THE BIBLE From God to Us

JoLynn Gower Spring 2017 493-6151 [email protected]

1 WORD FOR THE JOURNEY — 2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. — Scripture: graphe: writing, especially the Holy Bible text — Inspired by God: theopneustos: God-breathed: the concepts and wording came from God, via the Holy Spirit, to men who wrote it down — 2 Peter 1:20-21 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God — Last week: the structure and translation formats 2 HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO US — Autographs: The Bible is inerrant and infallible in the original autographs. An autograph is a manuscript hand written by the original author — Manuscripts: handwritten copies of exemplars (now extended to mean unpublished works by an author) — Exemplar: a manuscript known to be absolutely correct — Scribes were tasked with copying new manuscripts from exemplars; copies were never made from copies — Scribes counted each word and pronounced it before they wrote it down — Lower textual criticism tries to determine the original text with the highest possible degree of accuracy — Higher textual criticism analyzes dates, internal consistency and authors/writing styles 3 IS OUR TRANSLATION ACCURATE? — Future classes will consider reliability of various manuscripts coming from the Hebrew and Greek — Hebrew scholars considering the OT are recognized by time 1. Sopherim: scholars in the 400’s and 300’s BC 2. Zugoth: pairs of scholars in the 200’s and 100’s BC 3. Tannaim: repeaters (teachers) active until around 200 AD The Tannaim participated in developing: Midrash (interpretation) Tosefta (additions) Talmud: teaching or instruction divided into: Mishnah: (oral law) and Gemara (interpretation) 4. Talmudists: 100-500 AD; cataloged the law and wrote transcription rules 5. Masoretes (scholars) 500-550 AD; our OT is from the 4 Masoretic text IS IT ACCURATE?

— Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls have validated the accuracy of the text over time — Until recently, the oldest texts dated to 900-1000 AD — The Dead Sea Scrolls contained texts that dated to 125 BC; A text of Isaiah was more than 1000 years older than the previously known oldest text and proved accuracy — Septuagint (LXX) is the Greek translation of the OT — Targum is the Aramaic translation of the OT — There are no original autographs of the Old or New Testament — One copy of John’s gospel postdates his life by only 10-15 years — In the 1800’s, scholars began to try to reconstruct the

5 original Greek text from various manuscripts JUDEAN WILDERNESS NEAR QUMRAN

6 SHRINE OF THE BOOK

7 8 A DEBT OF GRATITUDE — Eberhard Nestle used the best known manuscripts of the Greek NT to make a compendium of the best scholars — Kurt Aland completed this work in 1993 and published as the Novum Testamentum Graece — We know this compendium as the Nestle-Aland text or NA28 — The United Bible Societies 5th edition is identical — In text notes, these are known as the NU text notes — The Old Testament manuscript favored by translators is the Masoretic text which has been shown by the Dead Sea Scrolls to be accurante — Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

9 THE REFORMATION — Last week, we looked at John Wycliffe produced the first English language translation from the Latin Vulgate in the 1380’s — John Hus, (John Huss; Jan Hus) Czech: a follower Wycliffe, promoted the English language idea, even when those with an English language translation were threatened with death. — In 1415, Hus was burned at the stake with Wycliffe’s manuscripts for kindling — Hus’ last words were “in 100 years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.” — In 1515, Martin Luther began his protests, and in 1517 nailed his famous 95 Theses of Contention to the door of the Wittenberg church; 7 people were burned at the stake by the Catholic church for teaching their children the Lord’s 10 prayer in Englishwho PRINTED — Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450’s The first book printed (in Mainz, Germany)was a Latin Bible — In the 1490’s, an Oxford professor and physician to King Henry decided to study Greek. After reading the gospels in Greek and comparing to the Vulgate he said, “Either this is not the Gospel or we are not Christians” — 1496 John Colet, Oxford professor started translating the Greek NT into English for his students and later at his London church; within 6 months, 20,000 people would be packed into services at the church and others outside Colet was influential enough to avoid execution — In 1516, Erasmus published corrections to the Vulgate in a parallel Greek-Latin NT. He did his own translation into Latin — After this, Pope Leo X declared the “fable of Christ was quite profitable to him.” 11 MORE REFORMERS — William Tyndale was the first to print an English language New Testament; he was a scholar and fluent in eight languages including biblical Hebrew and Greek — His compulsion was to teach people justification by faith, which he learned after reading Erasmus’ Greek text; He showed up at Luther’s doorstep to get a copy — Tyndale requested funds from the Bishop in England for translation work to English but was denied — He then traveled to the free European cities of Hamburg, Wittenberg, Cologne, and Worms where he completed his English translation in 1525 and printed it in 1526 — When the translation reached England, he was actively opposed by King Henry VIII, Cardinal Woolsey and Sir Thomas More who said it was, “not worthy to be called Christ's testament, but either Tyndale's own testament or 12 the testament of his master Antichrist."

BURNING THE TEXTS — The church and the King burned Tyndale English texts as quickly as they could find them claiming they were full of errors; the real reason was loss of control if people knew for themselves what the scriptures said — Salvation by faith, not through works or donations would destroy the Roman Catholic Church; the canonization of Saints and Mary would be called into question; the right to confession to God and not to priests would be known — Myles Coverdale, Tyndale’s disciple, printed the first complete English Bible translation in 1535 using Luther’s German text and the Latin as sources — John “Thomas Matthew” Rogers printed the second complete English Bible in 1537, the first translated from the original Greek and Hebrew 13 THE GREAT BIBLE — Henry VIII renounced Catholicism because the Pope wouldn’t let him divorce; after marrying his mistress anyway, Henry removed England from the Catholic church and founded the Church of England with himself as head — He authorized the “Great Bible” in English (14” tall) — Following Henry was Edward VI and then Bloody Mary who was obsessed with returning the country to Catholicism — Many were burned at the stake including John “Thomas Matthew” Rogers — In the 1550’s, the church at Geneva, Switzerland was sympathetic to the reformers and provided safe haven, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe (Book of Martyrs) — An English Bible was published there, the first with verse numbers, called The Geneva Bible

14 CONTINUED PROBLEMS

— In 1580 the Catholic church gave up the English Bible battle but proceeded to translate their own version using the inaccurate Latin Bible that Erasmus had critiqued; the result is the Douay-Rheims Bible — When Queen Elizabeth I died, James VI of Scotland became James 1 of England — In 1611 the King James Bible was published: scholars used the Tyndale NT, the Coverdale Bible, the Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the Rheims NT; the first copies were 16” thick and intended only for the pulpit — The King James Bible is not a protestant translation but an Anglican one; it was revised in 1769 — It took almost 90 years for the Geneva Bible (protestant) to 15 be overtaken in usage by the King James