“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged
sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow; it
judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” – Hebrews 4:12 NIV
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that
the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NKJV
Reading the Bible is undoubtedly one
of the most important parts of one’s spiritual walk in the Christian faith, as
it opens one’s heart, mind and soul to the living and powerful word of God that
has been preserved for generations since time immemorial. The Bible does not
merely serve as a moral compass in a Christian’s walk of faith; it is in fact
life’s ultimate manual that serves to navigate a Christian through the ups and
downs of life, regardless of time, place or circumstance. It forms the very
core of the foundation of one’s faith in Jesus and the gospel, and it is
through it that one acquires the necessary building blocks to build a strong
spiritual foundation that influences all spheres of one’s life.
The Bible is indisputably the most
translated book in the world, what with the whole Bible existing in at least
500 languages and at least some parts of the Bible existing in almost 3,000
languages of the world (as of 2015). In case you don’t already know, the
original languages of the Bible are Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old Testament,
and Greek for the New Testament. And just for the benefit of those of you who
don’t know, almost the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew, which was
historically the native and liturgical language of the Israelites, but small
portions of the Bible, particularly in the books of Ezra and Daniel, were
written in Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of many parts of the ancient
world in the Middle East and was likely the everyday language that Jesus Himself
spoke the most. The New Testament, however, was written in Greek because that
was the lingua franca in many parts of the Roman Empire from 50 to 100 AD, the
years when the books of the New Testament were written.
Bible translations
into the English language have existed since as early as the 7th
century AD, with large portions of both the Old and New Testaments being
translated into Old English by various Christian scholars and monks.
Nonetheless, perhaps the most famous English translation of the Bible in
medieval times is none other than the Wycliffe Bible, which was translated
around 1382 either directly or under the direction of John Wycliffe (1331 –
1384), a famous English theologian and preacher. Since then, numerous versions
of the Bible in English have been published up to modern times, and it is true
that choosing the best Bible to read can sometimes be a headache for the
average Christian.
Beginning of the Gospel of John in a 14th century copy of the Wycliffe Bible
In this two-part article, I’ll be
giving you an overview of some of the most commonly used translations of the
Bible in English today. In the first part of this article, I’ll first attempt
to cover a brief history and overview of the various source texts used in most
modern Bible translations, while in the second part of this article I’ll be
giving you brief descriptions of about 10 of the most popular versions of the
Bible in English today.
Latin Vulgate
Beginning of the Gospel of John from the Clementine Vulgate
Before I proceed further, it would
be best for us to first understand one of the most renowned versions of the
Bible in Christian history known as the Latin Vulgate. Indeed, no discourse on
the history of the Church is complete without at least making a brief mention
of this highly authoritative version of the Bible that left such a deep
impression for many centuries since its inception.
From around the 2nd
century AD onwards, churches throughout the Roman Empire started moving away
from Greek and embracing Latin as the new lingua franca. The first few
Latin-speaking churches of that time were in North Africa, and as the years
passed the use of Latin slowly replaced Greek in other parts of the Roman
Empire as well. Due to this, it soon became imperative that the books of the
Bible be translated into Latin as well, and to this end, numerous translations
were produced by both the skilled and the unskilled. Because churches were so
spread out throughout the vast territories of the Roman Empire, the number of
Latin translations of the various books of the Bible soon became countless, and
serious variations started creeping into the different translations from the
different geographical regions that were at times even done by anonymous
individuals with zero religious training. The situation became so bad that it
was said that there were almost as many types of texts as there were
manuscripts, and a standardized version became desirable.
In 382, Pope Damasus
I (305 – 384) commissioned Jerome (347 – 420), a Latin priest and one of the
Early Church Fathers, with the monumental task of revising the vast collection
of Biblical texts in Latin and producing a standardized Latin translation of
the Bible. Jerome thus started by revising the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John, using all the Greek manuscripts that were available to him. At about
the same time, he also revised the Old Testament using the Septuagint (which
will be covered later in this article). Nonetheless, in the year 390, Jerome
embarked on a much larger project, that was to translate the Old Testament
directly from the Hebrew texts. His primary motivation for doing so was the
hostility of the Jews who continued to belittle Christians for lacking a
genuine text of the Old Testament on which the latter could put forward their
theological arguments.
Artist's impression of Jerome, from a painting entitled Saint Jerome in His Study by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 - 1494)
The collection of all of Jerome’s works, including possible revisions of
the other books of the New Testament, formed the Latin Vulgate or simply the
Vulgate (Vulgata) in Latin. ‘Vulgate’ refers to the ‘common (or
vulgar) language’ of the people, and not the connotations we would attach to
the word ‘vulgar’ in our modern sense. For the centuries after the production
of the complete Vulgate in 405, this version of the Latin Bible became among
the most authoritative, if not the most itself, in the Catholic Church, and it
was the standard version studied by the clergy and preached in the churches
throughout Western Europe. The Council of Trent, a major ecumenical council of
the Catholic Church held between 1545 to 1563 in response to the Protestant
Reformation, issued a decree that sealed the position of the Vulgate as the
officially sanctioned version of the Bible in the Catholic Church.
Old Testament source texts
As mentioned earlier, the original
texts of the Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, although Aramaic was
also used in certain parts of the Bible either as words, phrases or long
portions of texts, most notably in Ezra 4:8-6:18 and 7:12-26, and Daniel
2:4-7:28. Most modern translations of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible
are based on any one or a combination of the sources discussed below.
For those of you who
may not be aware, the books of the Christian Bible’s Old Testament are
equivalent to the books of the Tanakh, the Jewish Scripture or the holy book of
Judaism. For the purpose of discussion below, whenever ‘Jewish Scripture’ is
mentioned, this would equally refer to the Old Testament of the Christian
Bible.
Transmission chart of the Old Testament. Red boxes indicate copies that are in Hebrew; blue boxes indicate copies that are in languages other than Hebrew
Septuagint
Surviving manuscript of the Septuagint
Although the Septuagint was regarded
with much reverence and accorded considerable authority in the days of Jesus
and the Early Church, its origins are somewhat shrouded in mystery and legends.
The name ‘Septuagint’ itself is derived from the Latin word septuaginta, which means ‘seventy,’ and
this is linked to the popular tradition regarding its origin that is now
considered by many to be legendary.
Tradition has it that when the
Hellenistic Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309 – 246 BC) established a
library in Alexandria, he was persuaded by his royal librarian Demetrius of
Phalerum (c.350 – c.280 BC) to secure a Greek translation of the Jewish
Scripture for his library’s collection. The king then sent a delegation to
Eleazar, the Jewish high priest in Jerusalem, requesting 72 (or 70)
interpreters, 6 from each Jewish tribe, to be sent to Alexandria along with a
copy of the Jewish Scripture. The high priest obliged, and the 72 interpreters
were sent along with a copy of the Jewish Scripture written in letters of gold
on rolls of skin. After much merrymaking upon their arrival, the interpreters were
brought to the remote island of Pharos to complete the translation works, with
all necessary supplies provided for. The result of their work was the Septuagint, or the Greek translation of
the Jewish Scripture/Old Testament from Hebrew.
In spite of this tradition that was
widely held in the past, many modern scholars believe that this was probably a
fanciful confabulation to give credence to the validity of the Septuagint as
scripture. What is certain is that the Septuagint was a product born out of the
necessity for a Greek translation of the Jewish Scripture in Hebrew. With the
Greek conquest under Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BC), Greek culture slowly
spread in influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Western Asia; a process
known as Hellenization. Among the Jews in the Greek Empire from the 3rd
century BC onwards, Hellenization brought about a gradual decline in the usage
of Hebrew in favour of Greek as the new lingua franca. This also meant that
there was an increasing demand for the Jewish Scriptures to be translated into
Greek, as many Jews themselves lost the ability to speak Hebrew with the
passage of time. Sometime around the 3rd and 2nd
centuries BC, efforts were made by the Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria to
produce such a Greek translation, and out of that the Septuagint was born. Its
use soon spread to many other parts of the Greek/Roman Empire, particularly
among Hellenized Jewish communities.
During the time of Jesus and the
days of the Early Church in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD,
the Septuagint was perhaps the most widely used version of the Jewish
Scripture. Many writers of the New Testament books and the Early Church Fathers
quoted from the Septuagint in their works, and because of this it soon became
the standard version of the Old Testament used in the early churches. The
influence of the Septuagint in the early churches was so strong that it formed
the basis for translations of the Old Testament into other languages of that
era, such as Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Georgian and others.
In producing modern Bible
translations, opinions regarding the authenticity and authority of the
Septuagint differ. Proponents of the Septuagint argue that the authors of the
New Testament books took many of their quotations of the Old Testament from the
Septuagint, thus lending credence to the spiritual authority attached to it.
They also argue that the Old Testament texts in Hebrew that have been passed
down to this modern era have been corrupted by Jewish scholars over the centuries
(see ‘Masoretic Text’ below), making the Septuagint the best and most unbiased available
representation of the earliest versions of the Jewish Scripture that existed
before the birth of Jesus. Opponents of the Septuagint, on the other hand,
assert that the Septuagint itself is a translated text, with Greek and Hebrew
being two languages that differ in many aspects including vocabulary use and
theological terminologies, not to mention that translations made from the
Septuagint are themselves ‘translations of a translation.’ As such, they argue
that the Septuagint may not be too accurate in representing the original
meanings and intents found in the Hebrew texts.
Masoretic Text
Excerpt from the Book of Deuteronomy in the Aleppo Codex
The Masoretic Text refers to the authoritative Hebrew text of the
Tanakh, the holy book of Judaism. Its name is derived from the Hebrew word masorah, which generally means ‘tradition’ and refers to the textual
traditions of the Masoretes, a community of Jewish rabbis and scholars from the
7th to 11th centuries AD who dedicated their lives to
compiling and copying the Jewish Scripture with great meticulousness in order
to preserve it. They were primarily based in Tiberias and Jerusalem in Israel,
as well as in several cities in what is presently Iraq.
Efforts to preserve the Hebrew Jewish
Scripture in its most original form can be traced back to the 5th
century BC, after the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. However, these efforts
were occasionally hampered by circumstances, such as the destruction of
Jerusalem in 70 AD that resulted in the loss of many sacred scrolls. Another
major setback in the preservation of the Jewish Scriptures over the centuries
was the absence of vowels in written Hebrew in ancient times. Hebrew texts were
written with only consonants, which meant that when reading those texts, the
vowels had to be supplied based on oral tradition handed down through the
generations. A simple illustration in English would be this: say for example
you have a text that reads ‘SLP.’ How would you know if this word was read
‘SLAP,’ ‘SLIP’ or ‘SLOP’? You’ll have to rely on oral tradition that has been
passed down to you to know its actual reading, which means that this sort of
writing system gives lots of room for variations in reading and consequently
meaning.
What the Masoretes did during the 6th
to 10th centuries was basically to gather as many copies of the
Jewish Scripture in Hebrew as they could, study them in detail, compile them
together into a standardized text, and proliferate them via meticulous copying
done by the most well-trained of scribes. Another major contribution by them
was the introduction of vowel points, a reading system that indicates the vowel
readings for any given word in Hebrew. This was to overcome the problems
associated with the lack of vowels as described above.
The Masoretes comprised several
schools, and each school adhered to their own set of oral and textual
traditions in the readings of the Jewish Scripture. As they developed the vowel
points, they soon added these vowel readings into their copies of the Scripture
according to the traditions that they adhered to. Each school possessed their
own standard codex from which they made their copies, and it was these codices
and their copies that formed the basis for what we know today as the Masoretic
Text. Although different versions of the Masoretic Text were produced by the
different schools, the variations between them were virtually minimal, as each
school frequently examined their works against those of the other schools. Two
of the most prominent versions of the Masoretic Text that have survived until
today are the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, both dating back to around
the 10th century and originating from the Ben Asher school.
The versions of the
Masoretic Text that form the main textual basis for most modern translations of
the Old Testament date back to the 16th century. The first of these
was a version published by Daniel Bomberg (d. 1549) in 1525 in Venice, known as
the Rabbinical Bible or Mikraot Gedolot
in Hebrew. This version was compiled and written based on manuscripts gathered
by a Masoretic scholar named Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah (c.1470 – c.1538),
who carefully studied the various manuscripts he had at hand and reconstructed
them into a single text. The Rabbinical Bible became an authoritative Masoretic
Text during that era, and various revised editions have been published until
today.
Excerpt from the Book of Leviticus in a version of the Mikraot Gedolot published in 1860 in Warsaw
Another version of the Masoretic
Text that has contributed much to many modern Bible translations are the Biblia Hebraica and its subsequent
revised edition Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.
Published by the German Bible Society, the first two editions of the Biblia Hebraica were published in 1906
and 1912 respectively, and were directly based on the second edition of the
Rabbinical Bible. The third edition and the Biblia
Hebraica Stuttgartensia, however, were published more recently, and were
based directly on the Leningrad Codex mentioned earlier.
The use of the Masoretic Text in
modern translations of the Old Testament is not without controversy. Proponents
of the Masoretic Text assert that it is the best preserved text of the Old
Testament that has been passed down in its original language, and that the
Masoretes who were responsible for compiling the Masoretic Text were renowned
for their extreme meticulousness in collating and copying the texts, thus
ensuring minimal variations as they were passed down over the centuries. On the
other hand, opponents argue that the Masoretic Text, being a work of Jewish
scholars, have been purposely corrupted in parts over the centuries. This
argument is based on the fact that after the 2nd century AD, when
the Septuagint became widely adopted by Christians in the Early Church as their
Old Testament, they frequently debated with the Jews regarding Jesus and His
Messianic nature by quoting from the Old Testament prophecies based on the
Septuagint. Because of this, the Jews slowly shifted away from the Septuagint
in favour of the original Hebrew versions of the Jewish Scripture, which were
not as widely used by Christians. Opponents of the Masoretic Text believe that
Jewish scholars including the Masoretes have corrupted certain wordings and
verses in the Masoretic Text over the centuries so as to alter certain parts
that may make allusions to the life and teachings of Jesus.
Dead Sea Scrolls
Manuscript of a portion of the Book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls
Any serious student of the Bible
today who is worth his salt would definitely have at least heard of the Dead
Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a
collection of ancient texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 in eleven caves
located in Qumran, West Bank near the Dead Sea. Its relatively recent
discovery has revolutionized how most modern Bibles are translated and edited.
The scrolls were
first discovered in 1946 by a group of Bedouin shepherds, who found them stored
in clay jars and subsequently sold them to an antiquities dealer. In the years
that followed, the scrolls eventually reached the hands of Bible scholars and
archaeologists, prompting a large-scale search for the caves where they were
originally discovered. When the caves were finally re-discovered by
archaeologists in 1949, major excavation projects were carried out, which
resulted in a priceless yield of thousands of manuscripts, both intact and
fragmented.
View of the Dead Sea from a cave in Qumran
The Dead Sea Scrolls have proven to
be an invaluable source for verifying the accuracy of modern Bible
translations. Prior to their discovery, the only forms in which the books of
the Old Testament have been passed down to modern times are the Septuagint, the
Masoretic Text and the Latin Vulgate, besides several other less known ancient
sources that will be briefly covered later. Archaeological studies have shown
that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written between the 2nd century BC to
the 1st century AD, and the large majority of them were written in
Hebrew, while the rest were in Aramaic and Greek. This means that the Dead Sea
Scrolls are by far one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Old Testament
in Hebrew, even older than the oldest of the Masoretic Text that has survived
until today. Written mostly on parchment or papyrus, at least a portion of
every Old Testament book is represented among the Scrolls except the Book of
Esther.
Nevertheless, little is known about
who the exact authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls are. Various theories have been
put forward by different scholars, but what is generally agreed upon is that
they were written between the 2nd century BC and the 1st
century AD, a turbulent era in Jewish history when different sects of Judaism
existed in Israel, each vying for dominance and struggling against foreign
invasions by the Greeks and Romans.
Syriac Peshitta
Excerpt from the Book of Exodus in the Syriac Peshitta
Many Eastern Orthodox churches
throughout the Middle East and Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) follow the Syriac
tradition of Christianity, in which one of its main defining features is its
use of Syriac as a liturgical language. Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic,
a language that was once the dominant lingua franca and literary language for
many centuries in the first millennium AD. The role of Syriac as a liturgical
language was not only associated with its status as a lingua franca and a
prominent literary language in many parts of the Middle East in the first
millennium AD; it was also a language that was closely related to the Aramaic
that Jesus Himself spoke during His earthly ministry.
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible used by Eastern
Orthodox churches belonging to the Syriac tradition. The term ‘Peshitta’ itself
literally means ‘common,’ ‘straight’ or ‘simple’ in the Syriac language. The
history behind the translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament and the
Greek New Testament into Syriac is shrouded in much mystery even until now.
Nevertheless, it is generally believed that the Old Testament in the Peshitta
was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew version sometime in the 2nd
century AD, while the New Testament was translated into Syriac from Greek at
around the same time as well. Exactly who did these translations or where these
translations were completed remain unknown.
What is known, however, is that the
Peshitta developed separately from the Latin Vulgate, and is seen by some to be
the Syriac counterpart of the Latin Vulgate in the Eastern Orthodox churches.
By the 5th century AD, the Peshitta was widely circulated and
accepted by the various denominations of the Eastern churches that follow the
Syriac tradition, and various copies of it throughout history have survived
until today.
Samaritan Pentateuch
A Samaritan High Priest holding the Samaritan Pentateuch
The Samaritans were a group of
people living in the region of Samaria, a region situated north of the region
of Judea where Jesus was born, preached and was crucified. The history of the
Samaritans can be traced back to the time of the Assyrian captivity of the
Israelites, when ten tribes of Israel were taken captive into Assyria in the 8th
century BC. During the Assyrian captivity, the rulers of Assyria resettled
various other tribes in the region of Samaria, which resulted in intermingling
and intermarriages between these foreign tribes and the remaining Israelite
population in Samaria. The result of such intermarriages brought about the
Samaritan population that existed up to Jesus’ time and beyond. Over time, the
Samaritan population adopted a mixture of Judaism and idolatrous religions,
which resulted in them being contemptibly labeled ‘half-breeds’ by the Jews
even during Jesus’ time.
The Samaritans adhere to
Samaritanism, a religion that is closely related to mainstream Judaism yet
differs in several significant ways from it. These differences stem from the
fact that Samaritanism developed separately from mainstream Judaism after the
Assyrian captivity. One of the biggest differences relates to their scripture. Samaritanism recognizes only their version
of the five books of Moses (i.e. the first five books of the Hebrew Bible),
written in the Samaritan script, as their entire biblical canon, and this is
known as the Samaritan Pentateuch.
The Samaritan Pentateuch is
generally believed to have been directly inherited by the Samaritans from the
ten tribes of Israel that were taken captive into Assyria. Similar to the Septuagint,
its value in reconstructing the original texts of the five books of Moses lies
in the fact that its origins can be traced back to many centuries even before
the compilation of the Masoretic Text. Nonetheless, the Samaritan Pentateuch is
not without some significant variations that came about as a result of
religious hostilities between the Samaritans and mainstream Jews throughout
history.
Aramaic Targum
An 11th century Hebrew Bible with the Targum discovered in Iraq
The Targums are paraphrases and explanations of the Jewish Scripture
given by rabbis, which were mostly written in Aramaic. After the Babylonian captivity of
the Jews in the 5th century BC, the usage of Hebrew among the Jews
was facing a gradual decline, so much so that many among the Jewish Diaspora
slowly lost their fluency in the language. With Aramaic gradually taking over
as the new lingua franca in the Jewish Diaspora, there was a need for the
rabbis (Jewish religious teachers) to provide paraphrases, translations and
explanations in Aramaic each time after the Hebrew scripture was read. While
these Aramaic paraphrases and explanations were initially produced and
disseminated orally, they eventually took on a written form. It is unclear when
exactly the practice of providing Targums began, but by the 1st
century BC right up to the first century AD, it became a fairly common
practice.
The two most important Targums
recognized in Jewish history are the Targum Onkelos and the Targum Jonathan
(Targum Yonatan), although several other Targums also exist. With the decline
of Aramaic in the first millennium AD and especially after the Islamic conquest
of the Middle East from the 7th century AD onwards, the Aramaic
Targums were gradually abandoned, and are hardly used by the Jews of today for
liturgical purposes. Just like the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint, the
value of the Targums in determining the most original readings of verses in the
Old Testament lies in the fact that it predates the Masoretic Text by several
centuries, although the Targums are often given a lower priority due to the
fact that they were never complete translations of the Jewish Scripture in
Aramaic in the first place.
New Testament source texts
The books of the New Testament were
originally written in Greek, which was the lingua franca in many parts of the
Roman Empire in the first century AD. Broadly speaking, most translations of
the Bible since the 16th century utilize source texts of the New Testament
that fall under either one of two categories: the Majority Text and the
Minority Text.
Majority Text
Excerpt from the Gospel of Luke in the Codex Vaticanus
Although the Bible is today one of
the most widely read books in the world, it is a widely attested fact that none
of the original manuscripts of any of the books of the Bible have survived
until today. Even the oldest manuscripts available today are copies of copies
of copies of copies of the originals. Analyses of all the New Testament
manuscripts that have survived until today have shown that there exist numerous
variations between them in terms of vocabulary, word order and even the
inclusion or exclusion of certain verses. As such, determining which surviving
manuscripts reflect the original texts most closely has become a scholarly
challenge in reconstructing the New Testament.
The Majority Text is one of the two
main methods employed in determining the readings of the New Testament texts
that were most likely present in the originals. The simplest way of
illustrating this method is that for any given variation in the text, each
Greek manuscript is given a single vote, and the reading that has the most
votes is considered the most original reading. For example, if 346 manuscripts
were to read “he said” and 1053 manuscripts were to read “they said” for a
given verse, the Majority Text would go with “they said” as the most likely
original reading. In other words, the
Majority Text is a method that considers the reading that occurs in a majority
of existing Greek manuscripts to be the most original reading. It is also
often known as the Byzantine text-type due to the fact that most of the Greek
manuscripts that form the basis of the Majority Text came from Eastern Europe
and Asia Minor, a region that was in the past under the ecclesiastical influence
of the Eastern Orthodox Church based in Byzantine. Most of these manuscripts
date back to the 5th-16th centuries AD.
Although there exist several other
published versions of the Majority Text, I’d like to draw special attention to
something called the Textus Receptus (Latin for ‘Received Text’), due to its
significance in modern English Bible translations. While the Textus Receptus
still bears hundreds of variations compared to published versions of the
Majority Text, it is often considered as a type of Majority Text in its own
right because of its close textual similarities with many of the Greek
manuscripts that form the basis of the Majority Text.
The Textus Receptus refers to a series of printed Greek texts of the New
Testament that were published during the Protestant Reformation from the 1500s
to the 1600s. Prior
to the Protestant Reformation, most churches in Western Europe recognized the
Latin Vulgate as the sole approved version of the Bible. With the resurgence in
interest towards the Greek language in the 1400s, the Latin Vulgate was
subjected to critical comparison with the Greek manuscripts, and numerous
errors in translation were found. As a result, many among the clergy and scholarly
circles advocated for the publication of the New Testament in its original
language, and the idea of a Greek New Testament was conceived.
The first edition of
the Textus Receptus was compiled and published in 1516 by Desiderius Erasmus
(1466 – 1536), a Dutch Catholic theologian. Erasmus was able to acquire around
six Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, which were mostly dated in the 12th
century and were Byzantine in origin. Based on these manuscripts, he hastily
compiled a Greek text of the New Testament and rushed it off for publication,
supposedly in order to beat to press another Greek New Testament that was being
compiled in Spain. The result was a best-selling, albeit error-ridden Greek New
Testament that would be known to posterity as the Textus Receptus.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536)
Erasmus heavily edited his first
edition, subsequently publishing a much refined second edition in 1519. As the
years passed, Erasmus was able to acquire more Greek manuscripts of the New
Testament which he took into consideration in his later editions. The third,
fourth and final editions of his Textus Receptus were published in 1522, 1527
and 1535 respectively, but work on reviewing and editing the Textus Receptus
continued well after his death, up to the early 1600s. The Textus Receptus
became the textual basis for many influential translations of the Bible into
European languages, and even up to the late 1800s its authority as the
‘original Greek manuscript’ of the New Testament remained undisputed.
Excerpt from the Book of Revelation compiled by Erasmus
Most modern versions of the English
Bible (with the notable exception of the King James Version and the New King
James Version) no longer use the Textus Receptus as their textual basis, and
neither do they prefer other versions of the Majority Text. This is largely
because the Majority Text does not take into account two major factors in
determining the most original readings in the New Testament texts: the age and
place of origin of the manuscripts. Scholars assert that for any given
variation in the text, the reading found in the majority of Greek manuscripts
does not necessarily mean that it was also in the original, as it is possible
that a variant reading could have simply ended up being proliferated much more
than the original over the course of history. Most scholars believe that older
manuscripts are more likely to represent what was in the originals, and that
both Greek and translated manuscripts from other locations (besides Byzantine)
should also be taken into consideration.
Minority Text / Critical Text / Eclectic
Text
Excerpt from the Acts of the Apostles in the Codex Alexandrinus
The Minority Text makes up for the
shortcomings of the Majority Text, and is today the more preferred method for
most modern translations of the Bible in English. Also known by other
terminologies such as Critical Text, Eclectic Text, Neutral Text or Alexandrian
text-type, the Minority Text determines
the most original readings on the basis of internal evidences (e.g.
grammatical and contextual conformity of readings, readings that are more
likely to account for the origin of other variant readings) and external evidences (e.g. manuscript dates and places of
origin, number of times a particular reading occurs among the different
manuscripts). In general, most of the manuscripts that form the basis of the
Minority Text originate from within and around Alexandria, Egypt, and can be
dated back to the 2nd-4th centuries AD.
As mentioned earlier, the Textus
Receptus’ status as the de facto
‘original Greek manuscript’ remained unquestioned up to the late 1800s. It was
the scholarly work of two theologians, Brooke Westcott (1825 – 1901) and Fenton
Hort (1828 – 1892), that finally broke this tradition and subsequently
introduced the science of textual criticism in Bible scholarship. Westcott and
Hort did extensive research and worked together for 28 years before publishing The New Testament in the Original Greek in
1881. This was a Greek version of the New Testament that was soon recognized as
one of the first versions of the New Testament to have applied the Minority
Text method. Although not without its own shortcomings, it became the precursor
to more extensive research in the area of biblical textual criticism, and was
the preferred source text for subsequent English Bible translations for nearly
two generations.
In 1898, a German Bible scholar by the name of
Eberhard Nestle (1851 – 1913) published another influential version of the New
Testament in Greek known as the Novum
Testamentum Graece, taking into account previous works by Westcott and Hort
as well as several other scholars. This version soon rose in prominence among
Bible scholarly circles worldwide. Surpassing even Westcott and Hort’s The New Testament in the Original Greek,
Nestle’s Novum Testamentum Graece was
soon dubbed the ‘New Textus Receptus.’
Eberhard Nestle (1851 - 1913)
With the discovery of newer
manuscripts over the following years, Eberhard continued revising his work,
producing up to 11 more editions before he died. His son, Erwin Nestle (1883 –
1972), took over his father’s work, starting from the 13th edition
onwards which was published in 1927. Another major milestone in the development
of Nestle’s Novum Testamentum Graece
was when prominent German Bible scholar, Kurt Aland (1915 – 1994), became the
associate editor of Nestle’s work from the 21st edition onwards,
which was published in 1952. Aland also submitted his work to the editorial
committee of the United Bible Societies’ Greek
New Testament, of which he was also a member, and this became the basis for
their 3rd edition onwards, published in 1975.
Kurt Aland (1915 - 1994)
Today, the Novum Testamentum Graece is synonymous with two Greek versions of
the New Testament: the Nestle-Aland editions and the United Bible Societies
(UBS) editions, published by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research
at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. Both versions utilize the
same base text, with the main difference being that the Nestle-Aland editions
are aimed at translators while the UBS editions are aimed at textual critics
and scholars. Most modern versions of the English Bible, and a substantial
number of modern translations of the Bible in other languages as well, utilize
the Novum Testamentum Graece as their
primary source text for the New Testament.
Although it is true that none of the
original manuscripts of any books of the Bible have survived until today, and
that there exists numerous textual variations between the Majority Text and the
Minority Text, it should be noted that no major area of doctrine is affected by
any of these variations. These variations merely involve minor grammatical
differences, usages of different words and phrases to express the same meaning,
and the occasional insertions of what is believed to be scribal explanations
for certain cultural points. With that, let’s move on to the second part of this article, where I’ll be giving you an overview of the different kinds of
Bible translations and a brief description of 10 of the most popular versions
of the Bible in English.
Excellent overview of biblical manuscript history. Thank you.
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