WordHelp: 27 November 2018 – The History of Bible Translations Vision: We lead people to LIFE-CHANGE that is only possible through JESUS CHRIST! Mission: REACHING PEOPLE with the GOSPEL of JESUS CHRIST to ESTABLISH them in the BODY OF CHRIST, to the GLORY OF HIS NAME! Jeremiah 17:7-8: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Welcome It is excellent to have you with us this evening. We trust that this evening will truly bless your soul and help you to mature significantly in the Lord and that you would progress in your sanctification this evening, becoming more and more like Jesus Christ, who is the only way to the Father. May we be filled with great thankfulness as we look at a short history of Bible Translations. It is because of this history that we have the Bible in languages that are known to us and enable us to have an accurate and clear knowledge of God. We stand on the shoulders of many other Christians who has gone before us and whom God has used to bring His Special Revelation through His Word to us! I pray that this will bring great praise in your heart towards God as well as a renewed fervour to study His Word and know Him more intimately! This is a class and we would love to have you participate freely and learn. We do not want to make this as much an academic exercise as we desire it to be a very practical tool for you to use as you go and make disciples in a world that so desperately needs Christ. Remember to pray regularly for this process and prepare well for every class so that you will be receiving the maximum reward possible from your investment of time and energy in these classes. The Lord bless you… Pastor Jacques 1 THE HISTORY OF BIBLE TRANSLATIONS CONTENTS PAGE 1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. OLD TESTAMENT TRANSLATION 3 3. NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATION 5 4. HOW THE BIBLE ENTERED INTO ENGLISH 5 5. THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS 8 6. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 10 7. TRANSLATION PHILOSOPHY 11 8. MEASUREMENT OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FREE AND LITERAL TRANSLATIONS 11 9. TRANSLATION SURVEY 12 10. TRANSLATION CHOICE 13 11. NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 14 2 1. INTRODUCTION The Bible and Bible Translations form an integral part of Christianity. Why? Because the Bible is God’s Word to mankind; His message to them; His revelation of Himself to them so that by grace man can come to a saving knowledge of Him through Jesus Christ and love Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. This knowledge comes through faith in this message and faith comes through hearing this message. (Rom 10:17) In order for people to have a clear understanding of this message, the language barrier that separates so many people from this message has to be overcome and this is where Bible Translations form such an integral part of worldwide Christianity. The need for Bible Translations flows from the great commission (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8) namely that we should make disciples of all nations. We are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth and this through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. One way in which the Holy Spirit then powerfully worked and still works in Christians is to enable them to translate the Word of God into the languages of the nations so that they may come to a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. “Unlike religions such as Islam, where the Quran is only truly the Quran in the original Arabic, biblical Christianity has always believed that God's word can and should be translated into the common languages of all men. In any language in which the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are faithfully rendered, they are still the word of God, and so the Scriptures should be translated into any language necessary to bring the gospel message to all people everywhere.”1 2. OLD TESTEMANT TRANSLATIONS1 Translation of Scripture is older than Christianity itself. The Old Testament Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible were brought into other common languages for centuries before the coming of Jesus Christ, and indeed were a great help to the early church. After the time of Alexander, the Great, Greek became the common language of much of the ancient world. Many Jews dispersed throughout that world began to speak Greek as their primary language. This eventually led to the need for a Greek translation. The Torah (The Books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy) was translated into Greek in the third century BC, with the other Old Testament books shortly to follow. The Septuagint (also known as the LXX) is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language. The name “Septuagint” comes from the Latin word for seventy. The tradition is that 70 (or 72) Jewish scholars were the translators behind the Septuagint. The Septuagint is often quoted verbatim (word for word) in the New Testament and was very important to the early church. Gentile Christians knew nothing of Hebrew, and so the Septuagint was their Bible. Indeed, after Christians embraced and so effectively used the Septuagint for their own teaching, worship, and evangelism, the Jews rejected it and sought to produce new Greek editions to suit their own community's needs. Even these, however, are often classified by some scholars as revisions of the Septuagint rather than new "from scratch" translations. In the third century AD, Origen of Alexandria collected these various Greek editions (along with the Hebrew text of his day) and published them all side by side in parallel columns with notations of key differences in a massive work known as the Hexapla. The Hexapla had a profound influence on future copying of the Septuagint, and scholars give it a central position among the editions of the LXX. It was based on the assumption that, while the Septuagint should be revered as the word of God even in its peculiar readings, there is also value in the study of other translations. They, too, are the word of God, even when they differ from the Septuagint, and the church is richer from knowing them. The wide popularity and influence of the Hexapla shows that this view was held by many early Christians. 3 Though many early Christians spoke Greek, not all did, and Christians were not content to leave the Old Testament only in Greek. They made various translations of the Greek Septuagint into many other languages during the 2nd-9th centuries, including Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic. Greek was also not the only language into which the Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures. After the Babylonian exile, the dominant language among the Jews in and around their homeland began to shift from Hebrew to Aramaic. Hebrew and Aramaic are extremely similar languages, and it seems almost surprising that an Aramaic translation was needed at all. Indeed, the Aramaic did not supplant the Hebrew, which continued to be read aloud in worship. The Aramaic was the contemporary vernacular of the people, however, and so Aramaic translations were produced to aid in comprehension and application of the sacred text. We don't know when written Aramaic Targums were first produced, but our earliest manuscripts go back as early as the second century BC. In addition to the Jewish Targums, the Samaritans also produced an Aramaic translation of the Torah. The Samaritan Targum is generally regarded as a plainer, literal translation while many of the Jewish Targums were often somewhat interpretive. Probably in the late first or the second century AD but certainly before the fourth century, the Old Testament was also separately translated into a prominent eastern dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac. This translation shows clear markings of Jewish interpretation, but also betrays no obvious Rabbinic influence and was readily embraced and transmitted by Christians. For these reasons and more, it is unclear whether the translation was first produced by Jews, Christians, or perhaps a community who identified as both. At any rate, it is interesting to note that, while Aramaic translations already existed, a translation specifically into the Syriac dialect was considered both proper and needful. As noted earlier, Christians translated the Old Testament from the Septuagint into Latin, and probably at a very early date. In the fourth century, however, a scholar named Jerome became convinced that it was important to produce a fresh Latin translation directly from the Hebrew. Jerome relied on the assistance of Jewish scholars. Because all translation is to some degree interpretation, this cooperation concerned some of Jerome's Christian contemporaries. They were worried that the translation would be slanted by Rabbinic exegesis against Christian interpretations of the text. The greater controversy, however, was in returning to the Hebrew rather than relying on the familiar and long trusted tradition of the Greek Septuagint. Even the slightest variation between Jerome's translation and the Septuagint was met with deep scrutiny and tremendous hostility. In one famous instance, a church in North Africa nearly rioted when Jerome's translation of Jonah 4 was read aloud and it identified the plant which sheltered Jonah as an ivy plant rather than the Septuagint's interpretation of the plant as a gourd.