History of the Bible

Uncategorized

Bible History Summary:

If you are new to Bible reading, you might be interested in the following information about the Book itself:                   

  • Written over a period of about 1500 years.
  • Approximately 40 writers; God is the Author.
  • At all times, every writer wrote under God’s inspiration; it is a book of Divine authorship. It is the Holy Bible, set apart from every other book .  (See 2 Tim. 3:16)
  • It is ‘the Book;’ only God Himself could have guided the miraculous preservation of His Holy Word, virtually unchanged, across centuries of societal evolution.  
  • For every devout Christian the Bible stands alone as the pre-imminent written document of all time.  

Following is a brief review of the history and promulgation of the Bible, and some of the individuals and events God used to shepherd His Book through the ages, from its origins in antiquity into our hands today:

Ancient versions:

  1. The Septuagint; also, the Alexandrian version; the Bible of the early Christians, including Jesus:
    1. A translation of the earliest Hebrew manuscripts into Greek.
    2. As New Testament books were written, they were added to the Septuagint.
    3. With the exception of the Isaiah Scroll, it is 700 years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament.
    4. It is contained in the oldest Bible manuscripts in existence: the Vatican Codex, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus, Ephraim Rescript as the Old Testament portion.
  2. The Targums: Aramaic Targums, some language concerns; Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the popular language; the Targums were oral paraphrases of the Hebrew scriptures.
    1. Not considered as reliable due to free paraphrasing.
    2. However, they do help clarify some difficult points of translation.
  3. The Talmud:  Collection of explanations, etc, (opinions) spoken of by Jesus as traditions.
  4. Midrash:  Commentaries on the written Law just before, during, and after Jesus.
  5. The Peshitta: The work of Syrian Christians during the fifth century after Jesus.  The word means “literal” or “simple.”
  6. The Latin Vulgate: The gradual replacement of Greek by Latin through the conquests of Rome created the need for this change in language.
    1. St. Jerome spent 20 years, 385-405, bringing together the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament into Latin.
  7. John Wycliffe, c. 1320-84; experienced conflicts with the Roman Church; translated the Vulgate into English. The first English versions of the Bible were translations from the Vulgate rather than from the original Hebrew and Greek.
  8. The Gutenberg Bible, 1456, enabled by the invention of the printing press using mechanical, movable type, changed forever the control held by the church and governments over the education of society.
  9. William Tyndale, 1482-1536, translated the scriptures into English from the original Hebrew and Greek rather than from the Vulgate.  In 1525 he published the New Testament, allowing ordinary people to read the scriptures for themselves in plain English.  This, the Church, and the government in England, could not condone, and he, and his writings, were banned. In hiding, in 1534, he was betrayed to the authorities. After eighteen months in prison, during which he was able to convert many of his antagonists, he was bound and strangled, then burned at the stake. He died a martyr for Jesus Christ under the heavy hand of King Henry VIII and the dictatorship of the Church at Rome.
  10. Miles Coverdale published the first complete English Bible, c.1535, translated from the Vulgate and Luther’s German Bible.
  11. Matthew Bible: c.1550, English translation, a compilation, by John Rogers, of works by Coverdale and Tyndale. Rogers was the first English Protestant martyr under “Bloody Mary I” in her quest to restore the Catholic Church in England.
  12. Douay-Rheims Version: 1582-1609 translation of the Vulgate into English by Catholics exiled under Queen Elizabeth, a protestant, who had banned the Catholic church which had been restored under Queen Mary I.  These and later versions of the “Catholic Bible” contain the seven books of the apocrypha which are not included in most Protestant Bibles.
  13. Other important ancient versions:
    1. The “Great” Bible, 1539, came to be used in churches.
    2. Geneva Bible, 1553-58, a revision of the Great Bible by English scholars exiled under Queen Mary I.  Replaced the Great Bible in popularity in churches.
    3. Bishop’s Bible: Another revision of the Great Bible by the Church of England; became the church Bible.
  14. The Authorized Version, or King James Version (KJV), authorized by King James of England, published 1611; translated by 47 scholars from segments of the Church of England, Cambridge and Oxford Universities:
    1. “Old English” followed generally the Bishop’s Bible with some revisions.
    2. Updated several times as the English language changed away from Shakespearian “Old English” over the next 158 years to the current edition published in 1769 by Dr. Blayney.
  15. The Revised Version (Britain), 1881; The English Revised Version, 1885; The American Standard Version, 1901.
    1. Both are revisions of the King James to update language and expression.

More recent versions:

  1. Some more recent versions of the twentieth century:
    1. Revised Standard Version, 1946-52.
    2. Phillips Modern English, 1958.
    3. New English Version, 1961.
    4. The Living Bible (Paraphrase), 1962.
    5. Jerusalem Bible, 1966.
    6. Today’s English, 1966.
    7. New American Standard Bible (NASB), 1971.
    8. New International Version, 1965-73
  2. Some newer versions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries:
    1. The New King James Version (NKJV); 1982.
    2. The New Living Translation, mid 1990s, has become very popular.
    3. Contemporary English Version (CEV), 1995, updates the KJV into more modern English.
    4. There are many more paraphrases and translations on the market today.  For centuries, every version published has received some level of criticism for various reasons: editorial content; language vernacular; style; opinions as to fidelity to the original Hebrew and Greek; etc.
  3. The Catholic Bible, Douay-Rheims, etc:
    1. Since the original Douay-Rheims Version of 1582-1610, various versions of Catholic bibles have been updated and revised recently.

Published

Leave a comment