History
of the Bible
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Ver'sion
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- Other Versions
There are numerous other ancient versions which are of importance for Biblical critics, but which we need not mention particularly, such as the
- Ethiopic. Fourth century, from the Greek LXX; More than 2,000 manuscript copies of it exist today. Some scholars say sixth century.
- Memphitic. Circulated in Lower Egypt about the fourth century from the Greek.
- Thebaic. Designed for Upper Egypt, about the fourth century from the Greek.
- Sahidic. Early in the third century in Egypt
- Bohairic. Fourth century. About 100 manuscript copies now exist.
- Middle
Egyptian. Fourth or fifth century.
- Gothic, written in the German language, but with the Greek alphabet, by Ulphilas (died A.D. 388), of which only fragments of the Old Testament remain; About 6 partial texts exist today.
- Armenian, about A.D. 400; About 2,600 manuscript copies exist
today. Translated from a Greek Bible.
- Slavonic, in the ninth century, for ancient Moravia. Over 4,000 manuscript copies exist today.
- Arabic. About 75 manuscript copies exist today.
- Persian. Only 2 manuscript copies exist today.
- Anglo-Saxon. Seven manuscript copies exist today.
- Georgian. Fifth century.
- Nubian. Sixth century.
- The English Versions
The history of the English versions begins properly with
Wyckliffe (around AD 1384). But earlier, around AD 650, Caedmon wrote many of the Bible's central passages in the form of Saxon poems. Around AD 700, two bishops, Eadhelm and Egbert, made rather crude Saxon translations of the Psalms and of the Gospels.
Portions of the Scriptures were rendered into Saxon (as the Gospel according to John, by Bede, A.D.
735), (much improved quality) and also into English (by Orme, called the "Ormulum," a portion of the Gospels and of the Acts in the form of a metrical paraphrase, toward the close of the seventh
century), long before Wyckliffe; but it is to him that the honour belongs of having first rendered the whole Bible into
English (A.D. 1384). This version was made from the Vulgate, and renders Gen. 3:15 after that Version, "She shall trede thy head." This translation was very stilted and mechanical in style. It is likely that only a few hundred copies were ever made, because the printing press had not yet been invented. Each copy was laboriously and meticulously copied by hand. There are presently one hundred and seventy copies still in existence.
In 1454, Johann Gutenberg developed the movable type printing press. This allowed all of the following Bible versions to be printed in much larger quantity. It seems no coincidence that Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution began soon after (1517), since a much larger number of scholars now had easy access to Biblical texts.
This was followed by Tyndale's translation (1525-1531) (this translation was based on the original Greek of the New Testament, and was translated in a free idiomatic English; when the KJAV was produced almost a century later (1611), one-third of it retained Tyndale's wording and the remainder retained his general literary structure);
Miles Coverdale's (1535-1553); Thomas Matthew's (1537), really, however, the work of John Rogers, the first martyr under the reign of Queen Mary.
This was properly the first Authorized Version, Henry VIII, having ordered a copy of it to be got for every church.
This took place in less than a year after Tyndale was martyred for the crime of translating the Scriptures. In 1539 Richard
Taverner published a revised edition of Matthew's Bible. The Great Bible, so called from its great size, called also
Cranmer's Bible, was published in 1539 and 1568.
In the strict sense, the "Great Bible" is "the only authorized version; for the Bishops' Bible and the present Bible [the A.V.] never had the formal sanction of royal
authority." Next in order was the Geneva version (1557-1560) (the first version to recognize the division of the text into verses); the
Bishops' Bible (1568); the Rheims and Douai
versions, under Roman Catholic auspices (1582, 1609) (still the standard Roman Catholic Bible); the
Authorized Version (1611) (the most broadly distributed version, also called King James Authorized Version [KJAV]; the work of fifty-four scholars from Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster; a number of revisions were soon made, in 1613, 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769); and the
Revised Version of the New Testament in 1880 and
of the Old Testament in 1884. The two were combined and called the
English Revised Version (1885).
(Easton Illustrated Dictionary)
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Article by Believe Project
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