Note that the Hebrew scribes did not begin using the Aramaic language; they simply borrowed its script and used it to express their own Hebrew words. They could do this because both Hebrew and Aramaic were Semitic languages, and their scripts stood for the same alphabet, which in turn signified many of the same sounds in both languages.

(We see a modern example of this in English and French. Since they were both shaped by the same classical language, Latin, their alphabets and some of their sounds are the same). When Hebrew scribes had borrowed the Aramaic script, they also started borrowing Aramaic words and phrases to express traditional Hebrew ideas (just as we commonly use the French words coiffure and lingerie). Gradually they came to insert Aramaic words into the text to take the place of older Hebrew words that they no longer used. And sometimes they added editorial notes in Aramaic to clarify what the text said; Jeremiah 10:11 is such a note.

Paleo-Hebrew had no vowels, and early scribes probably used dots to separate their words, as the Phoenicians did. They did not put spaces between words, as we do. In the tenth century B.C., the Arameans (who lived in what is now Syria) had begun putting special letters at the end of each word to indicate final long vowels. Two centuries later, Moabites of Canaan began doing the same, and they passed the idea on to the Hebrew scribes. After the Exile, Hebrew scribes began to associate four of the Hebrew consonants with vowel sounds (Aleph = long a, heth = a, vav = o, ayin = i). Language experts call these letters the matres lectionis (Latin, "mothers of reading"). But the Hebrew scribes did not develop a system for showing the vowel sounds until after 500 A.D. (See "Languages and Writing".)

So a person who read an Old Testament manuscript in the time of Jesus found a continuous string of letters, and had only these three simple devices (dots between words, final long vowels, and the matres lectionis) to guide him in identifying, breaking up and pronouncing the words. He had to supply a good deal, in fact, from memory. For example, let us say we were going to write Isaiah 61:1 (in English!) the way it would have appeared in the scroll that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18): "The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me..." If we use the letters from our English translation but write it in the old Hebrew style, it would look something like this:

That's not easy to read, it it? Actually, we have made it a bit easier by printing it from left to right, in normal English fashion. But Hebrew and other Semitic languages ran from right to left; so to get a better picture of what the verse looked like, try this:

(Actually, the letters appear backward also, but I couldn't find the html command to make it appear that way).

By the time the Hebrew scribes began to insert vowel markings into the text, they had lost the meanings of a few words (mostly very ancient or rare ones) in the Old Testament. They were able to determine the meaning of most of these words in the light of the surrounding material. We call these later scribes Masoretes, and the manuscripts they produced the Masoretic Text. These terms come from the Hebrew word Masorah ("tradition"), because the Masoretic scribes tried to preserve the traditional meaning of the Scriptures. A small Jewish sect in Babylon known as the Qaraites developed an effective system of vowel marks around 500 A.D., which led the Masoretes to deal more seriously themselves with this problem.

A Masoretic family named ben Asher produced a better system of vowel markings in the ninth and tenth centuries. Soon afterward, Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher issued a complete text of the Old Testament with the vowel marks. Because the ben Asher system represented the vowels with dots and short dashes, above and below the line of letters, scholars refer to it as vowel pointing. The ben Naphtali family of Masoretes developed a different pointing system and a slightly different Old Testament text at this same time. But late in the twelfth century A.D., the noted Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides declared the ben Asher text to be the textus receptus (Latin, "received text").

However, the ben Asher text comes to us in several different forms. Our earliest manuscript of the ben Asher text is the Cairo Codex of the Prophets (otherwise known as Codex C), which was made in A.D. 950. Moshe ben Asher supplied the vowel markings for this manuscript and presented it to the Qaraite community in Jerusalem. The Crusaders seized it in 1099, but eventually it was returned to the Qaraite community in Cairo. The Leningrad Codex B3 of the Major and Minor Prophets (also known as Codex P) was written in A.D. 916. The Aleppo manuscript of the ben Asher text (Codex A) was probably written before A.D. 940. However, one-fourth of that manuscript was lost during a raid on the Aleppo monastery in 1948. Finally, the Leningrad Codex B19 A (or Codex L) of the Old Testament was finished in A.D. 1008. These manuscripts provide the basic information we have about the ben Asher text.

In 1524, Jacob ben Hayyim published a printed text of the Hebrew Old Testament, using manuscripts that had been copied from the ben Asher manuscripts we have mentioned above. Because this was the first printed edition of the Hebrew Old Testament it became a standard for printed Bibles. Gerhard Kittel's Biblia Hebraica, perhaps the best-known Hebrew Old Testament of the twentieth century, listed the variations of the ben Hayyim text in its footnotes and did not include them in the text.

However, the Old Testament has come down to us in other languages besides Hebrew. Around 300 B.C., Greek versions began to appear. A community of Greek-speaking Jewish scholars in Alexandria compiled a Greek version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. For the Pentateuch, the Septuagint translators used a Hebrew manuscript very like the ben Hayyim text that we have today. But they seem to have used a much different manuscript for the other books, because the Septuagint often departs from the ben Hayyim text.

After 200 A.D., Jewish scholars began compiling Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament. We call these Aramaic versions targums. The targums were made from Hebrew manuscripts written in the time of Jesus or later.

II. The New Testament Text The writers of the New Testament completed their work within about sixty years of Jesus' crucifixion. Being written in an age when literature flourished, and being copied constantly from the start, the New Testament text has survived the centuries well. J. H. Greenlee estimates that we have altogether 15,000 complete manuscripts and quotations of the New Testament in our hands today.

A. New Testament Inspiration GOD moved the writers of the New Testament faithfully to record His Word as He did the Old Testament writers. Paul and the Gospel writers often showed themselves conscious of what the Holy Spirit was doing through them. We will review some of these texts briefly, because they give us valuable insights into the way GOD inspired His written Word.

Luke opens his Gospel by saying that "many" had attempted to write an account of Jesus' life and ministry, but that he himself is doing so because GOD had given him "perfect understanding of all things from the very first" (Luke 1:3). Likewise, we are assured that we can trust John's Gospel because he was an eyewitness of the events he records (John 21:24). GOD gave the Gospel writers firsthand exposure to the events of Jesus' ministry and a "perfect understanding" of those events; this uniquely qualified them for their writing task.

Similarly, when writing to the churches on practical matters of morals and ethics (I Cor. 4:14; 5:9; II Cor. 9:1), Paul knew that he was expressing what the Holy Spirit directed him to write. Of his detailed directions about the conduct of worship in the Corinthian church, he said, "If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the LORD (I Cor. 14:37). He was an apostle, one whom GOD enabled to declare His revealed wisdom "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth" (I Cor. 2:13). What Paul laid down, therefore, was to be received as divine instruction. As Peter said, Paul had written "according to the wisdom given to him" (II Pet. 3:15).

Again, the apostle John explained that he did not write to the churches to reveal any new instructions from GOD (I John 2:7-8). Nor did he write because his readers were ignorant of the truth that Christ had already revealed (I John 2:21). Rather, he wrote because his readers already knew the truth and his letters would encourage them to obey the truth (I John 1:4; 2:21b). This shows that the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament writers to work in perfect harmony with the truth that had already been revealed. They knew it was that truth, stemming from Christ Himself, that they were expressing and enforcing.

B. How We Received the New Testament Text We have many fragments of the New Testament text that were written in the second century A.D. Some of these are on ostraka (scraps of pottery that early writers used as a cheap form of stationery) and talismans (pendants, bracelets, and other objects that early Christians wore to ward off evil spirits). But these objects contain only very short quotations from the New Testaments, so they give us little information about the original text.

More important are the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament. Written on an early form of paper made from matted papyrus reeds, most of these manuscripts date from the third and fourth centuries after Christ.

The earliest known fragment of a New Testament papyrus manuscript dates from about A.D. 125 or 140. It is commonly called the Rylands Fragment because it is housed in the John Rylands Library of Manchester, England. A mere 6 cm by 9 cm (2 1/2 in. by 3 1/4 in.), the fragment contains a portion of John 18:32-33,37-38. Archaeologists recovered the Rylands Fragment from the ruins of a Greek town in ancient Egypt. Despite its early date, the fragment is too small to provide much information about the text of the Gospel of John in the second century.

The next oldest papyrus manuscript is one of those called the Chester Beatty Papyri, because most of it is owned by the Chester Beatty Museum of Dublin. This manuscript consists of 76 leaves of papyrus (46 at Dublin, 30 at the University of Michigan). Each leaf measures about 16.5 cm by 28 cm (6.5 in. by 11 in.) and contains about 25 lines of writing. Handwriting experts believe that this manuscript was written around A.D. 200. It contains most of Paul's letters.

Another important manuscript is called the Bodmer Papyrus (or Bodmer II). Also written in about A.D. 200, this manuscript contains chapters 1-14 of John and fragments of the last seven chapters. It is housed in the private library of Martin Bodmer in Cologny, Switzerland.

Jose O'Callaghan of Barcelona, a professor of the Pontifical Institute in Rome, believes that some papyrus fragments from Cave 7 of Qumran contain a portion of Mark's Gospel; if this is true, these fragments are the earliest New Testament finds to date. It would mean that the Gospel was written much earlier than scholars have traditionally supposed. The fragments date from A.D. 50, and it is very likely that they are copies of a manuscript written years before that. Therefore, most Bible scholars are doubtful about O'Callaghan's identification of the fragments.

The New Testament copies made in the third and fourth centuries were written in all capital letters, run together. Scholars call these manuscripts which were written on vellum (parchment) uncials, and nearly 275 have been found. Scribes used the uncial style of writing on vellum and papyrus until about the ninth century, when they began copying the manuscripts in a small, cursive Greek script: These later manuscripts are called miniscules. We have over 2,700 New Testament manuscripts written in miniscule style.

Scholars consider Codex Vaticanus (or "Vaticanus B") to be one of the most important uncial manuscripts. Written shortly after A.C. 300, this manuscript originally contained all of the Septuagint and all the New Testament. Part of the Letter to the Hebrews, the Pastoral Letters, and the Book of Revelation have been lost. Some portions of the Old Testament section of this manuscript also have been lost, but what remains is a useful source of information about the text of the Old Testament. It is housed in the Vatican Library.

Another valuable uncial manuscript is called Codex Sinaiticus, because Constatine von Tischendorf (1815-1874) found it in a monastery at the foot of traditional Mount Sinai in 1859. Written shortly after Codex Vaticanus, it is the earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament.

We should also note the Codex Alexandrinus, an uncial manuscript that dates from just after A.D. 400. It originally contained the entire Bible in Greek, along with the apocryphal books of I and II Clement and the Psalms of Solomon. The Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople gave this manuscript to the British ambassador in 1624, as a gift to England's King James I. It is now housed in the British Museum.

Another interesting uncial manuscript is the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, so called because it contains some of the writings of Ephraem Syrus. This manuscript was written about the same time as the Codex Alexandrinus, and it also contained the entire Greek Bible. Thrifty scribes produced it by erasing the parchment of the earlier manuscript of the Scriptures and jotting the new manuscript of Ephraem's sermons at a right angle to the old one. Scholars call this type of manuscript a palimpsest (Greek, palimpsestos - "scraped again"). This makes the text very dificult to read, but at some points researchers can discern portions of the earlier manuscript as well as the newer one.

Most minuscule manuscripts contain the same type of cursive Greek script. In the nineteenth century, Bible scholars rejected hundreds of these manuscripts as being the poorest examples of the New Testament text from early lectionaries (books containing Scripture lessons to be read on holy days). Also, the early church fathers often quoted New Testament scriptures in their writings. But as M. M. Parvis notes, "...The Fathers did not always quote accurately. They harmonized their texts, and they misqouted just as often as does the modern writer...They often paraphrased". But these quotations still serve as an important witness to the original text.

When there came to be many Latin-speaking Christians, the Bible was translated into Latin so that the Christians of that area could understand it. It is believed that this was done around A.D. 200, although no Latin manuscripts survive from that time. Christian scribes copied this "Old Latin" version many times, and eventually their copies picked up some striking differences.

Pope Damasus I commissioned the scholar Jerome (A.D. 340-420) to produce a standard text of the Latin Bible, and Jerome completed this project around A.D. 400. His version (called the "Vulgate" because it used the "common language" of early medieval times) was based on the Old Latin versions. But Jerome used a good Latin text and compared it with some old Greek manuscripts that were available.

Pope Leo X was the greatest scholar and manuscript collector among the Renaissance popes. He suggested a scholarly edition of the Bible to be edited by Cardinal Ximines of Spain. In 1517, a printer in Alcala, Spain completed this printed Bible with the Vulgate and the Greek arranged in parallel columns. It became known as the Complutensian Polyglot (Latin, Complutum - "Alcala"; Greek, Polyglot - "set forth in many languages"). The editors of this edition said they used "very ancient and correct" Greek manuscripts thaat Pope Leo X provided for their work. But we cannot be sure which manuscripts these were, nor whether they have survived to the present day. They were probably burned in one of the papal wars of Renaissance Italy. The pope did not give permission to release this book until 1522, and by that time another printer named Joannes Froben had issued a printed Greek New Testament.

Froben, a printer in Basel, Switzerland, had persuaded the noted biblical scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam to come to that city to prepare this edition. Using manuscripts from the library of Basel University, Erasmus and Froben produced their Greek text in March 1516. Earsmus' text became the textus receptus (Latin, "received text") of the New Testament. It served as a basic guide for the translators of the King James Version.

Two hundred years later, scholars began to replace Erasmus' text with printed texts based on earlier Greek manuscripts, which they assumed to be better than the textus receptus. In 1831, Charles Lachmann published such a text. Scholars call Lachmann's work the first critical text of the New Testament. It was called a critical text because he set aside the textus receptus and constructed a text from what he thought were the most ancient witnesses. Critical comes from a Greek word meaning "judge".

Later, Constantine von Tischendorf zealously collected ancient manuscripts and issued several editions of the Greek text, with notations of variant readings in the margins. Also, from 1856 to 1879, Samuel Prideaux Tragelles tried to develop an "improved" text, seeking the best reading at each point where selected manuscripts diverged. Tregelles sought to evaluate the Greek manuscripts by the age of the various readings, not the age of the manuscripts themselves.

Two of the great names in the history of textual studies were Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892). They also classified the Greek texts according to the age of the various readings, and they concluded that there were four basic text types: Syrian, Western, Alexandrian, and "Neutral". In 1881, after 30 years' work, they published their own Greek text of the New Testament, entitled The New Testament in the Original Greek. It soon replaced Erasmus' text as the textus receptus of the New Testament. Unfortunately, it began to appear that the classic translations such as the King James Version had been made from Erasmus' textus receptus.

Textual study has made some notable advances since the days of Westcott and Hort. Now scholars agree that "the early textual history of the Greek New Testament was more complicatd than [Westcott and Hort] supposed. These two Anglican scholars assumed that the earliest text would be the purest, with the least difficulties and the simplest readings. Therefore, they were unsuccessful in tracing the text back beyond the second century by the aid of text types". Scholars still basically follow the Westcott and Hort principles and conclusions.

Many scholars now believe that the "internal evidence" (content) should carry more weight than the text types in determining which readings are the most reliable.

The Christian can approach his Greek New Testament today with great confidence. Not one word in a thousand is seriously uncertain, and no established doctrine is called in quetion by any of the continuing doubts about the correct reading in this or that text.

English Translations of the BibleEntire books have been written on the history of English translations of the Bible, but here we will review the translations very briefly. We will also attempt to evaluate the usefulness of each.

Psalters and Other Early Translations Bishop Aldhelm of Sherborne (d. A.D. 709) translated the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon, an early form of the English language. Very early, English bards put the Psalms into regular peotic form, which made them easy to remember. And so the Psalms became the most popular portion of Scripture in the English tongue. Peasants sang them in the fields and parents taught them to their children. We have manuscripts of the Psalms in Anglo-Saxon dialects dating back to the tenth century.

A tenth-century priest named Aldred wrote an English translation of the Gospels between the lines of a Latin text he was copying. This manuscript is our earliest evidence of an English translation of the New Testament. Around A.D. 1000, Alfric of Bath produced an English translation of the Gospels.

John Wycliffe published the first complete Bible in English in 1382. Wycliffe used primarily the Latin Vulgate, and his translation was weak in some respects. But the common people of England gladly received the book, and Wycliffe organized a group of ministers known as the Lollards (because they used the "lollardy", or common, speech) to travel throughout the country, preaching from his translation. The official Roman Catholic Church condemned Wycliffe's work and burned many of the handwritten copies. Nevertheless, about one hundred and fifty copies of Wycliffe's Version have survived, but only one is complete.

Another Englishman, William Tyndale, began printing the next important English translation of the New Testament at Cologne, Germany, in 1525. Because Tyndale was a close friend of Martin Luther, Roman authorities attempted to halt the project. Yet Tyndale succeeded in finishing the book and smuggled his printed New Testaments into England. In 1535, after he had completed translations of the Pentateuch and Jonah, British agents captured him in Belgium, strangled him, and burned him at the stake.

Also in 1535, an Englishman named Miles Coverdale published an English translation of the whole Bible in the city of Zurich. This edition had the support of King Henry VIII, because Coverdale translated many passages in a way that supported the Anglican Catholic doctrine and undermined the use of the Latin Vulgate.

Coverdale then began work on another English Bible that would incorporate the best of Tyndale and other English translators, as well as new insights from the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. He prepared huge 23 cm x 38 cm (9 in. x 15 in.) pages for this volume, earning it the name of the "Great Bible". He completed it in 1539, and the British government ordered the clergy to display the book prominently in churches throughout the land. This stirred popular interest in the Scriptures.

In 1553, Mary Tudor came to the throne of England and enforced strict Catholic policies upon the people. She banned the use of all English Bibles, in favor of the Latin versions. Coverdale and many other Bible translators fled to the city of Geneva, Switzerland, where John Calvin had established a Protestant stronghold. William Whittingham of Geneva organized several of these scholars to begin work on a new English Bible, which they published in 1560. It was the first Bible to divide the Scriptures into verses. (This was the work of Robert Estienne, a Parisian printer of Greek New Testaments).Booksellers called this book the Geneva Bible or the "Breeches Bible", because of the peculiar way it translated Genesis 3:7: "They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches".

Whittingham and his colleagues dedicated this translation to Queen Elizabeth I, who had taken the throne of England in 1558. The people of England used the Geneva Bible very widely for the next two generations.

the King James Version In 1604, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England and began a program of peacemaking between the hostile religious factions of Great Britain. That same year he convened a meeting of religious leaders at Hampton Court. Dr. John Reynolds, the Puritan spokesman, proposed that the new English translation of the Bible be issued in honor of the new king. The King James Version was to become an important watershed in the history of English Bible translations.

King James appointed 54 scholars to the task of making a new translation. For the Old Testament, they relied primarily upon ben Hayyim's edition of the ben Asher text; for the New Testament, they relied upon the Greek text of Erasmus and a bilingual Greek-and-Latin text of the sixth century, found by Theodore Beza. The translators followed chapter divisions made by Archbishop Stephen Langton in 1551 and the verse divisions of Robert Estienne.

Because King James had authorized this project, the new Bible became known as the "Authorized Version". It was first published in 1611 and revised in 1615, 1629, 1638 and 1762.

We should especially note an edition of the KJV published by Bishop William Lloyd in 1701, because it was the first Bible to contain marginal notes dating biblical events in relation to the birth of Christ (B.C. and A.D.). Lloyd's edition also contained the chronology laid out by Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), which dated the Creation at 4004 B.C. This chronology was first used in an Oxford edition of the KJV published in 1679. Many subsequent editions of the KJV have reprinted this chronology.

The 1762 revision is what most people now know as the King James Version. Current biblicl knowledge invites both revision of the KJV, and new translations based on a re-edited majority text.

Revisions of the King James Version Among the many attempts to revise the KVJ, we should note the English Revised Version (ERV or RV) and the American Standard Version (ASV). Both of these attempted to maintain the dignity of language that had become a hallmark of the KJV, while drawing upon the new insights provided by recent manuscript discoveries and improved knowledge of Hebrew words and grammar. They also sought to exclude obsolete words and usages left over from the Tudor speech of the King James Version.

English Revised Version Bishop Harold Browne and Bishop C. J. Ellicott - both respected Anglican leaders - headed two committees that attempted to revise the KJV in the 1870s; an American committee joined them in 1872. These groups produced a Revised Version of the New Testament in 1881, which the public greeted enthusiastically in Great Britain and the United States. The committees issued the Revised Version of the entire Bible in 1885. By that time, the Revised Version had a reputation of being oriented toward British spelling and figures of speech, so the ERV lost popular support in the United States.

American Standard Version Some members of the American committee for the ERV banded together to produce their own revision of the King James. Headed by J. Henry Thayer, this new committee substituted American expressions for British and reverted to the King James rendering of many words. The committee also made parallel passages read the same when the Greek text was identical; the KJV had not been consistent in doing this. The ASV committee aimed at a word-for-word translation of the Greek and Hebrew wherever possible, and in some cases this made the ASV rather awkward to read. The complete ASV Bible was published in 1901.

New King James Version In 1979, Thomas Nelson Publishers issued a new edition of the KJV New Testament. This edition was based on the 1894 edition of the Textus Receptus. While it preserved the integrity of the text, it eliminated many archaic expressions that made the old KJV difficult to read.

The publisher assembled 119 scholars to work on this new publication. Dr. Arthur Farstad coordinated the work on the New Testament section. "We chose to follow the same theory of manuscript selection as was employed by the 1611 translators", Dr. Farstad said.

In 1982, Thomas Nelson published the complete NKJV Bible, which quickly gained wide acceptance.

New Translations Besides revising the KJV, modern scholars have produced several totally new translations of the Bible.

Revised Standard Version In 1929, the International Council of Religious Education (an agency of the World Council of Churches) began work on a revision of the ASV. After several false starts, the committee resolved on an entirely new translation, based in the New Testament on the latest scholarly Greek texts. The committee finally settled for an eclectic or reading-by-reading type of text that differed at many points from Westcott and Hort. The New Testament section of this Revised Standard Version was published in 1946, and the Old Testament in 1952.

The RSV met a mixed response. Many major denominations welcomed it as a more readable translation, and supposedly a more reliable rendering of the ancient texts. It was one of the most consistent translations ever made into English. However, it brought on itself a storm of criticism for two features: (1) It altered the wording of many classic passages. (2) It chose new readings for a number of passages with far-reaching theological implications.

New English Bible In October 1946, representatives of the major Protestant churches in Great Britain met at Westminster Abbey to commission a new translation that would be better suited to British readers. The New Testament portion of this New English Bible was released in 1961, exactly 350 years after the publication of the KJV. The complete NEB was released in 1970, listing C. H. Dodd as director of the project.

Donald Ebor, at that time Archbishop of York, Chairman of the Joint Committee for the NEB, stated that the NEB translators were "free to employ a contemporary idiom rather than reproduce the traditional 'biblical' English". Nevertheless, the NEB reflects many British characteristics that have made it less desirable in the United States.

The NEB translators used Kittel's Biblia Hebraica (with a number of speculative and perhaps needless amendments) and an eclectic New Testament text by R. V. G. Tasker, published in 1964. They produced an entirely new translation, without trying to imitate the KJV or other earlier versions.

Recent Revisions and Paraphrases We cannot discuss all of the revised editions and paraphrases of the Bible published in recent years. But we should note how several of these recent editions have attempted to preserve the biblical text.

New American Standard Bible

In the New American Standard Bible, evangelical scholars have attempted to update and clarify the ASV. The NASB's New Testament translators mainly used Nestle's improved text, based on Westcott and Hort; but they also referred to some of the papyrus manuscripts and recent studies of the New Testament text. Generally, the Old Testament committee used Kittel's Hebrew text; they noted in the margin any alternative translations from other manuscripts and versions, particularly the Septuagint.

The NASB translators made it their policy to transliterate (write in English letters) most of the Hebrew and Greek names. They capitalized personal pronouns that referred to deity and used "Thou" and "Thee" whenever a biblical speaker addressed GOD. When a literal translation would confuse the reader, the NASB gave the meaning of the text and put the literal reading in the margin. The marginal notes seem to follow the highly regarded Hebrew text of the Jewish Publication Society, known to scholars as the JPS. The complete NASB appeared in 1971, and was well received by Christian readers from different backgrounds.

New American Bible A committee of prominent Roman Catholic scholars was gathered in 1944 and worked for many years to produce a new translation. They first established an Old and New Testament text of their own and then produced an English translation of it. The text chosen for translation varies slightly in character with each section of the Bible. But a textual guide and a complete introduction have been published to inform the reader what judgments were made. The entire NAB was published in 1970, and a complete concordance of it in 1978. At some points, the NAB contains readings based upon the tradition of Catholic biblical interpretation, which differs widely from the Protestant tradition. But the version is vigorous in style and reflects weighty scholarship.

New International Version This version attempts to give the meaning of the Bible text more effectively than the ASV or the other contemporary versions. It was begun in 1965 by a number of scholars representing a group of evangelical denominations. The group worked for a decade under the direction of the New York bible Society. The translation had two basic characteristics: (1) It was to be an ecumenical effort, which would first establish a critical text. The most recent edition of Kittel's Biblia Hebraica was used for the Old Testament, but major differences in the Septuagint were noted. The Greek text of the New Testament was adopted from a number of sources. (2) A principle of translation popularized in the 1960's, known as dynamic equivalence, was used in translating a number of passages. This principle calls for using a word or phrase that makes the impact that the original had on its first readers, rather than using a simple grammatical or lexical equivalent (which in our changed culture might not convey any meaning at all).

The New Testament of the NIV was published in 1973 and the Old Testament in 1978. The NIV's English style is quite contemporary and similar to that of the RSV.

The NIV has many helpful features. It seeks to communicate the meaning of the original text in modern English. On the whole, it reads smoothly and is easy for the average reader to understand. The NIV places quotation marks around direct quotes and brackets around words that the translators have supplied to aid the English reader.

Goodspeed's Paraphrase In 1923, Edgar J. Goodspeed (1871-1962) issued his English-language version of the New Testament, entitled An American Translation. Goodspeed was trying to translate the Greek text of Westcott and Hort into the "simple, straightforward English of the daily expression". To avoid confusing the reader with the structure of Greek sentences, he had to paraphrase much of the text. This book enjoyed good success in the United States, and in 1931 it was combined with a similar translation of the Old Testament by J. M. Powis Smith and others.

J. B. Phillips' Paraphrase J. B. Phillips' New Testament in Modern English appeared in 1957, bringing together a series of paraphrased New Testament books that Phillips began in 1947 with his Letters to Young Churches. Phillips rendered the text very freely, often departing entirely from the Greek manuscripts. His paraphrase attracted considerable attention because of its vivid (and sometimes earthy) language. But serious Bible students do not use it as their basic version because it takes such liberties with the New Testament text.

Today's English Version (Good News Bible) This rendering (New Testament-1966; Old Testament-1976) was sponsered by the American Bible Society. The main TEV writer, Robert G. Bratcher (1920-   ), used a new critical text of the Greek New Testament which the Bible Society prepared for this project. Bratcher saw his work as one of translation rather than paraphrase, but he used the dynamic equivalence method more liberally than the earlier translations did. This placed the TEV in a class apart. It departs radically from the precise meaning of the Hebrew and Greek at many points.

Living Bible Kenneth Taylor (1917-   ), an editor at a Chicago publishing house, began writing this version, an avowed paraphrase, in an effort to make the Bible more understandable to his children. His colleagues found it very helpful, and Taylor founded his own publishing company - Tyndale House - in order to produce a paraphrase of the entire Bible. He published the New Testament section in 1956 and the Old Testament in 1972.

The Living Bible is marked by great clarity and simplicity, and thousands of readers find that they can understand the LB more easily than the KJV or other translations. But Bible scholars and religious leaders have criticized the LB for its free hndling of many passages.

Standards for Evaluation The modern Christian finds himself in a situation that is both bewildering and exciting, because he has so many English translations and paraphrases available. John H. Skilton (1906-   ) lists 107 English translations that have appeared from 1881 to 1973. More are being prepared.

Often, however, Christian readers are not sure how to weigh the different translations and paraphrases against each other. Here we will suggest some simple guidelines for evaluating the various English-language editions.

In general, there are three things to check in a Bible translation: (1) its attitude toward the original text, (2) its way of rendering that text, and (3) whether or not it communicates clearly to the modern reader.

People who have no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew can pass judgment only on the last point - whether the translation communicates clearly to them. But they can learn a great deal about the way each version has handled the work of translation by seeing what it does with certain key passages. For example, we shall get some idea of the translators' theological viewpoint by checking these references:

Deity of Christ - John 1:1; Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13
Atonement - Romans 3:25; 5:1
Justification - Romans 3:25; 5:1
Repentance - Matthew 3:2
Baptism - Matthew 28:19
Eternal Punishment - Matthew 25:46
Church Government - Acts 14:23; 20:17,28; James 5:14
Inspiration of Scripture - II Timothy 3:16

A more thorough New Testament checklist of key passages is provided by the proof texts to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Some of the most difficult Old Testament sections are Genesis 1:1-10; 49; Job 9-11; and Ezekiel 1-10. by comparing how various translations render these sections, a reader will soon discern the theological flavor of each.

Of course, if he does not know Hebrew or Greek, he must depend upon the opinions of reputable Bible scholars concerning the reliability of the translation. he will get a clue to the integrity of a particular version by reading its preface and noting which Hebrew and Greek manuscripts the translators used. Beyond this, he will be wise to note what is said in reviews by trusted Bible scholars.

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