A study of the sources, compilation, canon and translation of the Old and New Testaments. Prepared by Lester LeMay for the Thursday Afternoon Bible Class, First Christian Church, Tempe, Arizona. 10/12/99

Course Contents:

The Structure and Character of the Bible

The Inspiration of the Bible

The Canon or Extent of the Old Testament

The Apocrypha

The Canon or Extent of the New Testament

Languages and Materials of the Bible

Major Manuscripts of the Bible

Textual criticism and the Bible

Early Translations of the Bible

How our English Bible came to be

Bibliography

The Bible is a unique book. It has very ancient roots. It was composed by many people in three languages over about 1600 years of history. We have had the Bible complete for at least 1700 years. It is the most translated book in the world and the most influential book. It is remarkable for its unity and its applicability to present day life in any society. It provides historical background and legal precedence for many of the institutions of the Western World, though its locale is primarily in Asia. It is a witness to us of God's concern for the human race. It is the source of our knowledge of God's Son, Jesus Christ, to whom we look for our salvation.

The Old Testament is referred to in the New Testament as the Holy Scriptures: Note this passage from 2 Timothy 3:14-17

The Old Testament was written and preserved by the Jewish community for a millennium or more before the time of Christ and today remains the Holy Writings of the Jewish religion.

The New Testament was composed by disciples of Christ Jesus during the first century A.D.

The word "Testament" which is better translated "Covenant," is taken from Hebrew and Greek words meaning a compact or agreement between two parties. In the case of the Bible, then, we have the old compact between God and His people the Jews, and the new compact between God and Christians.

The Old Testament was divided by the Jews into three parts:

Evidence that this is the arrangement used by Jesus are found in Luke 24:

In another place, Jesus referred to some murders in the Old Testament in this way: Matt. 23:35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Here Jesus is referring to an incident told in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22 where Zechariah was murdered for his faithfulness, even as Abel had been. Since Chronicles was the last of the Old Testament books in Jewish arrangement and Genesis was the first, this indicates the arrangement of the Scriptures with which Jesus was acquainted.

The orientation of books by subject presently used in our Bibles comes primarily from the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the 3rd century B.C. and the Latin Vulgate translation of Jerome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries.

Chapters were not in any of the early manuscripts, but were added for convenience in quoting the Scriptures by Stephen Langton in 1227 A.D. Verses were added by Robert Stephanus, a Paris printer, in 1555. Fortunately, Jewish scholars have since then adopted the same chapter and verse divisions in the Old Testament.

What is inspiration? It literally means "breathing in" and is used in both a secular and a spiritual sense. Webster's first definition is "a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him to receive and communicate sacred revelation." But we also speak of "an inspired book, sermon, solo, poem" meaning that it makes us believe it to be truthful and helpful in improving our lives.

Consider how God communicated in the past: direct influence as with Adam [Gen 2:16f] , Enoch [Gen 5:22] and Moses [Ex 33:21-34:1]; dreams or interpretation of dreams as with Joseph [Gen 40:8ff] and Laban [Gen 31:24]; angels as with Abraham [Gen 18:1-2] and Mary [Lk 1:19]; visions as with Nathan [2 Sam 7:17] and Peter [Acts 10:17] and many where it simply says "The Lord said..."

From the 2 Timothy 3:15 quoted before, we see that the New Testament writers assumed that all the Old Testament was inspired. Just how it is inspired is referred to in Heb 1:1-2 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,

In 2 Peter 1:20-21 this principle is reiterated: Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

As the Bible was being developed it was done so in the context of words from God. Note Joshua 8:34 Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law--the blessings and the curses--just as it is written in the Book of the Law.

As Moses received the 10 commandments directly from God, so the rest of the "Law" was delivered as from God and expected to be heeded and obeyed.

Besides this, Prophets who were specially directed or inspired by God spoke and wrote. There is no better example that that of Isaiah 6:1-8. Isaiah felt himself cleansed, called, and filled with God's word.

In Gen. 15:1 Abraham receives God's message another way: After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision: "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward."

This does not mean that historical writers of the Old Testament did not sometimes refer to works then extant, though lost to us now, as in Joshua 10:13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. Sometimes they even referred to other written works of the Old Testament. See Nehemiah 10:34, 2 Chronicles 26:22.

In fact, there are even long quotes in the Bible of one book by another as in 2 Kings 20ff and Isaiah 38ff, and Isaiah 2:1-5 and Micah 4:1-5.

Today three theories of inspiration are prevalent. One, which we will call the "Orthodox", submits that the Bible IS the Word of God and was inerrant in the original autographs. The claim of "Modernists" is that the Bible CONTAINS the Word of God, but rational interpretation by man is necessary to discover what is true. The "Neo-Orthodox" view proclaimed by some recent philosophers is that the Bible BECOMES the word of God by each person's personal encounter with God.

The New Testament books also claim inspiration of God. The Church was built upon the cornerstone of faith in Jesus Christ supported by the apostles and prophets. Eph 2:19-21 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.

John, in the Revelation claims God was speaking through him. Rev. 1:1-3 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw--that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

There are so many references in the Bible expressing its authority and inspiration, that either it is truthful, or is one of the most deceitful and destructive books ever to have been written. Yet many people, like Thomas Jefferson is reputed to have done, claim the authority to "pick and choose" what portions of the Bible they will believe and reject the rest. The danger of this type of thinking is that if a person can choose how much or she will believe, it will be his own fate at stake if he chooses wrongly. Our belief about the Bible is not what saves us. It is our faith in Jesus as God's Son that saves us. Some will be wrong about the Bible, but because of their faith in Jesus, are likely to be saved. Some will be adamant about the full inspiration of the Bible, but if they have not submitted their heart to the Lord of the Bible, their salvation is at risk.

"Canon" is from a Greek word kanon that means "rule, model or standard" [Phil. 3:16] and has come to mean an authoritative list of books that are a part of holy scripture. It basically means the books that are accepted as being inspired by God. However, God does the inspiring as far as the prophets and writers are concerned. To choose a canon is man's effort to discover what God has already done.

We have already discussed the arrangement of the Old Testament in Jesus' day and the threefold naming of its parts. The Hebrew bibles of today continue to arrange it in the "Law, Prophets, and Writings" order. The evidence on how these sections were collected is important.

First chronologically, we have the Samaritan Pentateuch, though we do not have really ancient copies of it. The Samaritans were formed when the Babylonians settled the Holy Land with people from other places to take the place of the Israelites who had been exiled to Babylon. These new folk accepted the basic religion of the Israelites although they continued in some of their other traditions. In 442 B.C. when Nehemiah came to rebuild the temple, he rejected these people as helpers because of their intermarriages [Neh.13:28] and as a result the Samaritans built their own religion with a temple on Mount Gerazim instead of Jerusalem. By New Testament times they were utterly despised by the Jews, though they still kept the first five books--the Pentateuch--as their Holy Scriptures. [In fact, there are about 150 Samaritans still today in Israel.] Therefore we can assume on good evidence that by 442 B.C. the Pentateuch, at least, was considered Scripture.

Within the Old Testament we have internal evidence with the many references to "the book of the Law" as an authoritative scripture. [Deut 29:21; 2 Kings 14:6 are just ]. Even more often the formula "as it is written" refers to words which should be obeyed. [Dan 9:13; Ezra 3:2, 2 Chronicles 35:12].

Another witness is found in the Septuagint--the earliest known written translation of the Bible (from Hebrew to Greek) done in the period from 250 to 150 B.C. Ptolemy Philadelphus was making a collection of books at Alexandria and wanted the Hebrew sacred writings available in Greek. He, according to an ancient story, set free 189,000 Jewish slaves and sent them with presents to Jerusalem, asking Eleazar, the high priest, to supply copies of their books and send rabbis to translated them. The ancient story continues by saying that 72 rabbis were asked 70 questions to test their wisdom and did the work in 72 days--hence the name "Septuagint" which means 70. Actually it took much longer and there is evidence that many people translated over a longer period of time than the legend gives it. Our present copies of the Septuagint are about 500 years later than when it was first begun, so we do not know what it looked like in its first stages.

However, since this was a translation made for secular purposes, not holy, the arrangement of the books was changed to a more "subject oriented" format which has been followed in our present Bibles. The Apocryphal books were also interspersed within the Septuagint (as we now have it) in this order: Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, 1 & 2 Esdras, Nehemiah, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, 1, 2 & 3 Maccabees. The books in italics are known as the Apocrypha. It is this order used in Catholic Bibles today, and Esther and Daniel have additional verses and stories added.

Josephus, a Jewish historian, writes about 100 A.D. about the collection of Jewish scriptures in a controversial treatise, Contra Apionem [I,8]. He claims only 22 books of the Old Testament and explicitly says that more recent writings than the time of Artaxerxes are not of equal credit.

Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, only translated the Apocrypha "under protest" and there was mixed acceptance of these books until the Council of Trent when the Roman Catholic Church officially declared them canonical in 1546 A.D. to counter the Protestants, who stood for accepting only what the Jews themselves accepted as Scripture. This not to say that the Apocrypha is evil. Parts of it are good history, others are good stories; but it is not on the same level of authority as the Old Testament which we use today.

One of the Apocryphal books, Ecclesiasticus or Wisdom of Sirach written about 170 B.C. is itself witness to the inclusion of the 12 Minor Prophets in the canon. The prologue to this book written by Sirach's grandson in 132 B.C. is the oldest witness to the three-fold division of the Old Testament.

But the best witness to the Old Testament is the New Testament. Reading John 10:35 and the many references to "scripture" where Old Testament prophets are authoritatively quoted [John 13:18; Acts 1:16; I Tim. 5:18, etc.] is enough to show that the Old Testament was a "canon" to the Christians. It is also noteworthy that no verse of the Apocryphal books is quoted as scripture, though they were known, and even though the Septuagint translation was sometimes used to quote from the Old Testament.

Scholars deduce that by 444 B.C. the Jews agreed that the Law was recognized as authoritative. The Prophets were recognized considerably later; about 200 B.C. after all had given their prophecies. By 100 B.C. there was sanction given to the Writings on an equal basis, although 300 years later some Jewish scholars expressed some doubts about Proverbs, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther based on their content.

There were many other Jewish writings which, though religious in nature and often attached to an Old Testament name, never came close to being considered "Scripture". Such were the Book of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses, the Book of Adam and Eve, and the Psalms of Solomon. They are known as the Pseudopigrapha meaning "False writings".

Bottom Line: We can trust the Old Testament to teach us God's dealings with His chosen people and His preparation for Jesus Christ.

When we come to the New Testament, we cover a shorter period of time. The books of the New Testament were written within about 50 years beginning about 45 A.D. Luke tells us in his prologue, Luke 1:1-4, "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,...therefore...it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus." Other than Paul, the New Testament writers do not usually claim to be speaking for God as the old testament prophets did, but they do claim the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit. The early church already had the Old Testament. They had the teachings and guidance of the Apostles. They had the Holy Spirit inspired "prophets" who spoke for contemporary needs. [See Acts 21:10-14]. But soon people began writing the books that we have collected and denominated the New Testament.

Within the New Testament we find the way it grew. Paul wrote extensively and asked that his letters be read in other churches. I Thess. 5:17; Col. 4:17. Luke prepared an "orderly account" not only of the life and teachings of Jesus, but a second volume of the history of the early church. Apostolic origin and authority was very important although Luke, though not an apostle, was accepted because he was a close companion of Paul. Mark was likewise known as the scribe for Peter. The epistles of Jude and James were accepted because they were by the earthly brothers of Jesus who had come to believe in Him. Only the book of Hebrews is without a stated author or tradition of authorship, but it is so inherently truthful that it was early accepted. Some even considered it an anonymous work of Paul. By 170 A.D. all the books we now have had been collected and were recognized by church leaders such as Clement of Rome (95 A.D.), Ignatius (115 A.D.), and Justin Martyr (about 140 A.D.) These early "fathers" often quoted from New Testament writers as equal in authority to the Old Testament scripture.

Two forces were eliciting the singular value of the writings of the apostles. These were (1) the attention of the civil government in view of the rapid growth of the Christian church and (2) heresy.

The first brought forth the defenders of the faith, the Apologists, of which Justin is an example, for he speaks of the Memoirs of the Apostles, called Gospels and reports that they were read every Sunday along with the Old Testament scriptures.

Marcion was a Gnostic, a believer who had doctrines of "secret truths" supposedly delivered from the apostles. He broke with the established church about 140 A.D. and made his own "canon" of writings that supported his peculiar views, throwing out what he did not agree with, and rewriting the parts he did accept. So from that incentive, from 170 A.D. to 220 A.D. there is voluminous literature discussing the canon. No one disagreed that there was an authoritative canon, but there were differences in judgment as to its extent.

Eusebius [270-340 A.D.] wrote a Church History. In it he discussed the state of the canon of the New Testament [III, ch iii-xxv]. He lists the "Acknowledged" books about which there was no dispute -- The Gospels, Acts, Paul's epistles and Hebrews, I John and I Peter. Then he lists the "Disputed" books about which some portion of the church was still in doubt -- James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, and the Apocalypse. Then he mentions many that are "Spurious" as he says, "deviating as far as possible from sound orthodoxy, evidently proves they are the fictions of heretical men...and are to be rejected as altogether absurd and impious." [xxv]. It is such books as these that people today still draw upon when they are searching for something "new" and exciting such as "The Lost Books of the Bible" and "The Gospel of Thomas" often found in New Age bookstores.

The Council of Carthage in 397 gave a list of our 27 books of the New Testament in connection with a decree "that aside from the canonical Scriptures nothing is to be read in church under the name of Divine Scriptures."

Of special interest is the internal evidence of the New Testament's inspiration. First Peter was one of the acknowledged books. In 2:21-25 he speaks of Jesus' crucifixion as an eyewitness. In 2 Peter he alludes to the transfiguration as an eyewitness [1:17-18]. Also in 2 Peter 2:4-6 warnings of coming false prophets are given. Jude vs. 6-7 uses very similar expressions of such false prophets, but writes as if they were already working. So internally, there is progression from foretelling to fulfilling just in these books. It is like the Old Testament Scriptures prophecies of Jesus' coming.

It is a powerful study of the Bible to see how one part of it uses and quotes from another part. It is woven into an exquisite unity, even though so many people participated in its writing. The Holy Spirit has done a good job of "guiding us into all truth" [John 16:13-14], but Jesus Christ is still our Savior. We are not saved by having a right concept of the canon of the Scriptures, but by yielding ourselves to the One that the Scriptures reveal.

Is there any other religion which has sacred writings which encompass so long a period of composition and were also originally written in three languages?

The Vedas of the Hindu religion are all in Sanskrit and though thought to have been composed from the 15th to the 5th centuries B.C. have been transmitted primarily through oral tradition. The Upanishads of 600-300 B.C. show the beginnings of Hindi use. These contain rituals, mantras, and mythology. Little can be connected with historical happenings.

Zoroaster is a semi-historical person [about 600 B.C.] who reformed the gross idolatry of ancient Persia, but the Avesta, our principal source of documentation for this religion, comes from the 9th century A.D. and is written in Persian.

Buddhism arose from the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha [about 563-483 B.C.] who sought to reform the Hindu religion with a way of meditation taught in the Four Noble Truths. His language was Hindi.

Mohammed [c.570-c.632 A.D.] drawn to religious contemplation, declared that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him he was a messenger of God. His work, the Koran or Qu'ran, revered by all Islam, was not only written in Arabic, but is never to be accepted in a translation as holy.

We will brush over such as Mary Baker Eddy with her Science and Health and Key to the Scriptures and Joseph Smith with The Book of Mormon or the Universal Life Church's book by Kirby Hensley The Holy Bible for the 21st Century. There are always people who seek to speak for God and present books that support their claims.

Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. This was originally a pictographic script with vowels only. Vowel "points" were not added until about the 7th century A.D. to preserve the pronunciation. Hebrew was a "dead" language--unused except for religious purposes for over 2000 years until it was revived in present day Israel. It is a Semitic language, kin to Arabic, Phoenician, Aramaic and the Assyrian-Babylonian inscriptions. Using the same alphabet, a few chapters of Ezra and Daniel are in Aramaic, which is a later cognate of Hebrew which became the "lingua franca" of the Near East after the Babylonian conquest. It is probable that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic. Many Aramaic words are found in the New Testament and usually translated, such as talitha cumi in Mark:41.

Both these languages are very concrete, with generally three letter roots that are changed by the many inflexions their syntax requires. Translation from Hebrew to modern languages is quite easy compared with attempting to put a modern language back into classical Hebrew. They "think" differently is my way of putting it.

The Greek of the New Testament is not the classical Greek of Homer or the Greek philosophers. It is koine Greek, the lingua franca that was replacing Aramaic after Alexander the Great's conquests. For a long time scholars thought it was a "special" dialect used only in the New Testament, but later discoveries of large caches of still legible papyrus documents disclosed that it was the common Greek used in commerce, correspondence and communication in the pre-Roman world. Jesus used Greek when he named Simon "Peter" for that is the Greek word for "stone." When the apostles chose the seven to deal with the Hellenistic or Greek widows, all of the first servers had Greek names. Phillip, the apostle had a name that means "lover of horses."

Greek is a rich and expressive language. There are often many words to express variations of a thought. For instance in Greek there are 3 words for love: eros for erotic love; philos for friendship; and agape for a love expressed whether or not it is returned.

The materials of the Bible

Of course, the first sacred writings of the Bible was carved into stone by God, and then by Moses. [Ex. 34:27-28]. Unfortunately, the location of the Ten Commandments which had been stored in the ark is unknown. [The last place in the Bible where the Ark is located is Solomon's Temple I Kings 8:21-22, but see Jer. 3:16]. There are some inscriptions in stone that refer to Biblical persons [such as the Moabite stone], but no ancient text of the Bible is found on stone.

There are many ancient cuneiform markings in baked clay tablets, but few of these have been translated, and those which have, seem to be mostly market receipts and correspondence.

Some scholars, including Josephus [Antiquities 12:2:11], believe the Old Testament books were originally written on skins or leather. Parchment is a term for leather specially prepared for writing and comes from Pergamos, a city in Asia. It is likely that 2 Timothy 4:13 refers to this kind of material in the manuscripts desired by Paul.

A primary material of New Testament Scripture is papyrus, a kind of paper made from reeds that grow in swampy areas. It is easily perishable, but in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the dry heat of the desert and the clay jars protecting them from animals have preserved documents of Scripture that are now more than 2000 years old. One roll written on copper was discovered but it has been very difficult to unroll and translate.

It is likely that all the New Testament books and some of the Old Testament ones were originally written on papyrus. These were first made into scrolls, but later they were cut and bound into codices, the first books. The scroll or roll is used in figurative language in several places in the Bible, indicating its importance in religious writings. See Zech 5:2, Rev 10:2.

In later years and for more permanent preservation, vellum [cognate of veal?], a treated calf-skin, was used . But this came when ornateness and beauty were prized for presenting the sacred scriptures. Some of the illuminated manuscripts of the Bible are true works of art with beautiful color and calligraphy.

It is interesting that the very first book from a printing press using movable type was the Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455. Since then printing on paper has been the primary way the Bible has been transmitted.

Modern technology has been used in many ways, however. Gospel Recordings has a ministry in which records of Bible portions are made by native speakers and produced in bulk. They are then distributed to native peoples with an inexpensive primitive phonograph that can be operated by hand.

The Jesus Film, a dramatic production based on the Gospel of Luke, has been extensively translated and used worldwide as a means of spreading the Gospel and evangelizing. Thousands of illiterate people have been introduced to Jesus this way. A video of this film is in our church library.

The Bible has been translated into Braille for the blind and at least a portion put on video in sign language for the deaf. This is in addition to the worldwide efforts through Wycliffe Bible Translators, Pioneer Bible Translators, and the many Bible Societies to provide printed Bibles in all the main languages of the world. Bible translation is the most characteristic motivation for preserving the tribal languages of native groups by preparing alphabets, dictionaries, primers, and literacy materials for these folk.

The Bible is available on the internet in many versions. Software is available to make Bible study quicker and more productive for those who use computers.

God's word is quick and powerful and is becoming more available to people every day. Let us pray for and encourage this spread of the Gospel.

For the Old Testament we have the Masoretic texts carefully transmitted and re-written over the centuries by professional scribes. However the earliest actual texts date from about 850 A.D. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered they were almost 1000 years earlier than this text.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1947 in the area near Qumran, in the dry desert hills west of the Dead Sea. Story has it that a Bedouin boy was searching for a lost goat and as these hills are full of caves, he approached one of them and cautious about going in because of animals, tossed a stone into the cave. He heard a noise like pottery breaking and went in, finding several pots full of scrolls of papyrus covered with ancient writing. These manuscripts were acquired by a monastery and University in Jerusalem and as research began revealing their ancientness, it sparked additional searches in the area, eventually leading to 11 caves in which manuscripts were found. The first yielded remains of over 500 books, rather well preserved. Others caves yielded scraps and tatters in rat's nests, but still decipherable pieces.

The Dead Sea Scrolls did not make any major changes in our ideas of the canon or of literary criticism except to give a deathblow to some of the eccentric theories advocating very late composition of parts of the Law and the Prophets. Their major contribution was in the field of textual history, giving us glimpses of various early texts used before the Masoretic text had standardized the Hebrew scriptures.

The Manuscripts upon which our Bible Translations are based are numerous, but some stand out because of their size and history. Those most important are the Uncials, that is rather complete Bibles in the Greek language written in All Capital Letters with no separations between words and little punctuation. These were the earliest.

Imagine reading this:

ITWASAPROVISIONOFTHETALMUDTHATTHELAWSHOULDBEWRITTENO

NTHESKINSOFCLEANANIMALSTAMEORWILDANDEVENOFCLEANBIRDS

This was the way Greek was written in the earliest centuries.

The Cursives, in small running hand with divisions between words and lines came later. That made it easier.

Early Greek Bibles

The Alexandrian MSS from the fifth century, known by the translators of the King James Bible, probably found in Alexandria, now in London.

The Sinaiticus from the fourth century, found in 1844 at a monastery on Mt. Sinai, also now housed at the British Museum in London.

The Vaticanus from the fourth century, which has been in the Vatican since at least 1475, but was not made accessible to scholars until 1889.

The Ephraem from the fifth century, which is a palimpsest. That is a work that has been washed out so other material could be printed on top but later the original text recovered. This Bible MSS had been washed out to make room for the treatises of Ephraem the Syrian [hence the name], but in 1834 the original writing was revived by a wash of prussiate of potash. Now located in Paris.

The Beza MSS from the sixth century, known as far back as 1562, but with a slightly different text than the others. Now in Cambridge.

The first printed edition of the Green New Testament was that of Erasmus in 1516 which was revised several times.

Textual Criticism is not a negative term. It means the scholarly evaluation of the various texts of the Bible in its thousands of minor variations due to copying errors or deliberate changes in an effort to restore the original text.

The Old Testament is largely based on the Masoretic text which had a systematic and successful transmission by the trained scribes already alluded to. There are some differences in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but they are very minor in nature. Evidence from the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament are sufficient to establish that there has been very little change in hundreds of years. Sometimes the quotations are from the Septuagint, but since it is a Greek translation of the text and the New Testament was written in Greek, that is understandable.

When we come to the New Testament, there are thousands of other manuscripts of the Bible, more than for any ancient text. This makes the determination of which text is original easier than if we had only a few manuscripts. For instance, Tacitus, the Roman, wrote about 100 A.D. We know his work from about 20 texts, the earliest being copied about 1100 A.D. (1,000 years later than he lived). His translator wrote: "To begin with, textual ambiguities quiet often make it hard even to decide what Tacitus wrote. Since the text of each half of the work depends entirely on a single medieval manuscript, there is ample room for suspicions that error may have crept in."

The New Testament has portions that are within 25 years of its writing and there are over 24,000 texts available to study. There are only about 400 words of the New Testament which are in doubt as to what is the original reading. This is 1/2 of 1% of the text. Compare this with Homer's Iliad, written about 900 B.C. and also considered a sacred text by the Greeks. There are 643 early copies of the Iliad but 5% of the text is considered corrupted or in question.

There are many small differences in spelling or wording which make no real difference in the meaning of the passage in most of these changes. However, there are some particular passages where a whole verse or more is absent or changed. Most modern translations give notes of explanation about them.

Two of the most dramatic of these doubtful texts are Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53--8:11 (the woman taken in adultery).

In the case of the ending of Mark, it is obvious from the transmitted text that there may have been a lost page or more from the abrupt ending at verse 8. The two earliest Uncials, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus end with verse 8. Ones from later time include the verses that we have and from which the King James Bible was translated. Some later texts have a shorter ending which has even less reliability than the verses we are used to. This is textual evidence that these verses were not a part of Mark as it was originally written, and though they may be truthful, would not have the same stamp of inspiration as Mark's own writing. One consequence of this textual difference is that "handling of snakes" as an act of faith is not really supported by the inspired Bible, even though Mark 16:18 refers to it.

The passage in John has very little early textual testimony. Some of the manuscripts which include it have it marked with asterisks as doubtful; others place it at a different part in the text of John. Textually, we cannot say that this passage has the same authority as the rest of the Bible. However, the content of the story and its depiction of Jesus is so powerful and consistent with what we know of Jesus' character that most people accept it as a true story, whatever its source.

Some other places where there is lack of good textual foundation are these:

(1) The doxology found at the end of the Lord's prayer (Matt. 6:13b). It is not found in any of the earliest texts. It could have been a pious comment written on the margin that was later copied as a part of the text by later writers.

(2) I John 5:6-8 shows signs of doctrinal addition to the text. A comparison of versions will show that verse 7 in the King James is not in other versions (although sometimes part of verse 6 is made into 7 so that the numbering will still be there). The additional text "For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" and the addition of "on earth" in verse 8 are evidently placed as doctrinal proof for the Trinity. When the early church was deep in doctrinal and theological debates about the exact nature of God, evidently some writer felt it was so important a concept that he could add "supporting evidence" to the text he was copying, and from there it came into later texts. Whether deliberate, or simply a comment put on a margin that was taken by a later copyist as an omission that should be included, we do not know.

These are the most obvious places where there is any doubt about the original text of the New Testament. The bottom line is that we have ample evidence that the Word we study and base our faith upon is an accurate reflection of that which was written by the apostles and prophets. It is therefore a good foundation for our faith in Jesus Christ, the Cornerstone and the High Priest through Whom we approach God, our Heavenly Father.

In our studies we have already spoken of the earliest and most important translation of the Old Testament -- the Septuagint -- from Hebrew (and Aramaic) to Greek, done in the third century B.C. This was one of the first translations of any book to be written down, although some monuments had short texts with various translations on them [the Rosetta Stone, etc.]

In about 140 A.D., after the New Testament was written, Aquila made another Greek translation of the Old Testament for the Jews. The Christians had made so much use of the Septuagint that the Jews felt it necessary to make another "official" translation preserving the original order of the Hebrew scriptures. Aquila made it an extremely literal [word for word] translation.

LATIN -- ROMAN EMPIRE

Latin versions of the Bible abounded quickly, of varying degrees of accuracy, so that Pope Damascas I commissioned Jerome to make a standardized text of the whole Bible in Latin. Jerome spent 20 years on this task, much of it living in Jerusalem where he had access to Hebrew scrolls. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate. He completed it about 404 A.D. but had made several versions of his own while translating, so it still was not a unified text. For instance, he had three versions of the Psalms. Two were from the Septuagint and one from the Hebrew text and all were slightly different.

SYRIAC -- NEAR EAST

There were also several translations of portions of the Bible into Syriac (a Semitic language kin to Hebrew and Arabic) from about 165 A.D. and revised over the next 500 years. (Parts of Ezekiel and Daniel were originally written in Aramaic.) Syriac, or Aramaic, became the common language of the near east and had more affinity to the native languages than did Greek. Jesus often used Aramaic phrases in the New Testament, so it was likely his home and family language although he also spoke Greek. See Mark 15:34 for an example. These early translations are valuable in showing variations in the text and development of the canon of the New Testament. Many of the Jewish Targums are in Aramaic or Syriac.

COPTIC -- ETHIOPIA

From the third century onward there are Coptic translations of the Bible. Remember the incident in Acts 8:27-39 where an Ethiopian official was taught by Phillip the evangelist? Coptic has its own script and continues to this day as the language of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christians are called Copts.

GOTHIC -- GERMANIC PEOPLES

A Gothic translation was made before 381 A.D. by Ulfilas, a missionary bishop, to reach the Germanic people who were gradually encroaching into the Roman Empire. He created the Gothic alphabet and created the first translation of the Bible into a Germanic language.

OTHERS

Armenia was also early reached by the Gospel and Armenian translations of the Bible are found from the fourth or fifth centuries. Georgia, a neighboring country of Armenia in the Caucasus mountains between Europe and Asia, has its own language and there are copies going back to the fifth century.

In 879 A.D. Cyril was brought to Rome to justify his celebration of the Mass in the native tongue he and his brother Methodius were working in. They were Greeks, born in Thessalonica, and had become missionaries to the areas around Bulgaria and Moravia. They were translating the Scriptures into Slavonian. Pope John VIII finally approved of their work. Their alphabet prepared for translation of the Bible became the Cyrillic alphabet used today in Russia, Bulgaria and other eastern European countries.

RESTRICTIONS OF TRANSLATION

However, as the organized and hierarchical church began to take over the declining institutions of the crumbling Roman Empire, a different idea gained power. Seizing upon the Latin Vulgate as an "authorized translation" as Latin became a "church language," various Popes objected to translation into vernacular languages as harmful. It opened people's minds to heretical ideas, was the charge. During these centuries of the middle ages, a Latin Bible might be chained in a church building, but only the priests and those trained by the priests would be able to read it.

For instance, in 1079 Bratislaus asked permission to translate the Bible into the language of the Bohemians. The pope's answer was negative, in these words, "It is clear to those who reflect often upon it, that not without reason has it pleased Almighty God that holy scripture should be a secret in certain places, lest, if it were plainly apparent to all men, perchance it would be little esteemed and be subject to disrespect; or it might be falsely understood by those of mediocre learning, and lead to error."

Thus later Popes and archbishops actually burned German-language Bibles in 1199. There were decrees in France, Spain and England that forbade translation into any modern tongue. The religious authorities were not trying to destroy the Bible, but they wanted to fossilize it and keep it in a language that only a few could read. We will learn more of this as we see the experiences of the first translators of our English Bible.

MISSIONARY IMPETUS FOR TRANSLATION

The missionary zeal of the church today is shown by the extent of the translation of the Bible. Portions of the Bible have been translated into more than 2000 languages and dialects. 98% of the world's population can now read the Bible if it were made accessible to them. Between 1815 and 1975 over 2 and a half BILLION copies of the Bible were printed. It is the most available book on earth.

To reach the few tribes of people who do not have the Bible in their native tongues, hundreds of trained missionary translators are busy to this day. Wycliffe Bible Society has hundreds of translators spread over all the earth. Pioneer Bible Translators is a similar organization serving independent Christian Churches. We know and support David and Sharran Pryor who have dedicated the last 22 years of their lives to the Kire people of Papua New Guinea; and have succeeded in getting the Bible to them so they can read it. 

Through Gospel Recordings, Inc. verbal translations and Bible stories are produced in hundreds of languages by native speakers and put on small discs with a hand-operated inexpensive phonograph and distributed to the small tribes in Asia, Africa, and the places where pockets of primitive people with no written languages still reside.

In 1966 we met a lady named Katy Barnwell in Nigeria. She and another lady were living in the midst of the Mbembe people learning their language for purpose of translation. They completed their work after 20 years, and Katy went on to become a teacher of translators for Wycliffe Bible Translators. In recent years she has been the International Translation Coordinator for WBT, involved in preparing texts and software, and conducting workshops around the world to help all those who are taking the task of spreading God's Word abroad seriously.

We can be thankful that the Bible was not fossilized but has become so available. As Luther's Bible translation became the beginning of German literature, so the present-day translation is the impetus for many peoples to become literate. It has opened up civilization as well as salvation for them.

English has developed over the centuries as a "tag-end dialect of Low German" according to one writer. It is obvious that it has changed over the years. Old English is hardly intelligible to the present-day reader. One of the earliest to produce Biblical stories in the native tongue was Caedmon who died about 680 A.D. He was a laborer at a monastery in Yorkshire who had a dream that an angel told him to sing about how things were first created. He made paraphrases of Biblical stories and sang them, and his works became the popularized people's Bible of his day.

Aldhelm (640-709) translated the Psalms into Old English--the first written translation of part of the Bible into English. About the same time Egbert, archbishop of York, translated the gospels. The Venerable Bede (674-735), the greatest scholar in England, wrote an Ecclesiastical History and other works, and included a translation of the gospel of John. It is said he finished the translation in the very hour of his death.

Other portions of Scripture were being translated into English through the time of the Norman invasion in 1066. The structure of the English language then changed due to the Norman (French) influence and became what we call Middle English. But no one had yet translated the entire Bible until the coming of the "Morning Star of the Reformation" -- John Wycliffe (born about 1320--died 1384). Wycliffe was a powerful preacher and used the common English instead of Latin in addressing his audiences. This kind of appeal was spread through the Lollards, an order of itinerate preachers also known as the "poor priests." Trained at Oxford and renowned as a theologian, Wycliffe and some others translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate to aid the Lollards in their efforts to promote righteousness. Wycliffe later became critical of papal traditions and became part of the early reformation. His disciple, John Huss, became a reformation leader in Bohemia. Wycliffe died of a stroke in 1384, but papal opposition was so strong against him that in 1415 his remains were dug up and burned as an expression of censure upon his teachings.

Johan Gutenberg (1396-1468) with his invention of movable type revolutionized learning, for now the Bible could be printed in many exact copies and widely and inexpensively distributed.

William Tyndale (1492-1536) was a priest who tangled with the dissolute clergy of England and began thinking about a purification of the church. He determined to translated the Bible into English, but was opposed by the authorities. He finally had to go to the continent to do his work and had it secretly printed and smuggled back into England. He completed the New Testament and large parts of the Old. But in August 1536 he was found guilty of heresy and executed for his faith. At the time of his execution he cried out, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." His assistant and proofreader, Miles Coverdale, produced a complete Bible which was published first in 1537. Another assistant, John Rogers, published a Bible with notes and references that same year with a license to do so from Henry VIII -- Tyndale's prayer was answered!

A flood of translations and printings followed: the Great Bible in 1539; Cranmer's Bible in 1540; the Geneva Bible (favored by the Puritans) 1557; the Bishops' Bible 1568. Even the Roman Catholic church saw need for an English translation and came out with the Rheims-Douay Bible 1582 and 1609 based on the Latin Vulgate.

THE AUTHORIZED KING JAMES BIBLE

The stage was set for an "authorized" version of the Bible acceptable to all parties within the church. King James I, desiring to increase his popularity (and to get rid of two versions he thought inferior) agreed. He authorized six companies of translators to prepare a composite text, considering all English versions and with some reference to the known Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. The style and dignity of the language made this The King James Version the primary English version for many years after it was published in 1611. After all, this was the age of Shakespeare and many of the chief literary people of England.

Two hundred and sixty years later, the discovery of more ancient texts and the changes in the English language promoted a full revision and the English Revised Bible was published by the University presses of England in 1898, having begun in 1871. The American scholars involved felt there were enough differences to warrant producing the American Standard Version in 1901. Both these revisions were much more accurate than the King James, but it would take several generations for people to accept the altered words and rhythms.

In 1937 the International Council of Religious Education authorized a committee to proceed with another revision because of new discoveries and changes in the English language. This Revised Standard Version was published in 1947 with much controversy about some of its readings, particularly Isaiah 7:14 where "virgin" was replaced by "young woman."

Two principles of Bible translation were involved. "Formal equivalence" is found in the King James and the English and American Standard Bibles. Here the translation is sought to be "word for word" as close to the original text as possible, with words or thoughts added by translators for clarity put in italics or noted so that the underlying text is clear even when translated.

Another principle is that of "Dynamic equivalence" in which the goal is to translate "thought for thought" without being bound by the original words. This usually makes for a more readable result, but it also admits conscious or unconscious interpretation by the translators. This can contain bias with no indication to the reader that it is not from the original. Such translations are The New English Bible, published in 1970, the Good News Bible put out by the American Bible Society and others who seek to present the Bible in contemporary English. One should use these like a Bible Story book, as an aid to comprehension, but not as close to the original as a "word-for-word" translation.

SPECIALIZED TRANSLATIONS

The Amplified Bible is one said to express the nuances of the Greek text missed in a standard translation by giving several possible translations in the same verse. While interesting for study, this is not a particularly readable translation, but almost acts like a commentary. Another specialized translation is The Bible in Basic English, where a restricted vocabulary of about 2000 words was used. It is useful for people for whom English is not their primary language.

Besides "committee translated" versions, many private translations have appeared. Most of them reflect the nature of their translators. Moffett, Rotherham, J. B. Phillips, and even Alexander Campbell have provided such Bibles. Each has particular values and difficulties. For instance, The Living Bible by Kenneth Taylor published in 1971 is a paraphrase, that is -- an attempt to present in very contemporary speech the meaning of passages rather than follow the original words. The result been useful for many people who find the Bible hard to read, but necessarily it is dependent upon the interpretations of Mr. Taylor wherever there are ambiguities in the original text.

Specific versions for Catholics, such as The Jerusalem Bible and the RSV Catholic Edition (1965) have also been printed. Jehovah's Witnesses have The New World Translation of the Scriptures, as well.

SUMMARY

I hope that one truth will come out of this study. The Bible is a remarkable book and thoroughly deserves our attention and daily reading. But it is not the Bible, but Jesus Christ who gives us salvation. The Bible is one of our greatest witnesses to Him, but we should not worship the Book, but the one who is the Word of God incarnate. Perhaps understanding a little more how God prepared this book and delivered to us will help us be more faithful in sharing its most precious message to others.

Ceram, C.W., Gods, Graves & Scholars, [Translated from German by E.B. Garside and Sophie Wilkins], (New York: Vintage Books, 1986)

Daniel-Rops, Henri, The Church of Apostles and Martyrs, [2 volumes]. Translated from French by Audrey Butler, (Garden City, NY:Image Books, 1962)