Translating the Bible

The Bible was translated from Greek into 20th Century modern language through many centuries of hard work and determination to help the reader to understand the messages the authors wrote. The New Testament was composed between the years 50-140 CE. The development of the New Testament canon takes place right at the beginning. Greek text was formed from many different versions of survived and copied manuscripts; the oldest surviving being from the book of John Chapter 18, in the year 125 CE. The earliest list of the books of the New Testament was written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Easter letter of 367. The Codex Sinaitcus and Codex Vaticanus were the first two fully compiled New Testament copies as a whole.

Around 382 CE, Jerome's translation of the Bible set in stone what we would consider to be the New Testament canon. He translated the Greek text into Latin; known as the Latin Vulgate or vulgar, which remains to be used by the Roman Catholic Church to this day. By 600 CE, Latin was the only translation that was allowed to be used at that time. Between the 730s Ð'- 995 CE, the first Anglo-Saxon or English translations started to emerge by the help of Venerable Bede in the 730's.

This translation helped other translators such as English priest John Wycliffe, who wanted the scripture to become available to those who could not speak Latin. Because of the fear that average people would misinterpret the text, Wycliffe's 1408 version was condemned. William Tyndale, who translated the text from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts in 1525, was burned as a heretic but his work continues to influence virtually all English translations since.

The most popular and widely used translation is the King James Version which was published in 1611 when the English language was most vibrant. The translators were without the old manuscripts to make an effective study tool for students. Since then, the English language has gone through drastic changes and the revising of the KJV was accomplished in 1881-1885. Today, the Bible as a whole, has multiple English translations such as the New International Version from the 1970's and the Revised English Bible in 1989 to name a few. The translations have come a long way since the men who sacrificed their futures and lives for what we enjoy reading today.