By the 3rd century BC Greek had become the common language of the countries in eastern Mediterranean countries – including among those Jews who’d been exiled from their own country. King Ptolemy II of Egypt wanted a Greek of the Hebrew Old Testament for his library at Alexandria. So he arranged for 72 Jewish scholars to do this for him - hence its title, because the Latin word septuaginta means "seventy". It was written on papyrus scrolls, fragments of which have been found, like the replicas on the panel. The was in use in the days of Jesus and his followers 300 years later. The copy on the table was printed in 1665.

In the centuries after Jesus Christ, Latin was the language used by the Church in its services. In the 4th century Pope Damasus was keen to have one standard edition of the Latin to replace the different ones in circulation. He gave his secretary Jerome the task of producing one. First Jerome revised the text of the . He took the best existing Latin text he could find, and corrected it where necessary with the help of Greek manuscripts. Next he translated the Book of Psalms. This was followed by the rest of the . He retired to live in Bethlehem as a monk. Here he decided that the best way to translate the Old Testament was really to go back to the original Hebrew. He finished doing this in 405 AD.

Actually, this Bible wasn’t given the title Vulgate until much later, in 1546. It comes from the Latin ‘vulgaris’, meaning ‘popular’. It became the one used throughout Western Europe for many centuries. The page on the panel is from a 13th century Bible published in France. The volume on the table was produced in 1609.

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When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, some Christians fled to Britain and Ireland and formed monasteries. Bible manuscripts were stored and copied there. Bede was a monk who lived from in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. He lived at a monastery in Northumbria. He translated the of John from Latin into .

The 9th century King Alfred was another who translated parts of the Bible from Latin. The translators of the 10th century Wessex Gospels from Latin into Anglo-Saxon are unknown. On the table we have an 1848 reprint of Anglo-Saxon Gospels. Indeed, from the 7th - 14th centuries there were many attempts at translating parts of the Bible into early English. But it seems that these were to help the clergy, many of whom didn’t understand Latin.

In the 14th century the official Bible of the Church was still the Latin Vulgate. John Wycliffe, the Rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. He insisted that the ultimate authority for Christians should be the Bible, not the Church. So it was essential for them to read the Bible for themselves. He, with help from other scholars, made the 1st English translation of the entire Bible in 1384. There’s an 1810 reprint of his New Testament on the table. He translated it from the Vulgate. He sent out preachers into the streets and the fields. His enemies called them Lollards, or “mutterers”, because they read from the Bible. As a result many ordinary people, who could not themselves read, learned parts of the Bible off by heart.

The Church didn’t approve of Wycliffe’s work, because he acted without its authority. It persecuted Wycliffe and his followers, putting many of them to death. On the right of the panel you can see some of their names. In 1408 a new law was brought in that decreed that no-one should translate any part of the Bible its approval.

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In 1453 Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire), was captured by the Turks. As a result, many Hebrew and Greek scholars fled for safety from the east to Europe. In the West they continued their studies, including the study of the Bible. They brought with them early copies of the New Testament in Greek, which proved valuable to future Bible translation.

The next landmark was the invention of printing to make multiple copies of documents at the same time. Until then copies of had been made by hand. It might take a year to produce just one. And it was expensive. The invention of printing using moveable type is usually credited to the German, Johannes Gutenberg. On the panel is an illustration of one of the first mechanical printing presses. It was Gutenberg who produced the first printed Bible in Germany in 1455-6. This was a Latin Vulgate printed on vellum and done in such a way as to make it look it hand-written. One of its pages is reproduced on the panel. For many this is the most beautiful book in the world. The facsimile on the table is volume 2 of a 2-volume set printed in the 21st century.

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William Caxton brought printing to in 1476. He was the 1st to print parts of the Bible in English. From now on Bibles were printed.

About 100 years after John Wycliffe’s death, William Tyndale also stated that the Christian’s true authority was the Bible, not the Church. To someone who disagreed with this he said, “If God spares my life, I will cause a ploughboy to know more Scripture than you do!” But his efforts to bring the Bible in current English to the man in the street proved too difficult and dangerous in England. He was forced abroad for the rest of his life. There he translated the New Testament into English and had it printed in 1525. The example on the table was reprinted in 1862. Copies were smuggled back to England for circulation. Many people lost their lives in the process, because King Henry VIII and the Church were violently opposed to the work. He later translated and published parts of the Old Testament. Tyndale was the first to bypass the Vulgate and go directly to the Hebrew and Greek texts. But his enemies pursued him even on the Continent. King Henry had him arrested and imprisoned outside Brussels. He was tried for heresy, strangled and his body was burned at the stake. He died crying, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”,

Others followed in his footsteps. For example, Miles Coverdale produced a printed Bible in English in 1535. He used much of Tyndale's translation. This also had to be done abroad. But 2 years later the 2nd edition was the first English Bible printed in England. It even had King Henry’s blessing. “His eyes had been opened” indeed! On the table is the 1550 reprint.

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Miles Coverdale was commissioned to produce a standard English Bible. In 1539 the was printed in England, so called because of its size. A copy was installed in every parish church, chained to a reading desk, like the model on the table, to prevent theft. The Great Bible on the table was printed in 1540.

Queen Mary was a Roman Catholic, so Bible students were again persecuted and driven abroad. Geneva in Switzerland became a centre of learning for them. There William Whittingham and others produced another translation in 1560, the . The copy on the table was produced in 1599. It’s often called the ‘Breeches Bible’, because it says that Adam and Eve ‘ made themselves breeches’. It became more popular than the Great Bible. It was portable, affordable and could therefore be read at home. It was the first to be printed in Roman type, as opposed to the 'black letter' type that looked like handwriting. It was the first to be divided into chapters and verses all the way through. It was also the first to indicate in italics words added by translators.

When Elizabeth I, who was Protestant, became queen, the Church in England proposed a new translation. Sections of the work were given to suitably qualified bishops, which is why it was unofficially called the “Bishops’ Bible”. Their instructions were to revise the Great Bible. This took 7 years and was finished in 1568. It superseded the Great Bible as the authorised version of the Church of England. But unlike the Great Bible it was also an approved version for ordinary people. This version was nicknamed the “Treacle Bible”, because it translated “Is there no balm in Gilead?” in Jer. 8 as “Is there not treacle in Gilead…?” The copy on table was printed in 1574.

It was now the turn of Catholics to flee to Europe to avoid persecution. At Douai in France they translated it from the Latin Vulgate an English translation to rival the Protestant Geneva Bible. They. The N.T. was printed at Rheims in 1582, the O.T. at Douai in 1609-1610. It’s therefore known as the Douai (or Douai-Rheims) Bible.

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All this paved the way for the next milestone, the Authorised Version, or of the Bible. King James I, himself a Bible scholar, was persuaded that there was a need for a that would be acceptable to all. Strict terms of reference were laid down and the King himself would have to personally approve it. The panel of 47 translators was chosen on the grounds of scholarship alone. It was to be a revision of the Bishops’ Bible. Previous often included notes and opinions, but none were now to be allowed, except helpful explanations of Hebrew and Greek words. The work was published in 1611 and dedicated to the King. Ironically, it is thought that 90% of it was from William Tyndale’s own translation!

It was originally published as a complete folio Bible. It was sold loose-leaf for ten shillings or bound for twelve shillings. The smaller copy on display is dated 1614. The title page says “appointed to be read in all churches”. It was revised several times and the edition now in use was published in 1769.

What’s amazing about the Authorised Version is the way it has stood the test of time, even though it’s four centuries old. Despite its antiquated English, it’s still read and loved by many. Like the works of William Shakespeare, it’s recognised as a literary masterpiece. Many expressions from it are used in everyday conversation today, without us realising where they came from!

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The first Welsh Bible was in existence by 1470. It was a translation from the Latin Vulgate. Queen Elizabeth ordered the Welsh bishops to have a Bible printed in Welsh and to place copies in all parish churches. In 1588 William Morgan published his translation of the whole Bible. The 2nd version, published in 1620, is still known as William Morgan's translation. It became the standard Welsh Bible for centuries. In 1630 a smaller edition was published for use in the home like the one on display, the edition that Mary Jones obtained in Bala in 1800 (see below). A new Welsh translation was published in 1988 and the Revised New Welsh Bible came out in 2004.

A translation of the New Testament into Irish from the original Greek was published in 1602. A translation of the Old Testament by William Bedell and other scholars was finished but never published. Narcissus Marsh and others revised it and about 500 copies were printed in 1686.

In 1690 3000 copies of the complete Irish Bible were printed for the Scottish Highlanders. It was printed in Roman script, because they weren’t familiar with Irish characters. For a long time the clergy in the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland used this Bible. However, differences in dialect meant it wasn’t ideal. So the first Gaelic New Testament was published in 1767. The translation was done by James Stuart and his son, John. John Stuart was also the main translator of the Gaelic Old Testament, which was published in parts between 1783 and 1801. The copy of the whole Bible in Gaelic on the table is undated.

Parts of the Bible were translated into Cornish as far back as the 17th century. It wasn’t until 2004 that the Cornish Bible Project published the whole of the New Testament, translated directly from the original Greek. The same team is working on the Old Testament.

The 1st part of the Bible to be translated into Manx was The Gospel of Matthew. It was done by William Walker and was printed in 1748. An Old Testament appeared in 1773. 2 years later an edition of 40 copies of the first complete Manx Bible was issued. The Gospel of John on display is a 1936 reprint of an 1819 Bible.

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Mary Jones Bible

Mary Jones was born in 1784 into a poor weaver’s family near Dolgellau (pronounced Doll- geth-lee) in north-west Wales. From an early age she helped her mother with the household chores. But on Sunday mornings she would walk to the chapel in the village 2 miles away and heard the Bible being read. Being illiterate, she longed to be able to read the Bible and even own one. But Welsh Bibles were rare and expensive.

When a school opened in the village, Mary worked extra hard to finish her chores quickly, so that she could go there to learn to read. She became even more determined to get her own Bible. But she was now old enough to realise the expense involved. So she started doing little jobs for other people to raise the money, which took 6 years. She had heard there was a man in a town called Bala, 25 miles away, who might have Bibles for sale. And so in 1800 Mary, who was now 15 or 16, set off barefoot to walk to Bala. Eventually, she reached the town and found the house of Mr Thomas Charles.

According to one version of her story, Mr. Charles told her that all the copies which he had were either sold or spoken for. Mary was so upset that he spared her one of the copies already promised to someone else. In another version, she waited 2 days for a supply of Bibles to arrive and was able to buy more than 1 copy. Whichever is correct, the Bible in question was the 1799 edition of the Welsh Bible that is on display. Her own copy is in Cambridge University Library.

Thomas Charles began to think of all the other ‘Mary Joneses’ who must want Bibles, not only in Wales but in the rest of Britain and even abroad. In 1804 he and others formed the British and Foreign Bible Society, now called the Bible Society. A "Mary Jones Walk" was held in 2000 to commemorate Mary's original journey and has been repeated several times. A memorial was erected over the ruins of the cottage where she lived.

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With the passing of time more ancient Bible manuscripts have been discovered. The panel refers to the Codex Sinaiticus (pronounced SIN-eye-IT-icus) and the Codex Alexandrinus. “Codex” means “book”, a volume produced by sewing together folded paper written on both sides with a cover.

The Codex Sinaiticus literally means “Sinai book”. It was discovered by visiting scholars in the 19th century at the St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. It had been preserved there since it was written in the 4th century. The main portion of the Codex is now at the British Library in London. Judging by the handwriting, it was probably the work of 3 or 4 scribes. It’s regarded by many scholars as one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint and of the New Testament. In fact, it’s the oldest surviving copy of the whole New Testament.

The panel shows a colour reproduction of the Codex Alexandrinus. On the table is a black and white photographed facsimile. The library at Alexandria in Egypt held the world's greatest collection of manuscripts. However, it’s not certain whether the Codex Alexandrinus was originally written there. It, too, is stored in the British Library. It was presented to King Charles I in 1621 by the Patriarch of Constantinople. It’s a 5th century manuscript of the Bible in Greek - in other words, slightly younger than the Codex Sinaiticus. It consists of four volumes, written on thin vellum, or animal skin. It contains almost the complete Bible. Going by differences in handwriting and so on, 2 scribes were responsible for their production.

The last 150 years has seen the publication of many more translations. Displayed here are the of 1885, the (published in 1952), the (1966), the New International Version (1978) and the of 1982. The updated NIV (2011) accompanies Panel 68.

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One day in 1947 an Arab boy found stone jars in a cave at Qumran near the Dead Sea like the ones on display. They contained scrolls of all but one of the books of the Old Testament. Experts reckon they are about 2100 years old, the oldest surviving Old Testament scrolls ever discovered. They’re on display in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Despite their age, the wording of these ancient scrolls is remarkably similar to what we have today. Normally, it would not be unreasonable to expect big changes due to the passage of time. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that the Old Testament has been miraculously preserved for us today.

Jewish scribes made copies of the Old Testament by hand. They treated the work with such reverence that they proof-read every copy scrupulously. If they found a mistake, the whole page would be discarded and they would have to start again. They had strict copying rules, such as: Each line should consist of 30 letters. Each column should have an even number of lines. No letters or words should be written from memory. Each word in the original should be spoken aloud before being copied. Words, and even letters, were counted, and the whole scroll was then checked by a supervisor.

On the table there is a Hebrew scroll. It dates back to the 16th century AD and is written in Hebrew on leather made from sheepskin. It contains the 1st five books of the Bible, which the Jews call the Torah. As it’s a corrected copy, it’s unlikely to have been read in the Synagogue. It’s open at Leviticus 25 – about the Year of Jubilee.

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The New Testament was written on scrolls that were made from papyrus reeds. As papyrus rots very easily, none of the original Greek manuscripts have been discovered. However, a large number of fragments have survived, meaning there are far more ancient copies of the New Testament than of any other classical book. And as it was quoted so many times in other ancient writings, we could actually compile the New Testament from those quotations alone.

On the panel there is a photo of the oldest fragment so far discovered. It’s part of a papyrus codex containing John’s Gospel which is in the John Rylands Museum in Manchester. It has been dated to about 130 AD. That means it was probably written less than 100 years after the original text.

This fragment is one of many obtained in Egypt by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty. Beatty was an American millionaire, nicknamed the "King of Copper”, because of the way he made his fortune. He was a collector and built up a remarkable collection of Oriental art and books. He acquired several early papyrus manuscripts, including portions of the Old and New Testaments. He gave some of them to the British Museum in a collection which bears his name. On the table there is a book containing facsimile reproductions of the Chester Beatty fragments of some New Testament books. Most of them have been dated to the 3rd century, but some are as early as the 2nd.

Through the dedication, hard work and self-sacrifice of some determined people in years gone by, we can all get hold of a copy cheaply and read it in our own language. And all in all, any differences in the text of both Old and New Testaments are only slight and not important to our understanding of .

The following notes accompany panel 68, which is about modern Bible versions. It includes a display of the Bibles listed on the panel (if there is space for it).

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There are roughly 2 kinds of modern translations: paraphrases and word-for-word translations.

Paraphrases focus on making the Bible more readable, by trying to convey its general meaning. They do this by adapting the wording and the style to the way we speak today. Examples of this are the and the New International Version. The danger with this method is the possibility of human interpretation. This is especially risky in one person translations such as The Message and .

On the other hand, there are word-for-word or literal translations, such as the King James, or Authorised, Version. The idea behind these is to stick as closely as possible to the original text, making us work out the meaning for ourselves where it seems unclear to modern ears. But they’re usually perfectly readable. The New King James Version and the belong to the same family of translations. It’s best to use this type if we want to really study the Bible.

The Good News Bible New Testament was first published separately in 1966 and at first it used the title Good News for Modern Man. It was sold in paperback in supermarkets. The origin of the Good News Bible goes back to requests for a Bible version that would be helpful to people learning English. The translators used a style they called “dynamic equivalence”. That is to say, the meaning of the original would be expressed in a "thought for thought" rather than "word for word" translation. In 1976 the Old Testament was completed and published as the Good News Bible: The Bible in Today's English. It’s been a popular translation with its simple, everyday, language and line drawings. So it’s often been considered suitable for children and for those new to English. Strict accuracy comes second to readability and ease of understanding. The Living Bible was published in 1971. The author was Kenneth Taylor, who decided to produce a paraphrased Bible to make it easier for his own children to understand. It’s therefore an example of a thought-for-thought translation. It became the best-selling book in America in the early 1970s, largely because it was easy to read and understand. But it is a paraphrase and Kenneth Taylor didn’t claim that he had produced an accurate translation. Instead, he himself admitted, "A paraphrase is guided not only by the translator's skill in simplifying, but also by … his understanding of the original. There is a possibility that the translator, however honest, may be giving the English reader something that the original writer did not mean to say. He added, “A paraphrase should be checked against a rigid translation." This applies to all paraphrased translations of the Bible.

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The New International Version was published in the USA, where it was thought it was time for a new modern English translation. The publishers wanted a translation that would be accurate and readable, but that, unlike the Good News Bible would fall somewhere between a paraphrase and an exact word-for-word translation. The whole Bible was published in 1978. Despite receiving a fair amount of criticism, it became hugely popular. A modified version came out in 1984. A new edition was published in 2011. Like several other very modern versions it has faced criticism over its use of gender-inclusive language. For instance, it says “people” instead of "men", if the original means “people” rather than males. This has led to accusations of feminism and political-correctness, especially in the USA. The King James Version is still very popular, despite being 400 years old and written in 17th century English. There are those who still advocate its use. They would say, for example, that the use of old-fashioned words like “thou” to address God is more respectful and reverential; and that overall this version gives the best impression of God’s majesty and holiness. In fact, this had been a major concern of the translators - to produce a Bible that would be dignified, and they avoided some expressions that had just come into use in 1611 in favour of phrases that were already going out-of-date, like verily and it came to pass.But its style and use of out-of-date language means that new or young readers find it off-putting. It’s a mainly word-for-word translation, which is better for getting at the exact meaning of the original words. Some would say that having to think about what the words mean is actually an advantage, because it makes you slow down, work out the meaning yourself and absorb more of the message. They might well use more than one modern translation to help them in this. The New King James Version started life as the Revised Authorized Version in the UK, but it’s generally known now as the New King James. As its title suggests, the translators aimed to keep the purity and dignified style of the original Authorised, or King James, Version. It kept the same order of words and phrases, but it updated some words and expressions that might no longer be understood. One of its main differences is that it abandoned the pronouns “thou” and "thee" etc. The translators have also sought to follow the same principles of translation that they call "complete equivalence", that is to say, to reproduce the original “word-for- word”. It’s faced criticism that it works from the same original manuscripts that the King James Bible translators had and largely ignores earlier manuscripts and documents which have since been discovered. The English Standard Version is a revision of the 1971 Revised Standard Version, partly as a reaction to the recent spate of loose translations. Its translators wanted to produce a readable and accurate translation in the tradition of that included William Tyndale’s, the King James Version, the Revised Version and the Revised Standard Version. Their philosophy was to produce a literal translation in modern English and to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. Thus this version stresses “word-for-word” accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning. But it also takes into account differences of grammar and idiom between the original languages and current English. The language was modernised to remove "thou" and "thee" and replace obsolete words. The result is a clear translation in modern English that is more literal than, for example, the New International Version

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There may be space for the display of other modern English versions…. The New Testament in Modern English was produced by J. B. Phillips, a London clergyman who during World War II realised that the young people in his church did not understand the Bible. So he began to paraphrase the New Testament for them, while sheltering from the bombing. The youth group liked his work, because for them it made the Bible easier to understand. Encouraged by this, he continued to translate the rest of the New Testament. When he later revised this, he left out some phrases that he had inserted but which weren’t in the original Greek, like ‘I am sure you realise’. He also translated parts of the Old Testament. He used that type of translation known as ‘dynamic equivalence’. Phillips followed 3 essential principles of translation: that it must not read like a translation at all; that the translator must not impose his own style and personality; and the translation should as much as possible produce the same effect on its readers as the original did. So the Apostle Paul’s Salute one another with an holy kiss’ in the King James Bible became ‘Give each other a hearty hand-shake all round in Christian love.’ The usual danger of paraphrases is doubled by the fact that it’s the work of one person. This is a very free paraphrase which can be helpful to understand the Bible – but only if Phillips’ interpretation is correct. The producers of the God’s Word translation describe their translation method as "closest natural equivalence” – in other words, not a literal translation but not a paraphrase either. It claims to express the original meaning in clear everyday language in a style that retains the characteristics of the original authors. Those in favour of literal translations argue that the translation method still involves too much interpretation and commentary. They criticise The God’s Word translation for taking too much liberty with the original Greek and Hebrew texts, resulting in important features of the Bible being omitted. It gives the impression of being designed more for young people and first-time readers. For example, familiar terms are avoided, so that "church" is sometimes changed to "community of believers," "justification" to "God's approval," and "the Law" to "Moses' Teachings". The claims to be easy to read and understand. It states that it reflects accurately the meaning of the original text. If it was thought that a literal translation of a word or phrase would be difficult to understand or misleading today, it turned to translating the idea rather than the words into natural, everyday English expressions. This is known as dynamic equivalence. So, "they beat their breasts" was changed to "They went home in deep sorrow", for example. Weights and measures, money, dates and times and so on are described in modern terms. Changes like these are accompanied by footnotes giving the literal translation. Another non-literal approach is the use of gender-inclusive language, an example of which is ‘brethren’ translated as "brothers and sisters". Once again we have a translation which is too much of a paraphrase, putting the readers into the hands of the opinions and interpretations of the translators. The New Revised Standard Version is a thorough revision of the Revised Standard Version. It draws on newly available sources that increase understanding of many Biblical passages. These sources include newly-found manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeological finds, and new understandings of Greek and Hebrew since the RSV was published. Generally speaking, it’s less literal than the RSV. But it claims to be "as literal as possible" in adhering to the ancient texts; and only "as free as necessary" to make the meaning clear in graceful, understandable English. It modernizes and simplifies the language of the old RSV to make it more easily understood, especially when it’s read out loud. The RSV had kept the use of "thee and thou" only when God was addressed, but the New RSV omits them. Again, the RSV had continued the old practice of using masculine nouns like "man", where "person" was meant in the original. But the New RSV adopts a policy of gender- inclusive language. So instead of “brethren” or “brothers”, the New RSV uses “brothers and sisters” to refer to a group that includes men and women. Where adjustments are made, the literal translation is noted in a footnote. The New Revised Standard Version claims that it meets with the approval of most scholars.

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You might think from the subtitle of The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language that it’s a paraphrase and you’d be right. In fact, it’s an extreme paraphrase, more like the JB Phillips in style but more daring. It was created by Eugene H. Peterson, who said that the reason he did it was to bring it to life for 2 different kinds of people: those who hadn't read the Bible because they thought it was irrelevant - and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become 'old hat’. To give an idea of its style, it’s probably sufficient to quote his version of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what's best— as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You're in charge! You can do anything you want! You're ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes. The author has said that he was surprised to find that The Message is often read in church, adding that he was uncomfortable with someone saying "Hear the Word of God from The Message." The usual dangers apply in the case of paraphrases produced by one person. The Contemporary English Version comes from the same stable as the Good News Bible. It’s a new translation which began as a result of research into speech patterns used in books, magazines, newspapers, and television. This led to a simplified version of the Bible designed for children and uneducated adults. To ensure it would be understood by someone unfamiliar with Biblical language, it replaces Bible terms with more everyday words and phrases. It often paraphrases passages in order to make them clearer, rather than directly translating the wording. Sometimes it summarises passages to make them shorter. At other times it inserts new material by way of explanation. This leads to a lot of interpretation being introduced. The trouble with trying to simplify the Bible is that it wasn’t written for modern children or for adults with no religious knowledge. It was written for Jewish adults in ancient times, who very familiar indeed with their religion, or for those who followed Jesus Christ, who were already familiar with the Old Testament and with the terminology of their faith. Many of the difficulties that modern translators face are not caused by unfamiliar words and low levels of education but by a lack of background knowledge. The is a Roman Catholic translation. As its title suggests, it’s an update of the Jerusalem Bible. It’s said to be less literary but more literal. It set out to improve on accuracy and where possible to translate the same original word by the same English word. Like its predecessor it differs from the convention of most translations in that it renders God's name as "Yahweh" instead of “LORD" in capital letters. It also tries to use inclusive language, but far less so than many other modern translations. It claims to have removed elements which were openly biased towards Roman Catholic belief. But the problem for non-Catholics lies in its many notes, many of which are still openly Roman Catholic. For example, where the Bible refers to Jesus’ brothers and sisters, the New Jerusalem Bible in some notes says that they were only cousins, as Catholics don’t believe that Mary had other children. Other notes cast doubt on the Bible’s claim to be the Word of God and accurate. For example, the Bible states that Jesus performed 2 separate miracles, when he fed 5000 people on one occasion and 4000 people on another. But a note in The New Jerusalem Bible describes this as mere duplication, two different versions of the same incident. The version also includes the Apocrypha, which the Catholic Church accepts as part of the Bible. The is aimed at young readers and those with low reading skills. Its publisher stresses that it’s designed for those who want to read the Bible for sheer enjoyment. They say (quote) “it’s easy to read and impossible to put down”. Despite this, they say it doesn’t sacrifice accuracy for simplicity. But its focus, making the Bible enjoyable and readable, especially for young people, leads it to use off-putting simplistic language at times. For example, the 1st verse of the Bible: In the beginning God created the sky and the earth. In its wish to use clear and simple language, it often turns to paraphrase. It seems to want to merely give the gist of the Bible by using short words and sentences, but too often the deep meaning is lost in the process. The problem is that, like all paraphrases, it doesn’t give us the words that God intended us to read. In addition it lowers its tone to appeal to the young. Yet God says: My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts, than your thoughts. How can God’s ways be understood by using basic language except in a very basic way. So it’s hardly a good accurate translation for adults who want to seriously study the Bible message.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible is subtitled “The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English”. That means it’s the first complete English translation of the Old Testament from the text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are by far the oldest known Hebrew Old Testament documents. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible contains all 220 of the Dead Sea Biblical scrolls, meaning all but one Book of the Old Testament. The Scrolls confirm that the text of the Old Testament, as it’s been handed down through the ages, is largely correct. Don’t be put off by the translators’ claim that they have revealed many important differences. In fact they have found only 1 significant difference every 13 chapters. The majority of these have little effect on the meaning of the text. Only 6 have any significant effect, but not enough to undermine one’s faith in the way the Bible has been preserved over the centuries.

There may be space for the display of books that can help people understand the Bible better. Included in this display is another Bible.

The aim of the Amplified Bible is to be true to the original languages, be grammatically correct, and be understandable to all. But we’ve included it here and not with other translations because it’s not so much a translation as an interpretation or explanation. It uses the 1901 American Standard Version as its basis. But its chief feature is that it defines and expands words and phrases in the middle of the text, and uses special punctuation to help bring out shades of meaning that traditional translations can’t do. Here’s one example, from Acts 16:31. The King James Bible says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. In the Amplified Bible this reads, Believe in -and on- the Lord Jesus Christ—that is, give yourself up to Him, take yourself out of your own keeping and entrust yourself into His keeping, and you will be saved. You can see there that it’s added quite a lot of additional wording, and why. There’s a danger that readers will accept its interpretations as accurate translation, so it must be used with care. Another interesting feature is that it gives God’s name – Yahweh – instead of GOD or LORD in capitals, which most translations do.

There may be space for the display of other historical Bibles…

There is a replica of the Nash Papyrus, a collection of 4 papyrus fragments obtained in Egypt in 1898 by W. L. Nash, who presented them to the Cambridge University Library. They fit together and are part of a single sheet, not a scroll, and have been dated to 150-100 BC. They contain the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, followed by the start of the Jewish prayer, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one." It was Jewish tradition to read the Ten Commandments before saying the prayer. Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, this papyrus was by far the oldest Biblical text in existence. As Christianity spread outwards from Palestine, translations of Old and New Testaments were made into local languages. One of the earliest of these translations was in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic spoken in what today we call northern Iraq. The standard Syriac version of the Bible is known as the ‘Peshitta’, which means either ‘simple’ (in relation to its style), or ‘common’ (meaning, in general use). The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated directly from the Hebrew, probably by Jews in the 2nd century AD, by which time the New Testament was already in circulation. The earliest versions of the New Testament that we have lack 4 of the last Letters and Revelation. Modern Syriac Bibles include later translations of these. The Syriac translation is generally thought to be faithful and literal. It’s admired by all Syriac scholars, earning it the title "Queen of the versions." The first printed edition of it was the New Testament in 1555, soon after the arrival of printing and our copy of it was produced in 1603.

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Ethiopia has a strong Christian heritage. It was cut off from Christian Europe by the armies of Islam and the Ethiopian church developed its own Bible. Perhaps the most common theory is that the Ethiopic Bible dates from about the 5th century, when Christianity became widespread in Ethiopia. One unusual feature is that it differs from the Bible of any other churches. It has 46 books of the Old Testament and 35 books of the New Testament, a total of 81. The only Old Testament book in the King James Bible which is not in the Ethiopian Bible is the Book of Lamentations. There are however 13 books in the Ethiopian Old Testament which are not in the King James Bible. The Ethiopian New Testament contains the 27 books of the New Testament plus 8 others. The volume you’re looking at is an 1830 facsimile of the New Testament. This is a book about the Lindisfarne Gospels. They’re a well-known Latin manuscript of the 4 Gospels, produced on the island of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, in Northumbria. It’s a copy of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translation of the Four Gospels, thought have been made by Eadfrith, Bishop of Lindisfarne in about 715 AD. It’s an illuminated manuscript, meaning one that’s richly illustrated. It’s beautiful to look at, but did not help ordinary people, who spoke Anglo-Saxon. But in the 10th century an Anglo-Saxon translation was added between the lines by Aldred, a priest of Lindisfarne. This is known as an interlinear translation, or gloss. The Latin version is written on one line and the Anglo-Saxon translation on another. It’s now held in the British Library. It was originally encased in a fine leather binding covered with jewels, but during the Viking raids the cover was lost. The Dutch scholar Erasmus in Rotterdam became one of Europe’s leading authorities on the Greek language, including recently discovered manuscripts. As a result he came to the view that the Latin Vulgate was an inaccurate translation of the Greek New Testament. So he made a new Latin translation of it from the various Greek New Testament manuscripts he owned. In 1516 he had it printed alongside the Greek text to allow his readers to assess the quality of his new Latin translation. What you’re looking at is the 1522 edition. His work showed how inaccurate the Latin Vulgate had become and how important it was to translate from the original languages. It was used by Martin Luther to translate the New Testament into German for the first time in 1522 and by William Tyndale to translate it into English for the first time in 1526.The Greek text produced by Erasmus is known as the Textus Receptus and was used by the translators of the King James Version. Erasmus’s was clearly interested in making the Bible available to ordinary people, because he said: ‘Would that the farmer might sing snatches of the Scripture at his plough and that the weaver might hum phrases to the tune of his shuttle’. In 1537 John Rogers, a friend of William Tyndale, published another English Bible bearing the title “The Byble … truly and purely translated into Englysh by Thomas Matthew”. We have the 1549 edition. It’s thought to have been largely the work of Rogers himself, Miles Coverdale and William Tyndale. The initials ‘W.T’ appear at the end of the Old Testament. It’s thus an important link in the history of English Bible translations. The influenced the next generation of English Bible versions. Rogers used the pen-name Thomas Matthew, possibly for the sake of his own safety, or from the need to keep from the King that Tyndale was involved in the translation. When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553, John Rogers preached an anti-Catholic sermon and was arrested and imprisoned. 2 years later he was sentenced to death by burning. Hexapla is Greek for "sixfold" and is the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions. The English Hexapla published in 1841 is an edition of the New Testament in Greek. It has 6 English translations dating from 1380 to 1611 arranged in columns underneath the Greek on each page. These are the translations by Wycliffe and Tyndale, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Authorized King James Version.

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Dividing the Books of the Bible into chapters and verses goes back a very long time. In the early 13th century Stephen Langton divided every Book into chapters. Wycliffe used this system in his 1384 English Bible. But it wasn’t until 1488 that Mordecai Nathan, using Langton’s chapter divisions, divided the Bible into verses. The next stage involved Robert Estienne, also known as Robert Stephanus or Robert Stephens, a 16th century printer and scholar who in 1539 became royal printer to the King of France. But he fell out of favour and in 1550 he fled to Geneva, Switzerland. It was there that in 1551 he printed a Greek New Testament, using Langton’s chapter divisions but a new system of verses. The story goes that he devised this while riding on horseback from Paris to Lyons. In 1555 he printed a Latin Vulgate. In the Old Testament he used the old chapter-and-verse divisions created by Langton and Nathan. But the New Testament again used Langton’s chapters and Stephens’ own verse system. This was the method generally used for Bibles from then on. The copy you see is an original 1555 edition. The Royal Bible is an edition of the Bible published in 1761 with notes and comments on every page by Leonard Howard. He was the Personal Chaplain to the Dowager Princess of Wales, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. She was the Princess of Wales until 1751 when her husband Frederick, Prince of Wales died and then she became Dowager Princess of Wales. A dowager is a widow holding a title or property that was her late husband's. Leonard Howard produced the Royal Bible for her the year after her son became King George III.

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