The Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was written across a period of several centuries in the languages of Hebrew and Aramaic (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) With the changing of nations and cultures across the centuries, these original writings have been translated numerous times to make the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible available in different languages. Following are the versions and translations of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible that have been issued during the past 2,200 years. Just as God inspired to write His Word, He also has preserved the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible by using human instruments to pass it on to succeeding generations.

Ancient versions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible are those that were produced in classical languages such as Greek, Syriac, and Latin. The following ancient versions were issued more than 600 years period from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 400. The oldest Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible translation in the world was made in Alexandria, Egypt, where the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek for the benefit of the Greek speaking Jews of that city. A Jewish community had existed in Alexandria almost from its foundation by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. In two or three generations this community had forgotten its native Palestinian language. These Jews realized they needed the Hebrew Scriptures rendered into the only language they knew - Greek. The first section of the Hebrew Scripture to be translated into Greek was the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Old Testament, some time before 200 B.C. Other parts were translated during the next century.

The version is commonly called the 'Septuagint' from septuaginta, the Latin word for 70 (LXX) This name was selected because of a tradition that the Pentateuch was translated into Greek by about 70 elders of Israel who were brought to Alexandria especially for this purpose.

Only a few fragments of this version survive from the period before Christ. Most copies of the Greek Old Testament belong to the Christian era and were made by Christians. According to some scholars, The John Rylands University Library, Manchester, England, owns a fragment of Deuteronomy in Greek from the second century B.C. Another fragments of the Septuagint have been identified among the texts known as the 'Dead Sea Scrolls' discovered in 1947.

When Christianity penetrated the world of the Greek speaking Jews, and then the Gentiles, the Septuagint was the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible used for preaching the Gospel. Most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from this Greek Scripture/Bible. In fact, the Christians adopted the Septuagint so wholeheartedly that the Jewish people lost interest in it. They produced other Greek versions that did not lend themselves so easily to Christian interpretation.

The Septuagint thus became the "authorized version" of the early Gentile Church. To this day it is the official version of the Old Testament used in the Greek Orthodox Church. After the books of the New Testament were written and accepted by the early Church, they were added to the Old Testament Septuagint to form the complete Greek version of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible.

The Septuagint was based on a Hebrew text much older than most surviving Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament. Occasionally, this Greek Old Testament helps scholars to reconstruct the wording of a passage where it has been lost or miscopied by scribes as the text was passed down across the centuries. An early instance of this occurs in Genesis 4:8, where Cain's words to Abel, "Let go out to the field" are reproduced from the Septuagint in the RSV and other modern versions. These words had been lost from the standard Hebrew text, but they were necessary to complete the sense of the English translation.

Aramaic targums - The word 'targum' means 'translation.' After their return from Captivity in Babylon, many Jews spoke Aramaic, a sister-language, instead of the pure Hebrew of their ancestors. They found it difficult to follow the reading of the Hebrew Scriptures at worship. So they adopted the practice of providing an oral paraphrase into Aramaic when the Scriptures were read in Hebrew. The person who provided this paraphrase, the Turgeman, was an official in the synagogue.

One of the earliest examples of such paraphrase occurs in Nehemiah 8:8 and because of the work of Ezra, the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Old Testament, was officially recognized as the constitution of the Jewish state during the days of the Persian Empire. This constitution was read publicly to the whole community after their return to Jerusalem. The appointed readers "read distinctly [or, with interpretation] from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them understand the reading."


The phrase "with interpretation" appears as a marginal reading in several modern versions, for instance, the RSV, but it probably indicates exactly what happened. The Hebrew text was read, followed by an oral paraphrase in Aramaic so everyone would be sure to understand. This practice continued as standard in the Jewish synagogue for a long time. The targum, or paraphrase of the Hebrew, was not read from a written document, lest some in the congregation might think the authoritative law was being read. Some religious leaders apparently held that the targum should not be written down, even for use outside the synagogue.

In time, all objections to a written targum disappeared. A number of such paraphrases began to be used. Official Jewish recognition was given to two in particular - the Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch and the Targum of Jonathan on the Prophets. Some were far from being word-for-word translations. As expanded paraphrases, they included interpretations and comments on the scriptural/biblical text.

Some New Testament writers indicate knowledge of targumic interpretations in their quotations from the Old Testament. For example, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" - Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30 - is a quotation from Deuteronomy 32:35; but it conforms neither to the Hebrew text nor to the Greek text of the Septuagint. This particular phrase comes from the Targum.

Syriac - The term Syriac describes the Eastern Aramaic language spoken in Northern Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers north-east of the land of Palestine. Large Jewish settlements were located there. At some point, the Old Testament must have been translated into Syriac for their benefit.

As Christianity expanded, this area became an important center of Christian life and action. The Christians in northern Mesopotamia inherited the Syriac Old Testament to it. This "authorized version" of the Syriac Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible is called the Peshitta (the "common" or "simple" version) In its present form, it goes back to the beginning of the fifth century A.D. but there were earlier Syriac translations manuscripts of the Gospels exist in an Old Syriac version, which probably goes back to about the second century A.D.

The Syriac speaking Church was very missionary minded. It carried the Gospel into Central Asia. It translated portions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible from Syriac into the local languages of areas which it evangelized. The earliest forms of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in the languages of Armenia and Georgia (north of Armenia) were based on the Syriac version.

Coptic - Coptic was a highly developed form of the native language of the ancient Egyptians. Christianity was planted in Egypt while some of the twelve apostles were still alive, although there is no record of how it was carried there. With the development of a Christian community in Egypt, the need arose for a Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in the Coptic tongue. To this day the Coptic Church of Egypt uses the Bohairic version of the Coptic Scripture/Bible. translated in the early centuries from the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament into the dialect of Lower Egypt. Earlier still is the Sahidic version, in the dialect of Upper Egypt.

Gothic - Across the Rhine and Danube frontiers of the Roman Empire lived a race of people known as the Goths. The evangelization of the Ostrogoths, those who lived north of the Danube River, began in the third century. About A.D. 360 Bishop Ulfilas, 'the apostle of the Goth' led his converts south of the Danube to settle in what is now Bulgaria. There he translated the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible into their language. The Gothic version was the first translation of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible into a language of the Germanic family. English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian belong to this language group.

Latin - The need for a Latin Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible first arose during the second century A.D. when Latin began to replace Greek as the dominant language of the Roman Empire. The first Old Testament sections of the Latin Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible were considered unreliable, since they were actually a translation of a translation. They were based on the Septuagint, which, in turn, was a translation of the Hebrew Scripture/Bible into Greek. Since the New Testament was written originally in Greek, it was translated directly into the Latin language. Several competing New Testament translations were in use throughout the Latin speaking world as early as about A.D. 250.

The task of producing one standard Latin Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible to replace these competing translations was entrusted by Damasus, bishop of Rome (366-384) to his secretary Jerome. Jerome undertook the task unwillingly, knowing that replacing an old version with a new is bound to cause offense, even if the new is better. He began with a revision of the Gospels, followed by the Psalms. After completing the New Testament, Jerome mastered the Hebrew language in order to translate the Old Testament into Latin. He completed this work in A.D. 405.

Jerome's translation of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible is known as the Latin Vulgate. It did not win instant acceptance. Many were suspicious of it because it varied so much from the version with which they were familiar. But in time its superior merits caused it to gain popularity.

The best surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate, the Codex Amiatinus, is now in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy. Written in a monastery in Northumbria, England, it was presented to Pope Gregory II in 716.

 The Latin Vulgate is especially important because it was the medium through which the Gospel arrived in Western Europe. It remained the standard version in this part of the world for centuries. In 1546 the Council of Trent directed that only "this same ancient and Vulgate edition...be held as authentic in public lecture, disputations, sermons and expository discourses, and that  no one make bold or presume to reject it on any pretext." Until the 20th century no translations of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible except those based on the Vulgate were recognized as authoritative by the Roman Catholic Church.

Until the beginning of the 16th century, all Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible versions in the languages of the Masses of Western Europe were based on the Latin Vulgate. Among these, the Old English versions are of special interest. Most of these versions consisted of only parts of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible, and even these had limited circulation. In this period few of the people of ancient England could read. Many of the familiar stories of the Scripture/Bible were turned into verse and set to music so they could be sung and memorized.

Caedmon, the unlettered poet of Whitby, is said to have turned the whole history of salvation into song in the seventh century. Bede, the monk of Jarrow, the most learned man of his day in Western Europe, devoted the last ten days of his life to turning the Gospels into English so they could be read by the common people.

Alfred the Great, king of a large part of southern and western England, defeated the Danish invaders in 878. He published a code of laws that was introduced by an Old English translation of the Ten Commandments and other brief passages from the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible.

The parts of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible most favored for translation during this period were those often read or recited during worship services, especially the Psalms and the Gospels. An Old English version of the Psalms by Bishop Aldhelm dates from soon after 700. A manuscript called the Wessex Gospels dates from the middle of the tenth century.

Some of the earliest Old English versions of Sacred Scripture were written between the lines of Latin language manuscripts. The manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels ( now in the British Museum , London) was produced originally in Latin shortly before 700. Two and a half centuries later a priest named Aldred wrote between the lines of the text a literal translation in the Northumbrian dialect of old English. Scripture/Bible texts of this type, with some letters decorated in gold and silver, are known as illustrated manuscripts.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -