals, and tokens. Such coinage was minted in Austria, France, Mexico, and Russia, among other countries. however, by the early 18th century, God's name was used in that way less and less often. Eventually, it almost totally disappeared from dies and stamps.

The name of God was no mystery in Colonial America either. According to the memoirs of the American Revolutionary soldier Ethan Allen.(1775) he demanded that his enemies surrender "in the name of the Great Jehovah." Later, during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, several advisers made frequent mention of Jehovah in their letters to Lincoln.

Great Discovery

A truly outstanding scholar was Tischendorf, who discovered the Sinaitic Manuscript in a monastery on the Sinai Peninsula.
In 1844, Konstantin von Tischendorf, in search of ancient copies of the Bible, entered the library of the monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai south of Palestine. His eyes were attracted by a large basket of book pages. A closer look left him stunned!
Here were pages from a copy of the Bible in Greek far older than any he had ever seen. Hardly containing himself, he inquired about these pages. His heart sank. They were used to start fires! Two heaps had already been burned! The monks gave him 43 pages, but they refused to cooperate further. He made a second trip to the monastery-no success. A third trip-again all appeared lost. He made arrangements to leave, considering it a hopeless search. Three days before departing, he was talking to the steward, or caretaker, of the monastery who invited him into his small room. The steward remarked that he had read an old copy of the Bible and abruptly pulled down a heap of loose leaves wrapped in a red cloth.

As he opened this bundle, ah! here was the " pearl " Tischendorf had been searching 15 years to find. This Bible manuscript, now called the Codex Sinaiticus, contained all the "New Testament." Believed to have been written around 350 C.E., it was over six centuries older than authoritative manuscripts at the time.

Work in England, was done Tregelles brought out a text that J. B. Rotherham used for the first two editions of his Emphasised Bible.

From 1853 to 1881, two British Bible scholars, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, worked on their Greek text

Rotherham used it for his later editions, speaking of Westcott and Hort as "consummate masters of textual criticism." Goodspeed states in the preface of An American Translation (1923):
" I have closely followed the Greek Text of Westcott and Hort, now generally accepted. Every scholar knows its superiority to the late and faulty texts from which the early English translations from Tyndale to the Authorized Version were made."

In 1870, work was begun on the Revised Version Authorised Version . Other translations have appeared in this century, but few can equal its beauty and dignity.

The text of Westcott and Hort also served as the foundation of the Greek Scripture portion of the American Standard Version (1901) and the Revised Standard Version (1946). The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures (1961) .

Bible Societies

No book in the world has been read by so many people or translated into so many languages as the Bible. In the early years of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries newly formed Bible societies came into existence one of the first of these was the British and Foreign Bible Society which was started in London England in 1804, others prominent societies started in Scotland the United States and Holland, soon through their efforts many millions of copies of the bible were produced and dispersed across the world .

Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a small cave at Wadi Qumran (Nahal Qumeran) by a 15-year-old boy overlooking the Dead Sea in Palestine. Stored in a large, two-foot-high clay pot a mass of leather scroll of the 12 prophets (Hosea through to Malachi) wrapped in a linen cloth. These were early copies of the Greek Septuagint contained the tetragrammaton and confirmed the accuracy of the text of the bible.
It was the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times . . . an absolutely incredible find!" Here were parts of the Bible that date back into the second century B.C.E., 1,000 years earlier than the oldest copies available up to that time. Many of the differences between the Masoretic texts [the Bible manuscripts in the ninth century] can be explained as differences in spelling and in grammatical construction Apart from these, there is a remarkable agreement, on the whole, with the text found in medieval manuscripts. Even earlier manuscripts than those dated as of the fourth century were forthcoming.

In Egypt were found copies of the Bible written on papyrus, some even wrapped around mummies! These were carefully restored and they dated back to the third century C.E. One small fragment of the book of John was even dated back to 125 C.E. Today there are 1,700 handwritten copies of various parts of the Hebrew Scriptures dating from the tenth century. Over 5,000 Greek manuscripts provide ample means virtually to reconstruct the original text.

 

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