5 Steps to Understanding Any Biblical Text: The Interpretive Journey...
Sometimes we take it for granted that we can read the Bible in english. The Bible being an ancient book that has been passed down by copying manuscripts in a variety of languages, some of which are now dead languages.
What follows is a brief overview of Bible translations into English. This glosses over a massive collection of translations and only focuses on English. A full comprehensive history would be a massive undertaking.
| Date | Translation Event |
|---|---|
| 250 B.C. | The Septuagint is translated from Hebrew |
| 405 A.D. | The Latin Vulgate is translated by St. Jerome |
| 1380’s A.D. | John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible into Middle English |
| 1450’s | The invention of the printing press and the release of the Gutenberg Bible. |
| 1526 A.D. | William Tyndale publishes the first english translation to directly translate from the original languages. |
| 1534 A.D. | The Bible is translated into German by Martin Luther |
| 1611 A.D. | The King James Version (AV - Authorized Version) of the Bible is first published |
| 1880-1900 A.D. | English Revised Version and the American Standard Versions are translated and published, sharing translation teams and working to revise the KJV. |
| 1956 A.D. | The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered |
| 1970’s | Modern english translations begin to be published. |
This brief timeline shows some notable events that have happened in the history of Bible translation. What this timeline does not show is the political, social and theological context of these events. What you might notice is that there was a long gap in major translations until John Wycliffe. Due in large part to the general dark ages, but also because of theological implications of translating the Bible into other languages, besides the Latin that the Catholic church used.
All the early translations up until the early 1600’s were at some point banned, burned or censored. This might be hard for us to understand but there was largely only one western christian church until Martin Luther. Why would the one church need more than one authoritative translation of the Bible? This might be hard for us in the internet age to understand but in a world before even the printing press, the idea of there being multiple translations of the Bible was radical.
Post the protestant reformation and during the enlightenment Bible translations were often tied to major denominations and political figures. The most famous Bible translation is largely referred to with the Kings name still attached to it.
Today Bible translations much less politically tied. But they do sometimes still maintain denominational or theological affiliation. This isn’t a bad thing, it merely represents a different translation tradition and approach, which we will tackle in a little bit.
This infographic shows very generally the relationship that different translations of the bible have to each other. Translations have followed in the steps of each other in philosophy, texts, and wordings.
What is somewhat visible in this above graphic is the source from which each Bible translation was made from. It has some simplifications but generally it shows what the translators were looking at. Early translations into English were not always direct translations from Greek or Hebrew (the original languages that the Bible was written in). They were often translations from the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible. In essence this means they were translations of translations. As time went on translations more and more made use of older manuscripts in the original languages.
Modern translations actually have access to older (subsequently often more reliable or authentic) manuscripts. This means that over time our translations have gotten better or more true to the original copies of the Bible. This sometimes is the cause for “changes” between translations.
We can see from our brief overview of the history of translations that part of the reason we have so many translations of the Bible is simply due to historical circumstances and language changes. But that doesn’t quite cover it all. Because now in the last 50 years we have had so many different Bibles made apart from any historical reasons. If they are all translations of the same Bible why are they so different?
Translating from one language to another is a difficult task. Here are a few of the obstacles in translating almost anything including the Bible…